Like any evolved organism, the State and the grey society are mutually dependent, often large numbers of members of the former also simultaneously comprising members of the latter. It is failed states where this dialectic is strongest. Mexico and Russia come to mind as examples where the grey society has penetrated State institutions to the extent that a clear dividing line between them is almost impossible to discern. One-party authoritarian States are another matter - in these countries a grey society is manifested in even further behind the scenes wrangling between cliques within a single ruling dominant power structure (The Party). Since no effective challenge can be made outside of the framework of the State, the challenge takes place between elites within it. China, Burma, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and North Korea spring to mind. Democracies and Republics build and maintain legitimacy for the State's monopoly through the application of suffrage and rule of law. They maintain individual freedoms that allow for the growth of a grey society but attempt as far as possible to separate policing and judicial operations from the State thereby ensuring that judicial and electoral outcomes are uncertain. This makes it much harder to crudely subvert institutions for an individual's gain. Most laws are commonly observed but operating outside of the law comes at a higher operating cost (not being commonly able to bribe a lawyer, judge or police officer for example).
All systems allow for the existence of a grey society in one form or another. The form depends on the structure and evolution of the political environment. The degree of saturation of the grey society into outcomes of State institution operation seems to depend largely upon the legal framework existant in a society - laws shape citizen's behaviour and their motivations. Prohibition doesn't stop the use and sale of banned products but rather induces a new response from individuals and communities to protect their contextually contingent psycho-social constructs (culture) and above all, income and financial independence.
Taiwan in this regard is no different from any other country. It has an extensive grey society. I posit that there are two types of corruption in Taiwan - Big C and Little C. The latter is the off the books work you got done for your car, the red light you ignored, the help you sought with your taxes to massage the figures, the running of your business without all the required legal certificates. The Big C corruption involves organised 'underworld' activity, the ruling class of which groups overlaps to some extent with the ruling class of the State, defrauds tax payers of huge sums of money, embezzles government budgets and fixes tenders to large construction projects as well as the prices of everyday goods. Relationships grease the wheels to secure outcomes favourable to a small group of specific and influential people.
Most political systems therefore witness an ongoing battle for control of the State and the national institutional apparatus. The party political system in a democracy or republic allows for a choice to be presented to voters, critical for maintaining legitimacy without constant resort to force and censorship, but does not preclude the existence of a grey society - indeed it likely motivates the grey society to cut its influence across party lines so as to constrain the largest parties from enacting an agenda that threatens the grey society's operations. In their attempts to secure certain results in a system designed to produce uncertain outcomes, members of the grey society will utilise any method seen necessary to protect their short and long term interests. Murder and judicial persecution are not uncommon. We fool ourselves if we imagine that any country, no matter how democratic or free, doesn't feature this kind of politics of vindictiveness and retribution, whether between individuals, parties or grey society groups.
This is where Taiwan diverts slightly from the model above. To understand the motivations of both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), one needs to understand the nature of the political system that has evolved on Taiwan since 1945. For some reason, some analysts of Taiwanese politics consistently overlook the development of the KMT alongside the ROC throughout that polity's nearly 100 year history. The first most important point to understand is that for the KMT, the ROC is their nation-state project. It belongs to them. For nearly all of the 88 years from 1912 to 2000, the KMT solely ran the ROC, and it was only as a result of the ROC being stranded on Taiwan, and then transformed into a democracy, that control of the ROC came to be subject to change. In 1949, the KMT effectively up sticks in China and literally transported their failed State to Taiwan where it was implemented with extreme force and prejudice to the existing inhabitants. Thirty-eight years later, the Taiwanese finally managed to achieve an end to the world's longest running period of Martial Law and transform their country into a young and tentative democracy. That transition came at a cost - the amendments to the constitution encoded a long term goal to 'unify' with China whilst leaving the original constitution relatively unmodified - a two tier constitutional order existed that prevented institutional change that would have reified the new Taiwanese democracy into a de jure Taiwan nation.
One of the main reasons why democratic transition Presidents Lee and Chen are now reviled by the KMT is because they changed the ROC in the public's perception from a State waiting to be unified to one solely confined to and defined by its existence on Taiwan only. In short, the ROC became 'Taiwan' in all but legal form - it gained a de facto equivalence that associated the ROC with Taiwan, but with Taiwan as the core identity and the ROC as a legal idiosycracy. To the KMT, this was unforgivable. It was a theft of their great Chinese nation-building project. How, they wondered, could it have become the situation where the majority of citizens of the real 'China' were now Taiwanese who had no particular national political loyalty to, or identification, with China? How could polls consistently show at least 70% of citizens preferring independence to unification with the PRC? The answer: Lee and Chen. With Lee the deep blue clique of KMT were caught out and lost control of their party. Vindictiveness towards Lee was possible but not so much retribution, especially given Lee's still not inconsiderable influence amongst the public. With Chen, the party suffered two election defeats that, in their eyes, were the result of Chen cheating. Having rigged the game for 88 years, the KMT stood aghast as the nation they built got new executive leadership that ultimately wanted to supplant the ROC with an entirely indigenous polity separate from China, in any form.
From 2000 to 2008, the KMT as party strategy or the actions of individual members, I believe, engaged with the institutions of the State to:
- Prevent the Chen administrations from enacting any meaningful legislation or that which might leave a legacy that might constrain future KMT administrations.
