Ashley Smith:  Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception. I’m Ashley Smith. Blanca Missé and I are co-hosts of this ongoing podcast series. It is sponsored by the Ukraine Solidarity Network and produced by The Real News Network.

Today we’re joined by Brian Hioe. Brian is a writer, editor, translator and activist based in Taipei. During Taiwan’s Sunflower movement in 2014, he helped found New Bloom magazine, which covers activism and politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific. New Bloom is also an organization that sponsors events at Taipei’s community space Daybreak.

Today, Taiwan is caught in the crosshairs of two imperial rivals: the US and China. This is nothing new for the island nation; it has been a battleground between empires for centuries. Its Indigenous inhabitants were Austronesian people who had lived on the island for thousands of years.

In the 17th century, various capitalist and precapitalist empires fought for control over Taiwan and its people. The Netherlands seized most of it in the early 1600s, while Spain established a small outpost in the north. The Dutch eventually drove out Spain and brought in Han Chinese settlers to farm the land and police the island’s Indigenous people and the resistance to colonization. China’s Ming and Qing dynasties ousted the Dutch and incorporated the island in 1683, opening the door to Han in migration that marginalized the Indigenous population.

But China did not make Taiwan a province until 1885, only to lose it 10 years later to Japan, which claimed control of it in 1895 during the Sino-Japanese war. Japan ruled the island until its defeat in World War II. The victorious allied powers granted Taiwan to the rulers of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, the KMT. After Chiang’s defeat at the hands of Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the KMT fled the Mainland to Taiwan, where it imposed dictatorial rule against the wishes of the island’s people until they won democratization in 1987.

On the Mainland, Mao established the People’s Republic of China. During the Cold War, the US backed Chiang’s Taiwan against Mao’s China. Washington used it to project its power over the Asia Pacific, using its military bases on the island for its wars in Korea and Vietnam. The KMT oversaw sweatshop development, later becoming one of the so-called Asian Tigers, a high-tech manufacturer, and today, the 22nd largest economy in the world.

Richard Nixon upset this arrangement when he seemingly changed sides and struck an alliance with Mao against the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Washington adopted a One China policy, formally recognizing the People’s Republic, and giving it China’s seat at the United Nations. But the US hedged its bets on China. It maintained de facto relations with Taiwan, arming it against Beijing, and maintaining strategic ambiguity as to whether it would defend the island.

US normalization and China’s opening up to global capitalism transformed relations between these three countries. Despite repeated crises in the Taiwan Strait, US, Taiwanese, and Chinese capital have become intertwined, and so have the working classes they exploit. The US multinational Apple exemplifies their integration. It designs iPhones, Taiwan’s Foxconn exploits Chinese workers in Mainland China to make them, and the Chinese state oversees its workers and ensures labor peace.

That period of integration is ending. With the rise of China as a capitalist power, the US now sees it as its main economic, geopolitical, and military adversary. Taiwan has become the key flashpoint of their rivalry. China claims the island as a renegade province and threatens it with invasion while the US arms it and increasingly hints that it would defend it against Beijing. The stakes of their conflict are not just geopolitical. Taiwan manufactures 90% of the world’s most advanced microchips, the key component in everything from consumer electronics to Washington’s F-35 fighter bomber. Lost amidst the two great powers’ conflict is Taiwan’s people, who now see themselves primarily as Taiwanese and, as such, have the right to self-determination.

In this episode, Brian Hioe explains the history of Taiwan, its position in the US-China rivalry, and the urgency of building solidarity among workers against their common exploitation by all three ruling classes and states — And against the threat of Imperial war. Now, onto the discussion with Brian Hioe.

So since World War II, the US has been the Asia Pacific’s main hegemonic imperial power. Now, China is challenging Washington’s supremacy and the two are in an intensifying standoff over Taiwan. China has increased its military exercises against the island while the US has responded in kind with an increasing buildup in the region. What’s the situation as it stands today in Taiwan?

Brian Hioe:  Yeah, so interesting enough, Taiwan does not react very strongly to the Chinese threats directed at it because of the fact they’ve gone on so long. There are many decades of Chinese threats. People are quite used to it. And so, oftentimes, while there’s discussion as though war may break out tomorrow in the US, in Europe, in other Western contexts, in Taiwan, life goes on.

That being said, the Chinese threats against Taiwan are intensified. Since the Pelosi visit to Taiwan in 2022, the threats have escalated to a near daily basis. And so things have become riskier in the region, and yet life is still feeling about the same for most people. But people are aware of, for example, the rising tensions between the US and China as well as, for example, when Trump announces tariffs on the rest of the world outside of the US. And so it is a question of what happens next in Taiwan.

Ashley Smith:  What are the particular things that China has done that’s different recently? And in particular, how has the US responded? Like when defense secretary Pete Hegseth was at the Shangri-La Dialogue and threatened all sorts of responses to the Chinese aggression against Taiwan. So how is that playing out?

Brian Hioe:  I think, actually, the Chinese threats against Taiwan, people feel not very acutely, and in fact, it’s often filtered through the news media, to see a diagram, for example, of the amount of Chinese planes that have [made] incursions in Taiwan’s aerospace. In the meantime, the US says they will escalate their support for Taiwan through arm sales and so forth, but that’s not really felt by the majority of people.

