Southland’s Voice to Be Heard in Taiwan Election

Ten members of Taiwanese American physician Simon Lin’s family, including his 81-year-old father, left Los Angeles for Taipei over the weekend to cast their votes in Saturday’s presidential election in Taiwan.

“This is a historic moment,” said Lin. “We don’t want to miss it.”

That’s the way tens of thousands of overseas Taiwanese and Chinese Americans feel about this election--the first time the ruling Kuomintang’s candidate is not assured of winning although the party is one of the richest in the world.

The excitement over the election 9,000 miles away has prompted many thousands like Lin to spend anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 for the trip to the island nation, which has been ruled by the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, for more than half a century, ever since Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan after the Communist takeover of the mainland.

Flights from Los Angeles to Taiwan have been full for weeks.

Many Taiwanese Americans in the Los Angeles area believe the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, headed by Chen Shui-bian, a former mayor of the capital, Taipei, has a good chance of winning.

Lin, president of the Taiwan Center in Rosemead, a consortium of 50 organizations that has been working for Chen’s campaign since last year, believes he has been personally responsible for persuading 400 people to vote for Chen and his running mate, Harvard-educated lawyer Annette Hsiu-lien Lu.

Most polls show that Chen and James Soong, a former Kuomintang official who quit the party after disagreeing with President Lee Teng-hui, are running neck and neck and the Kuomintang’s candidate, Vice President Lien Chan, is a not-too-distant third.

In Southern California, which has the largest population of people from Taiwan in the United States, the fervor over the election seems only natural because two-thirds of them are first-generation immigrants. Their ties to homeland, families and friends remain intact.

Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, with a population of 22 million, recognizes dual citizenship, enabling U.S. citizens to vote if they are properly registered, said David Hwang of the Taiwanese American Citizens League, who left for Taiwan over the weekend.

A U.S. State Department spokeswoman said there is no restriction on U.S. citizens voting in foreign elections or making political contributions.

Taiwanese Americans, many of whom are well-educated professionals who came to the United States for advanced degrees, have raised large amounts of money for candidates back home--especially Chen.

Two fund-raisers for Chen in Los Angeles and San Francisco earlier this year netted $1.2 million.

At stake in the election is nothing less than the future relationship between China and Taiwan, said Godwin Chu, a senior fellow emeritus at the East-West Center in Honolulu and a specialist on China.

“It’s a matter of whether the two sides [China and Taiwan] will successfully conclude a peaceful renegotiation or whether the two sides will inadvertently get into a course of conflict--even military conflict,” Chu said.

Last month, China warned Taiwan not to delay reunification talks much longer or it might be provoked into attacking.

China’s statement came days after visiting U.S. officials urged the Chinese government to show the “highest possible degree of restraint” to avoid a repeat of the tense standoff that marked the first free Taiwanese presidential election in 1996.

President Clinton dispatched two Navy ships to the area then to protect the island after Beijing fired test missiles into waters off Taiwan.

Southern California supporters of the three major candidates have been working to influence the election in several ways.

“We are asking some of the overseas Chinese who still have Taiwanese passports to go back to Taiwan to vote,” said San Diego physician George Kung, a friend of presidential candidate Soong for three decades. “We are also asking people here who still have relatives in Taiwan to call Taiwan and ask their friends to vote.”

Though U.S.-educated Soong is personally popular, his campaign in the United States has raised nowhere near the amount that the Chen campaign has.

“We are embarrassed to tell you,” said Los Angeles businessman Terry Lee, secretary for Soong’s campaign in North America. Still, he said, support for Soong is “very high” because he is viewed as a reformer who stood up to President Lee, whom he described as “a dictator with a democratic mask.”

Lien’s campaign in Southern California is low-key, said Maxwell Lin, legal counsel for Lien’s drive in the United States. There is no official campaign office, but there are 17 subcommittees working in the Los Angeles area, and more in the San Francisco area and New York, Lin said.

Two events in February--a luncheon in Chinatown and a Chinese New Year celebration at Cal State Los Angeles--attracted several thousand, Lin said.

Lien is not only saddled with the Kuomintang’s image as a corrupt party, but he also is having difficulty persuading voters that he can be his own man. The incumbent will continue to serve as chairman of the Kuomintang after he leaves office.

Li-Pei Wu, the president of General Bank and chairman of the Overseas Friends of Chen Committee, has been in Taipei since last month working for his candidate. Wu has been appearing on television, too, to express the Taiwanese American viewpoint.

Over the years, overseas Taiwanese and Chinese from Taiwan have played a significant role in the political process of their homeland.

“We were ones who helped open the door because of our effort,” Wu said, by focusing international attention on Taiwan’s repressive regimes.

Lily Chen, a former mayor of Monterey Park whose family lived in Taiwan after leaving the mainland following the Communist takeover, said most Chinese Americans are more interested in U.S. politics than politics in their native land.

“We just hope and pray that things will go smoothly, and that there will be peaceful transition no matter who wins the election,” said Chen, chairman of the Asian Pacific Leadership Council for the California Democratic Party.