Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
GREEN AND BLUE
Partisan politics in Taiwan today are sometimes badly polarizing and
stridently Manichaean, especially during national elections. Since
Taiwan's democratization in the 1990s, a duality of “Blue” versus
“Green” has emerged, with “Blue” symbolizing the people and parties
(mainly the Kuomintang or Nationalists) who generally favor some sort
of eventual accommodation or unification with mainland China, and
“Green” representing people and parties (mainly the DPP, or
Democratic Progressive Party) who identify with the island's majority
ethnic group and topolect and hope for an eventual separation from
the mainland, amicable or otherwise. The Green and Blue camps some-
times demonize each other in the most puerile of terms, with Blues
insisting that Greens are traitors to China and lackeys of the Americans
and Greens swearing just as adamantly that the Blues are traitors to
Taiwan and allies with the Communists on the mainland. Foreigners
who allow themselves to be swept up in the maelstrom of Taiwan poli-
tics usually sympathize with the Greens, and their subjective blogo-
sphere invective sometimes reflects an undercurrent of animosity
toward mainland Chinese. (Some mainland Chinese and their first-
and second-generation descendants in Taiwan today have their own
prejudices toward the ethnic majority in Taiwan, but these animosities
do not often find expression on the English-language Internet.)
TAIWAN'S PATH OF DARKNESS
Politics in Taiwan are already difficult and strident enough, but
compounding the island's complexities even further is the widespread
problem of organized crime, known in Mandarin Chinese as heidao,
the “black way” or the “path of darkness.” The ubiquitous extent and
influence of organized crime on the island was perhaps no more ap-
parent than during the widespread media coverage of the 2007 funeral
for Ch'en Ch'i-li, the crime gang boss behind the murder of Henry Liu.
Ch'en's funeral was attended by men in black shirts, retired state
security officials, and miscellaneous Taiwan establishment glitterati,
including celebrities and business fat cats. Most astonishing of all,
however, was the presence at the funeral of several politicians, among
them Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng of the KMT (Kuomintang)
and Legislator Ko Chien-ming of the Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP). In a scathing editorial entitled “Gangsters, gangsters every-
where,” the English-language, Green-leaning Taipei Times on Novem-
ber 9, 2007, lit into the two lawmakers for their attendance:
