Taiwan on the edge

As Taipei prepares against the threat of invasion from China, the islands’ domestic politics are increasingly divided.

Photo by James Wendlinger/South China Morning Post

When you take the ferry to Green Island, you get a souvenir: breakfast in a bag, courtesy of the crossing-induced nausea. Just under 18 miles off Taiwan’s rugged east coast, the island floats in the Pacific with nothing but ocean stretching to Hawaii, the edge of the world. As I try to focus on a horizon that keeps disappearing, I question why anyone on this boat had put themselves through this ordeal. What could be worth it?

Kuan, a dive-centre owner, picks me up at the port. He tells me the sea is especially rough because of Typhoon Wipha, which had passed through earlier that week. It formed in the Philippine Sea, scraped past Taiwan and the Philippines, neared Hong Kong and made landfall in China and Vietnam, killing at least 40 people. “We don’t usually get typhoons in July,” Kuan says. This is the second I’ve experienced in as many weeks.

Green Island has had its name for 75 years – a softening of its previous title, Hué-sio-tó in Taiwanese, or Fire-Burn Island, known under Japanese rule (1895-1945) as Kashō-tō. After the arrival of Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT) in 1949, following their defeat to the Communist Red Army on the Chinese mainland, the islands under KMT control became the Republic of China – still Taiwan’s official name – and this one became Green Island, a direct translation of the Chinese 綠島 (“Ludao”). Such rebrandings marked the arrival of a new regime and the imposition of Mandarin as the official language. Japanese erased, Taiwanese suppressed.

Learning Mandarin is part of why I’ve been in Taiwan for over a month. I don’t speak it, but sometimes I feel like I should – or that I look like I should. My mum is Taiwanese, but her family left in the 1970s, and the language never stuck. She spoke Taiwanese at home, her parents spoke Japanese at work. Now, decades later, I’m trying to understand their past by learning a language they hated to speak. Today Taiwanese is still spoken among older generations, more commonly in the south. Mandarin dominates for the younger generations and in the north where nationalist arrivals were concentrated.

I came to Green Island for the scuba, the saltwater hot springs, the Formosan sika deer park – but also at my mum’s insistence, to learn about its darker past, and the reasons they left.

To crush Communist influence and tighten control over Taiwan, the KMT declared martial law in 1949 – a mandate that lasted 38 years. Under it, free speech, assembly, press and political activity were banned. The military ruled civilian life. This period of surveillance and fear, remembered as the White Terror, spanned four decades.

Green Island became a prison camp. Thousands were sent here, accused of opposing the regime – students, writers, teachers, doctors. A glance, a book, a joke could land you in exile. The writer Bo Yang was incarcerated on the island between 1969 and 1977 for translating a Popeye comic the authorities claimed mocked Chiang Kai-shek, who led the Republic of China until his death in 1975; the KMT survives today as Taiwan’s dominant centre-right political party. Banished to the margins of society, prisoners were subject to forced labour, interrogation, torture and execution.

But something else began on Green Island. Many dissidents and intellectuals imprisoned here would go on to shape Taiwan’s transition to democracy, including key figures in the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the pro-independence party in power today.

Beside the former prison, now a museum, a memorial wall lists the names and sentences of those once held. It bears a line from Bo Yang: “In that era, how many mothers spent long nights crying for their children locked up on Green Island?” When unveiled in 1999, it held 953 names; as of May this year, the list has grown to more than 12,000. The memorial is a quiet reminder of how far Taiwan has come.

This July, Taiwan held its longest and largest Han Kuang military drills – an annual exercise preparing for potential invasion by China, and an assault on the otherwise calm pattern of daily life in Taiwan. The focus was on urban defence, with roughly 22,000 reservists taking part, and for the first time civilians joined unscripted drills. Missiles were rushed through Taipei’s metro. Shoppers were herded into supermarket basements. Air raid sirens echoed through streets usually filled with the cheerful tinkle of “Für Elise” from the bin lorries. It was Taiwan’s 41st year of Han Kuang.

I texted a friend in Kaohsiung, a city on the island’s southern coast, asking how effective he thinks the drills are. “It’s a distraction,” he replied. “The real issue is building stronger foundations.” He told me it reminds him of a Japanese anime, Shadow of the Moon, the Sea of Shadow, in which a reluctant ruler must undergo internal transformation to save a kingdom collapsing from within.

While China-Taiwan tensions dominate global headlines, many Taiwanese – especially the young – are more concerned by domestic challenges: stagnant wages, high youth unemployment, unaffordable property – a complaint I hear from almost everyone I speak to. Taipei apartment prices are now rivalling London’s. After nine years in power, the DPP, now led by Lai Ching-te, is losing support for failing to materially address these concerns.

Adding to the political tension, in late July, 24 KMT legislators faced recall votes, sparked by backlash against a bill seen as redistributing power to the party. Pro-DPP supporters took to the streets, handing out plastic fans depicting KMT politicians in Beijing’s pocket, faces painted with the Chinese flag. The KMT accused Lai’s presidency of becoming a dictatorship.

I’m in Ximending, Taipei’s youth district, on the day of the Great Recall, a series of votes attempting to oust elected officials. Streets are lined with banners from the anti-Communist World League for Freedom and Democracy – Taiwan’s outline over a Ukrainian flag, affirming self-determination. In the metro, police are continuing Han Kuang efforts, handing out instructions on how to reach air defence shelters: bring trainers, an ID card, biscuits. I’m given a fluorescent drawstring bag branded for the occasion. Around it are posters of police and soldiers ready for war: “It is safer to be prepared.” I’m the only one at the stall. The real event is upstairs, where crowds jostle at Pop Mart to get their hands on a Labubu, a doll that has become Beijing’s greatest export.

None of these recall votes would pass, nor any from the second set, which would take place on 24 August. The KMT holds its slim parliamentary majority – the power to pass laws, approve budgets, and reject bills. But the failed overhaul may have only deepened Taiwan’s growing political polarisation.

Back at the ferry port on Green Island, I ask Kuan if he’s ever seen signs of Chinese military activity near the island. China has been ramping up drills around Taiwan for years, operating in the “grey zone” – visible, but not overt. Kuan shakes his head. “They’re bluffing,” he says. “Wasting fuel. Seven years now. Besides,” he adds, “Taiwan has the highest missile density after Israel. If they shoot, Taiwan is like a porcupine.”

By now, I have found travel sickness pills, but before boarding I ask if the sea will be calmer. “There’s another typhoon forming,” Kuan says. Francisco – another one born in the Philippine Sea – is heading over northern Taiwan. “But we’re lucky today. We’re sitting between two weather systems.” The crossing is smoother, the retching quieter – or maybe I’m just prepared. Not everyone is. When we dock in Taitung, an ambulance waits to take a passenger to hospital.

[See also: The millennial parent trap]