On the Taipei practice station, a Chinese language human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six younger Taiwanese politicians campaigned for town’s legislative seats. A decade in the past, they’d been concerned in parallel democratic protest actions — she in China, and the politicians on the other facet of the Taiwan Strait.
“We got here of age as activists across the identical time. Now they’re operating as legislators whereas my friends and I are in exile,” mentioned Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia final 12 months over safety considerations.
Cuicui was one in a bunch of eight girls I adopted final week in Taiwan earlier than the Jan. 13 election. Their tour was known as “Particulars of a Democracy” and was put collectively by Annie Jieping Zhang, a mainland-born journalist who labored in Hong Kong for 20 years earlier than shifting to Taiwan in the course of the pandemic. Her purpose is to assist mainland Chinese language see Taiwan’s election firsthand.
The ladies went to election rallies and talked to politicians and voters, in addition to homeless folks and different deprived teams. They attended a stand-up comedy present by a person from China, now dwelling in Taiwan, whose humor addressed subjects which can be taboo in his residence nation.
It was an emotional journey full of envy, admiration, tears and revelations.
The group made a number of stops at websites that demonstrated the “White Terror” repression Taiwan went although between 1947 and 1987, when tens of hundreds of individuals have been imprisoned and at the least 1,000 have been executed after being accused of spying for China. They visited a former jail that had jailed political prisoners. For them, it was a historical past lesson in Taiwan’s journey from authoritarianism to democracy, a path they consider is more and more unattainable in China.
“Though it might look like touring backward in time for folks in Taiwan, for us, it’s the current,” mentioned Yamei, a Chinese language journalist in her 20s now dwelling exterior China.
Members of the group flew in from Japan, Southeast Asia and america — wherever however China. Each China and Taiwan have made it tougher for Chinese language to go to the island as tensions between them have spiked over Beijing’s more and more assertive declare on the island. They ranged in age from their 20s to their 70s. Some have been activists like Cuicui, who left the nation lately, whereas others have been professionals and businesspeople who’ve lived overseas for years and are usually not essentially political of their outlook.
Angela Chen, an actual property agent in Portland, Ore., joined the tour to take her mom on a trip. Ms. Chen is a naturalized U.S. citizen who identifies culturally as Chinese language. The journey was eye opening, she mentioned. She was shocked to find out how tragic and fierce Taiwan’s democratization course of had been. Her father, like many Chinese language dad and mom, advised her to not become involved in politics. Now she felt that everybody needed to contribute to push a society ahead.
Till a decade in the past, visiting Taiwan to witness its elections was a well-liked exercise for mainland Chinese language who have been involved in exploring the probabilities of democratization.
It’s straightforward to see why. Most Taiwanese converse Mandarin and share a cultural heritage with China as Han Chinese language. As mainlanders looked for another Chinese language society, they naturally turned to Taiwan for solutions.
I traveled to Taiwan in 2012 to report about such a bunch, which had greater than a dozen high Chinese language intellectuals, entrepreneurs and traders. On the time, debates concerning the execs and cons of democracy, republicanism and constitutionalism have been frequent on Chinese language social media.
Opinion leaders have been asking whether or not China would ever have a pacesetter like Chiang Ching-kuo, the Taiwanese president who step by step shifted away from the dictatorial rule of his father, Chiang Kai-shek, within the Eighties.
That looks like a lifetime in the past. Quickly after that, Xi Jinping took over as China’s chief, and he has moved the nation in the other way. Civil society has been pushed underground and discussions about democracy forbidden.
Final week’s group visited Taiwan below very completely different circumstances. Most of them wished to stay nameless, agreeing to speak to me provided that I recognized them by their first identify, as a result of merely cheering Taiwan’s democracy is politically delicate.
At Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, the previous jail, it was straightforward for the group to image how folks had spent their time in crowded, humid and tacky cells and washed their garments in bathrooms.
“Many individuals thought that Taiwan’s democracy fell from the sky,” Antonio Chiang, a former journalist, dissident and adviser to the departing president, Tsai Ing-wen, advised the group over lunch after their go to to the jail website. “It was the results of many individuals’s efforts,” he mentioned.
Mr. Chiang added, “Will probably be a really very long time earlier than China turns into a democracy.”
Everybody knew that was true. Nonetheless, it was deflating for them to listen to. However their despair didn’t final lengthy.
They heard from the daughter of Cheng Nan-jung, a writer and pro-democracy activist who set himself on hearth to protest the shortage of freedom of speech in 1989. On the website of his self-immolation, her feedback resonated with the visiting Chinese language: “The predicament of a rustic can solely be resolved by the folks of that nation themselves.”
Then they went to the stand-up present by the comedian, who was from Xinjiang, the western Chinese language area the place a couple of million Muslims have been despatched to re-education facilities. Everybody cried. It was each heartbreaking and cathartic for them to listen to somebody utilizing phrases, reminiscent of “Uyghurs,” “re-education camps” and “lockdowns,” which can be thought-about too delicate to be mentioned at a public venue in China.
“If everybody does what they will, does it properly and with a bit of extra braveness, our society will grow to be higher,” mentioned the comedian, who requested to not be named.
For the group, essentially the most empowering a part of the tour was to witness the residents organizing themselves and casting their votes. Because the guests gathered on the island’s presidential palace, Yamei, the journalist, was shocked that its entrance was painted peachy pink.
“It was not an establishment surrounded by absolute solemnity or excessive partitions that will intimidate you,” she mentioned. The distinction with Zhongnanhai, the compound for China’s high leaders in Beijing, “was fairly placing.”
After watching a documentary about bar hostesses who had organized a union, they realized that the ladies had drafted laws to guard their rights. That might be unimaginable for anybody in China.
Whereas homeless individuals are largely invisible in Chinese language cities — as a result of the authorities received’t enable them to be seen — the group realized that many organizations in Taiwan present homeless folks with meals, locations to bathe and different assist.
At election rallies, they noticed voters — younger and outdated, and oldsters with strollers — pack squares and stadiums to hearken to candidates make their pitches.
Within the days earlier than the election, they’d heard from many Taiwanese who had nonetheless not determined which of the three presidential candidates they’d vote for. But, the turnout on Taiwan’s Election Day was 72 %, greater than the 66 % that got here out within the U.S. presidential election in 2020, the highest turnout in an American vote since 1900.
The candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Get together, Lai Ching-te, received with 40 % of the vote — not a satisfying end result even for among the occasion’s supporters. However nonetheless the folks selected who can be their chief.
At a rally within the southern metropolis of Tainan, amid the sounds of drums, gongs and fireworks, Lin Lizhen, the proprietor of a jewellery retailer, advised the tour group proudly, “That is democracy.”
Then she mentioned: “I do know the mainlanders like freedom, too. They only don’t have the facility to battle again.”
