‘The end of the common world’: COVID anxieties, bordered lives and democratic censorship in Taiwan

ABSTRACTThis paper provides ethnographic sketches of the struggles of bordered lives – mainland spouses and their families, PRC students and overseas Taiwan – during the pandemic time when their rights to enter or return to overseas Taiwanese was denied as part of the preventive measures against COVID-19. By conducting interviews with mainland spouses from a distance and looking at the discussion of a Facebook group called ‘Overseas Taiwanese COVID-19 Self-Help Group’ as an archival site, we seek to understand and analyse the reasons why their right to enter or return was silenced, discredited, denied and attacked, and used these ethnographic sketches as the basis for explaining the emergence of democratic censorship, a paradox that sadly is part of the living reality in Taiwan. Furthermore, inspired by Michel Foucault’s discussion of raison d’etat as the rationale for the state’s, rather than people’s, survival, we situate democratic censorship in the context of tense China–Taiwan relations and call for the ‘de-Cold Warring’ (Chen Citation2010) of consciousness as the key to save democracy from the spectre of autocracy.KEYWORDS: Mainland spousesPRC students‘Xiao Ming’‘Xiao Hong’Overseas Taiwanese COVID-19 Self-Help Groupraison d’etat Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Situated on the coast of Fujian Province, Kinmen and Matsu are what Szonyi (Citation2008) calls ‘Cold War islands’ that were used as garrisons against China during the Cold War era. Though closer to the Chinese mainland than to Taiwan in distance, they are separated from the Chinese mainland despite deep historical connections of migration. In January 2001, as a signal of the Taiwan–China reconciliation, the travel between Fujian and Kinmen and Matsu was re-established, as part of the attempt to materialize the three ‘direct communications’ – in commerce, travel, and postage – across the Taiwan Strait. The eruption of Covid-19, however, put a halt on this travel in February 2020. It was not resumed until 25 March 2023.2 Taiwan’s cultural anthropologist, Sau-hua Liu notes that naming Covid-19 in Chinese was a tortuous political process: while the original translation was more neutral, since 21 February 2020, the Taiwan government decided using ‘Wuhan Pneumonia’ as its official name in Chinese, subjecting the term to stigmatization and discrimination (Citation2020, p. 21).3 At the initial stage, there were debates about the origin of the virus, and many have pointed to the wet market in Wuhan, though some sources suggested otherwise. Such an association between the virus and Wuhan, and later China, thanks to Donald Trump, has racist implications. See A. Liu (Citation2022); Lynteris (Citation2018).4 According to Article 17 of the “Act Governing Relations between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area” (《大陸地區與台灣地區人民關係條例》), it takes four stages for mainland spouses to obtain the Taiwanese citizenship: get together (團聚), stay with family (依親居留), long-term stay (長期居留), and settlement (定居). Mainland spouses of Taiwanese citizens could apply to enter Taiwan for family reunion; once permitted to enter, they can apply to stay with their family. After staying with family for four years, with more than 183 days in residence each year, they will be allowed to apply for long-term stay. After 2 years of long-term stay, again with more than 183 days in residence each year, mainland spouses will be allowed to apply for settlement and obtain citizenship. See Mainland Affairs Council (Citation2022). It should be noted that in comparison, foreign spouses only need 5 years to obtain citizenship, and whereas foreign spouses ‘naturalize’ to become Taiwan citizens, the same process for mainland spouses is called ‘settlement’.5 To understand the experiences and struggles of mainland spouses and their children, from January 2020 to September 2022 we conducted interviews by WeChat and Line messages, when meeting face-to-face was impossible due to pandemic concerns. The interviews are semi-structured, focusing on the interviewee’s life experience, family situation, petitions in detail and interaction with the Taiwan government. Out of the 58 people we interviewed for our study, 15 were sojourners in Wuhan, 22 are children of cross-Strait marriages who were unable to return to Taiwan until August 2020, and 21 are mainland spouses who were yet to obtain the long-term stay permit. All interviews were done with the interviewees’ consent. In addition to interviews, we also observed their petitions in front of government buildings, participated in and helped organize the social platforms – public hearings, news briefings, or news programs – sponsored by the Nationalist Party (KMT) and the media. For understanding overseas Taiwanese’s response to shifting COVID policies, we registered as members of the group as silent observers lest our comments stirred and changed the dynamic of the discussion. All names mentioned in our ethnographical account are alias.6 For children of mainland spouses, there are two ways of obtaining residential permits in Taiwan. If the parent of the child is not yet a Taiwanese citizen, the child can only apply for the ‘long-term stay