Leaders are supposed to have charisma or power to inspire devotion and enthusiasm.More important, however, it is for them to fully comprehend the ethos of the people they lead. In Aristotelian philosophy, ethos is the character or personality of a man with respect to a balance between passions and caution, but it is now commonly referred to as the spirit that motivates the ideas, customs or practices of a people or the guiding beliefs, standards or ideals that characterize or pervade a nation.
Taiwan had leaders with charisma, but few fully understood the ethos of its people and succeeded in eliciting truly enthusiastic popular support.Chiang Kai-shek was a leader with charisma, who fully understood the ethos of only less than a third of the population he governed in Taiwan.His son Chiang Ching-kuo had charisma and enough knowledge of the ethos of the people he led to initiate democratization.Lee Teng-hui had charisma and more than enough knowledge of the ethos of the native-born islanders, of whom he is one, and that of the mainlanders, immigrants from China after 1945 and their offspring born in Taiwan.Lee partially succeeded in putting that knowledge into practice, democratizing Taiwan and helping it work the economic miracle of the twentieth century in the process.
Taiwan still has a few leaders with charisma, but none of them are capable of inspiring devotion and enthusiasm of all its people for lack of knowledge of what influences our national ethos.
The people of Taiwan, islanders and mainlanders alike, have one thing in common.All of them are uncertain of their future.Their fear of what is going to happen to them in the future has changed their ideas, habits, beliefs, behavior, standards and ideals.That fear was dismissed when Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan from 1950 until his death in 1975.He was able to foster a unity of purpose among the people who were willing to work hard to make their homeland strong enough to stop Mao Zedong from “washing Taiwan with blood.”The fear was submerged, while Chiang Ching-kuo, who claimed he was a Taiwanese, was paving the way for Taiwan’s phenomenal economic development.It was almost gone in the first part of Lee Teng-hui’s 12-year reign from 1988 to 2000.Lee founded the National Unification Council and laid down the Guidelines for National Unification.He launched a “New Taiwanese” nationalistic movement: Anybody born in Taiwan, be he an aborigine, islander or mainlander, is a Taiwanese so long as he is loyal and devoted to his homeland.In fact, his appeal for that new nationalism helped Ma Ying-jeou, a mainlander, beat Chen Shui-bian, the popular and populist native-born incumbent, in the 1998 election of the mayor of Taipei.
That fear of the uncertain future has been accentuated since Chen Shui-bian was inaugurated as president to succeed Lee in 2000.All islanders, including the aborigines, have been made to live in fear of an eventual, if not imminent, invasion from across the Taiwan Strait.The People’s Republic of China adopted an anti-secession law in 2006, codifying and justifying attacks on Taiwan, if and when independence is proclaimed.President Chen wants to call a referendum on Taiwan’s admission to the United Nations under the name Taiwan on March 22 next year, which Beijing considers a move towards de jure independence and the United States has declared “provocative” enough to tempt China to start hostilities across the Strait.
If an invasion occurred, Taiwan would not last long.A blockade or embargo could easily defeat Taiwan.All that have been accomplished with hard work would be gone in just a couple of weeks or a little longer.Everyone on Taiwan knows it full well.All of us share that fear.That crisis may not be imminent, but in that case, the mainlander minority will continue to live in fear of increasingly harsh and ugly brutality of the majority.Come election time, one may be beaten up if one speaks Mandarin in any of the many Hoklo-chauvinistic communities in southern Taiwan.Many islanders will stubbornly or blindly vote against mainlanders for fear they might be forced to live under a dictatorship of the latter’s alien regime.Schoolchildren with mainlander parents are afraid their Hoklo classmates will throw them into the sea and force them to swim across the 100-mile strait that separates Taiwan and China.
Ask college students what they wish most to do after graduation.Eight out of every ten undergraduates will tell you they hope to get rich quick and enjoy the wealth as long as they can.They have no scruples about how they can rake in as many quick bucks as they can.They want to enjoy their ephemeral epicurean lives.They have no purpose of life, for they have the fear of an unknown tomorrow.The fear dominates the ethos of the people of Taiwan.
The behavior of politicians is determined by the general ethos of the people they govern.Leaders should try to rid that ethos of the fear of an uncertain and highly disastrous future.They should do much more than just shape public opinion.They should address themselves to the question of Taiwan and solve it to give the people freedom from fear.
Chinese unification is a historical inevitability.History repeats itself, albeit not exactly in the same way.Just as the leaders of Taiwan who supported Koxinga and his dynasty for 21 years in the seventeenth century finally came to accept alien Manchu rule as the mandate of Heaven, so will the people, who are ethnically and culturally Chinese, identify themselves with China in one way or the other in the end.Our people will then be totally free of fear.
True leaders have to convince the people that they are all Taiwanese and Chinese as well.It would be easy before the new millennium began.It is a hard task now.Anyone who can get that task done will win the devotion of all the people to put Taiwan to work for another economic miracle in the new century.
（本文刊載於96.12.25 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