- Prevent a formalisation of Taiwan's de facto independence in law and constitution.
- Prevent the politically potent symbolic elements of the physical environment from being changed and prevent Taiwan-centered names from replacing China-centered names.
- Prevent Taiwan from acquiring more defensive weapons.
- Aid the PRC in coaching Washington to cast Chen as a 'troublemaker' in international relations.
- Cut or impede the flow of budgets to state institutions and local governments.
- Fix the outcomes of elections through vote-buying.
- Fix judicial outcomes through the bribing of judges.
- Allow for more the media to be bought by interests that have close connections to the KMT.
- Send party officials to China for negotiations that undermined the sovereign authority of the ROC Executive Yuan to determine relations with other countries.
- Tolerate and support senior party members who illegally held dual nationality.
- Worked with the grey society to constrict economic growth and public construction projects.
- Overseen greater consolidation of media into fewer hands, hands that support the party's agenda.
- Restored the names of politically potent symbolic elements of the physical environment.
- Resorted to a Pre-1992 definition of the ROC-PRC relations and attempted to subvert the notion that Taiwanese is a nationality separate from China.
- Both criticised the judiciary then praised it for in short succession, after having said it will not intervene in ongoing cases.
- Stolen and smashed the ROC flag to appease visiting Chinese dignitaries.
- Refused visas to people that China dislikes.
- Put overt political pressure on the judiciary to pursue legal action against former President Chen (this destroys his reputation as a way to destroy his legacy and make the public associate the DPP and Taiwan identity with Chen's corruption).
- Resumed active use of the death penalty.
- Used the police to harras politically active citizens.
- Warned students to curb their freedoms of expression. Encouraged media self-censorship.
- Steered all negotiations and agreements with China away from effective public oversight.
- Refused on multiple occasions to allow a referendum on ECFA whilst allowing one on gambling in Penghu.
- Influenced prosecutorial and judicial irregularities in the procedure of Chen's trials.
- Allocated a massive budget to the 100 year 'celebrations' of the ROC - an event they hope will reignite the public's identification with the ROC and China as a preparation for political negotiations with China post 2012.
- Engaged in vote buying.
- Allowed visiting Chinese dignitaries to address senior members of the government as 'you' or 'Mr'.
- Attempted to reformulate the meaning of 'Taiwan' as a 'region' of the ROC rather than a national entity with equivalence to the ROC.
- Changed personnel in independent media organisations to affect editorial lines.
- Worked with the grey society to ensure that public works and construction are vamped up and ECFA delivers quick economic benefits that will spur the electorate to vote for the party. This is done at huge cost to the tax payers who pay a premium of 20% extra which goes to grey society groups and then likely enters the political system through religious and financial institutions.
I'm sure I've probably missed a few in that list. This is my interpretation and I am limited in the scope and extent of information I have available to see patterns and draw conclusions. The actual TRUTH of Taiwanese politics is unobtainable - everyone from the President to the foreign resident can only know part of the reality before them. There are a million logical fallacies, paradoxes and contradictions to fall over as each of us builds a world view. Errors of perception are therefore inevitable.
At this time, as I understand it, the KMT can only be regarded as a hegemony building party - one in which a monopoly of power, soft and hard, is always the desired goal, whether than be manifested as a 'benign' or command-control dictatorship. A dictatorship of the party rather than the 'father' is the KMT's response to the uncertain outcomes of democracy. The President and ruling party might change but hegemony within State institutions must not. Relationships and influence must be maintained and directed by KMT party political necessity. KMT hegemony in the institutions of Taiwan's nation-state did not die away during the Chen administrations. If anything, it went quiet. On the KMT's return to government in 2008, it has reasserted itself but in a savvy manner that posits State institutions such as the Judiciary as politically neutral when in reality they are far from it. Many Taiwanese argue that now Taiwan is a democracy, both the KMT and DPP should conduct their battles in the public eye using legally sanctioned and morally acceptable methods, which for the most part they usually do. Sometimes, confrontation becomes physical but on the whole both parties play by the rules of a game - the rules themselves also an object of political manipulation and a site of contest. What some Taiwanese have trouble coming to terms with, much like other people with similar situations in other countries, is that the political playing field is not level and never was. The battle to prevent a level playing field in Taiwanese politics is for the KMT an existential one - if the KMT no longer has a direct equivalence to the ROC, it will become just one of a number of Chinese political parties competing in a self acknowledged Taiwanese polity. A level playing field also infers truly independent State institutions yet the institutions of the State have been the key to the KMT maintaining a fall back position that restricts the depth of change an opposition administration could enact. When you perceive that you are fighting for the existence of your nation, no matter how much cognitive dissonance that fight might potentially invoke you will consider all actions of the opposition as treason / war and any method or means acceptable to achieve the long term goal. Vindictiveness and retribution are just some of the tools of the trade. Humanity, compassion and empathy are dangerous traps that weaken resolve. The art of politics is the art of war. When is comes to Taiwanese politics, as the taxi drivers in Bangkok so admirably summarise, 'same same but different'.
It's a dirty battle out there but at least Taiwan is not Mexico or Russia*, yet.
* I mean no particular slight to the people of these two countries. I am only comparing levels of violence and freedom and State control. It is not a comment on the culture, language, food, environment, religions, hobbies, lifestyle preferences or identities of citizens from these countries.
