Chen Shui-bian: On Independence

Chen Shui-bian achieved an international reputation for his promotion of Taiwan independence. Whilst that reputation may have been well earned, the analyses on which this conclusion is based are frequently flawed in two ways. First, by using an undifferentiated notion of independence, they tend to conflate sovereignty with less threatening expressions of Taiwanese identity and pro-democracy discourse. Second, by failing to take into account the impact of immediate strategic context, analysts ignore a fundamental element of democratic political communication. In our empirical analysis of more than 2,000 of Chen’s speeches, we seek to avoid both flaws by unpacking the concept of independence and taking into account Chen’s strategic relationship with his primary audiences. Our findings challenge popular portrayals of Chen, but more importantly they have strong implications for policy makers and students of political rhetoric with regard to current and future ROC presidents. During his time as president of the Republic of China (ROC), Chen Shui-bian 陳 水扁 achieved international notoriety for his promotion of “Taiwan independence.”1 With the taut strategic conditions prevailing in the Taiwan Strait, Chen was routinely depicted in international media as being provocative and quixotic.2 Nor was his portrayal as an irresponsible adventurer bent on independence limited to popular literature. A classic example of the “reckless adventurer” narrative can be found in Robert Ross’s article on “Taiwanese revisionism.”3 Writing in 2006, Ross declared that “Taiwan has taken incremental steps that signal its intention to declare independence” and left no doubt that it was Chen, a “risk acceptant leader” with a “personal commitment to independence,” who was * University of Nottingham. Email: [email protected] † Maastricht University. Email: [email protected] 1 As an indication of this fame, a Lexis-Nexis search of English language news sources between 2003 and 2008 returns 1,390 articles with three or more mentions of Chen in connection with “Taiwan independence.” 2 A similar Lexis-Nexis search returns 464 articles in which Chen is associated three or more times with “recklessness” or “danger.” 3 Robert Ross, “Explaining Taiwan’s revisionist diplomacy,” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 15, No. 48 (2006), pp. 443–58. For an alternative opinion see Edward Friedman, “Taiwan’s independence plot,” Issues and Studies, Vol. 42, No. 4 (2006), pp. 67–95. 619 © The China Quarterly, 2010 doi:10.1017/S0305741010000627 instrumental in this process. Ross concluded that “the level of the individual is the most persuasive explanation for Taiwan’s revisionism.”4 The purpose of this article is not to dispute such characterizations of Chen’s presidency. Instead its objective is to develop an operational understanding of Chen’s presidential discourse and to explicitly measure the content of his rhetoric. In doing so we will try to demonstrate that the idea that Chen expressed a constant level of independence rhetoric is not supported by systematic large-scale analysis of his speeches. Cross-Strait relations, under any ROC president, involve a multi-layered set of issues and interrelated discourses that should not be reduced to ill defined notions of “Taiwan independence.” We argue that a minimum requirement for analysing Chen’s discourse is to distinguish language relating to Taiwan sovereignty from less threatening expressions of Taiwanese identity and pro-democracy rhetoric. Furthermore, the majority of commentators disturbed by Chen’s seemingly erratic discursive behaviour fail to recognize a fundamental logic of democratic political communication. Democratically elected leaders are obliged to look for support from multiple constituencies to achieve their policy goals.5 Chen was no exception,6 and since the numerous dimensions of Taiwan’s national status involve a complex of issues and multiple stakeholders with whom he had to engage, the content of his statements can be expected to contain substantial variation. Simply put, different constituencies vary in their concerns and politicians are often required to make strategic decisions about which issues to emphasize and what kinds of language to generate in order to appeal to that constituency.7 By recognizing that audiences provide the immediate strategic context within which Chen operated and by exploring the variation in the content of his rhetoric over a large number of speeches, this article attempts to give a more balanced picture of Chen’s presidential discourse. Disaggregating Cross-Strait Discourse As shown by the excitement that Chen and his predecessor’s “provocative statements” generated in Beijing and Washington, the public assertions of the ROC president are a matter of major importance. Under both Lee Teng-hui 李登輝 4 Ross, “Explaining Taiwan’s revisionist diplomacy,” p. 456. 5 Philip Converse, “The nature of belief systems in mass publics,” in David Apter (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 206–62; Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller and Donald Stokes, The American Voter (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1960); V.O. Key, The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting 1936–1960 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1966); Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 6 For instance Cal Clark, “The paradox of the national identity issue in Chen Shui-Bian’s 2004 presidential campaign: base constituencies vs the moderate middle,” Issues and Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2004), pp. 53–86. 7 This is in contrast to a full information spatial politics model with a single homogenous audience, where political actors are expected to gravitate towards a single “median-voter” position. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957); Melvin Hinich and Michael Munger, Analytical Politics (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1997). 620 The China Quarterly, 203, September 2010, pp. 619–638