permit for visiting family’ (長期探親); if the parent of the child is a Taiwanese citizen, the child can apply for a ‘permit for staying’ (專案居留), but there is a quota system for both. Moreover, whereas the ‘long-term permit for visiting family’ is issued to children or spouses of cross-Strait marriages who would ‘rely on families’ (依親) in Taiwan, newly married spouses who come to Taiwan to ‘get together’ (團聚) would only be issued an entry permit (入台證) without the right to reside. Though mainland spouses with one of the residential permits mentioned above could enter Taiwan in spring 2020, their children of previous marriage could not, because they are deemed as PRC citizens.7 ” According to Liberty Times (2/12/Citation2020), a government mouthpiece, Shih-chung Chen’s explanation is favourably supported by the netizens.8 On 19 August 2020, the Ministry of Education announced that international students of high school and below, including those from mainland China, could return to Taiwan for school. The total number that benefitted from this policy is 2532, of which only 206 are from China. See Ministry of Education (Citation2020).9 Online interview conducted via Line (Taiwan’s instant messaging application) on 22 June 2020.10 Online interview conducted via WeChat (China’s instant messaging application) on 24 Jul 2020.11 Since phenotypically, Taiwanese and Chinese are not of different races, we decided to identify Taiwanese discrimination towards PRC Chinese as ‘national’ – rather than racial – hate, to signal both its difference from racial discrimination and its nationalist context in which such discriminatory behaviours arose.12 This is seen most notably in the media, where pro-government media, such as Sanli TV 三立, Formosa TV 民視 and Liberty Times 自由時報, received support from the government, publicly advocating for or defending the government’s policies. Media that are critical of the government are slighted to the margin. The closure of CTI News (中天新聞) in November 2020 is a case in point. The more effective indicator is the increasing crack-down on so-called ‘fake news’ by the government, which has a chilling effect on democratic discussion. For instance, the Keelung City Police Bureau (Citation2020) announced online that it encourages citizens to report on fake news which will be punishable by fine or imprisonment, based on Article 14 of the ‘Stipulates on the Serious Special Epidemic Pneumonia Prevention and Bailout Revitalization’ (嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎防治及紓困振興特別條例).13 In fact, foreign workers and spouses from Southeast Asia were also blamed for disseminating the virus in Taiwan at the early phase of the pandemic. See Shih (Citation2021).14 This petition was written by Chih-ming Wang and Wen-chian Huang, which was first published as an op-ed piece entitled ‘Saving without Differentiation, Response without Harm: Refusal to Package Discrimination in Pandemic Public Health Measures’ (救無別類、應物無傷：拒絕以防疫包裝歧視) in United Daily News (聯合報) on 24 February 2020. Both Wang and Huang were mid-rank professors in Taiwan. The op-ed piece was followed by an online petition in March, seeking public endorsement from the society. The petition, with more than a thousand endorsement, quickly invoked widespread criticism in pro-government social media and news outlets, condemning the initiators as pro-China and calling the petition a form of gaslighting.15 Brian D. Loader and Dan Mercea, for instance, believe that social media produces innovations in participatory politics, but such views were soon challenged and modified. See Loader and Mercea (Citation2012); Persily and Tucker (Citation2020).16 For instance, there is another Facebook group called ‘Overseas Taiwanese Covid-19 Mutual Help Group’ (海外台灣人Covid-19互助會), which was created on 20 October 2020. Though we have not been able to confirm this, the Mutual Help Group appears to be the spinoff from the Self-Help Group, as it renamed itself as ‘mutual help group’ on 11 November 2021. As of 9 December 2022, this group claims to have 36,863 members.17 It is estimated that about 50,000 to 70,000 people were deprived of their right to vote in the local election held on 26 November 2022. See Hsu and Shen (Citation2022).18 For instance, Erica Frantz in a primer on authoritarianism published in Citation2018 by Oxford University Press still maintains an Orientalist view, ascribing authoritarianism to poor, undeveloped countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. This view is not only dated, but moreover misses the point of authoritarianism as rested on the monopoly of power, breeding a form of autocratic culture that resists and silences dissent.Additional informationNotes on contributorsChih-ming WangChih-ming Wang is an Associate Research Fellow in the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica. His research focuses on Asian American literature and cultural studies in transpacific and inter-Asian contexts. He is working on a manuscript about Asian American return narrative and post/Cold War entanglements.Zhai GongZhai Gong is a Ph.D candidate in the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies at National Yangming Chiaotung University. She is finishing a dissertation on marriage migration across the Taiwan Strait during the Covid years.