And so you have a lot of rhetoric, actually, the rhetoric is definitely escalating, and there is a sense that there is a rising threat, but I think that’s filtered much more through, for example, events in Ukraine or Hong Kong, seeing those images of where there has been warfare or where it has been protest against, for example, China holding control of the government. And so, that has occurred, and there’s a sense of, I think, rising awareness that Taiwan could be caught in the crosshairs of the US and China. But in the meantime, it does still feel a bit remote sometimes, but there’s awareness, perhaps, that we are facing more threats.

Ashley Smith:  So, despite Taiwan being in the news all the time in the US, most people know very little about the island’s long history and the past. Various imperial powers [that] have contested for control over it. Can you give us a brief history of its pre-colonial people, European colonization, and subsequent seizure by China, Japan, then Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, the KMT, after its defeat at the hands of Mao’s Communist Party in 1949 — And connected to that, how has the US used Taiwan for its own purposes since the Cold War through to today?

Brian Hioe:  I think what’s very interesting is that particularly many people in Western contexts are aware of Taiwan’s producing the majority of the world’s semiconductors. And that’s, in fact, a very recent phenomenon. But Taiwan has long been fought over by imperial powers because of where it’s located, because of the fact that if you want to have hegemony over the Asia Pacific, Taiwan is at the crucial node of that. And so that has included Japan, in terms of the Japanese empire, in terms of various premodern Chinese empires, and so forth.

And that is something that I think, really, is why Taiwan is at this center of contestation between the US and China today. The fact that Taiwan produces the majority of the world’s semiconductors that power everything from iPhones to PlayStations to electric vehicles, that’s actually very relatively recent.

And so, Taiwan’s first inhabitants are Indigenous, they are Indigenous, it is actually thought that many Austronesian countries, their ancestors were in Taiwan before. But then after that, it was colonized by many Western powers: Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and so forth. And then after that by the Japanese empire. Taiwan was part of premodern Chinese empires, but it was often thought of as a hinterland. They were not really cared about, actually, as a crucial part of the territory. Taiwan was only ever a province of the Qing dynasty, in fact, for a total of seven years, seven or eight years depending on how you count it. And then after that, it became part of the Japanese empire for 50 years.

So, today when we talk about it, Taiwan, in fact, as a part of China since time immemorial, it’s actually a very recent development. Mao Zedong himself, for example, suggested that Taiwan should become independent the way that Korea was, for example. And he did not necessarily think about it that much until the KMT came to Taiwan after its defeat in the Chinese Civil War. After that, though, it becomes this notion that Taiwan has been part of China since time immemorial. And it’s very interesting to think about how it became that way.

But it points these contradictions, I think, of being caught between empires, of having peoples here, they’re not, say, part of the Chinese empire, who are Indigenous, or are from previous waves of migration from China but not necessarily when Taiwan was part of any Chinese empire, any premodern Chinese empire. And that’s part of the reason why it’s fought over today. But I think, really, it goes back to geopolitics, that it’s like this crystal node of trade and commerce in the region. That is why it is desired by empires historically and also today.

Ashley Smith:  One thing, if you could elaborate a little bit more about, is two things that are related to that. Flesh out a little bit more how the US used Taiwan against China during the Cold War, and then how that shifts with the normalization of relations between the US and Mainland China with the People’s Republic. So how has it shifted, and how do the majority of people in Taiwan conceptualize their identity, as Chinese or as Taiwanese?

Brian Hioe:  I think what is interesting is that Taiwan fits the classical pattern of a right-wing dictatorship that’s backed by the US for the purposes of anti-communism because China is right there, for example. Also that occurred, for example, in the context of the Vietnam War. And so it is actually very much along that pattern. And yet, I think people do not think about it enough, in fact, because I think Asia conceptually… People don’t pay attention as much to this part of this global US strategy at the time.

And I think that dynamic is still persistent to this day in fact, because you still have American Republicans, for example, talking about this rhetoric of needing to oppose communist China. And interesting enough, using this rhetoric of the authoritarian KMT because of the fact that they just don’t know what Taiwan is today, that is democratized against the US-backed right-wing dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. And so, the question is then how can leftists think worldwide, think of Taiwan on its own terms. That’s always been a challenge.

And so, I think that is still a conceptual challenge for many people. But what has changed in the decade since then, of course, is democratization and that Taiwan has become a place in which people have an [inaudible] of identity. And I think that people often do not realize, for example, that before Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo established a dictator from Taiwan, 90% of the population was descended from those who were already here. Descendants of those that came with the KMT, the Chinese Nationals Party of Taiwan, are only around 10% of the population — Which does include myself. But then the majority of the population are Indigenous or they’re from prior waves of Han migration from China during times in which Taiwan was not necessarily part of a Chinese empire. And so, that leads to a very different sense of identity.

Ashley Smith:  Now, Taiwan has undergone a massive political and economic transformation. After decades of martial law that you just described, it underwent democratization, significant economic development, neoliberalization and the rise of its tech industry, particularly the production of high-end computer chips. So it now ranks about 22nd globally in GDP, right below Switzerland. What is the role of Taiwan now in the world economy? How would you characterize its position in the order of imperial states? And what are the main political parties in the country, and how has democratization and neoliberal development impacted its working people and oppressed people?

Brian Hioe:  Taiwan is a very interesting context in that sense because, for example, many of the factories that were built up in China in the 1990s and 2000s were, in fact, Taiwanese investment. And so it is often categorized as part of the “East Asian Tigers”, economies that rose up after World War II, are often backed by enormous amounts of US aid as a bulwark against “communist China”. And that is what leads to the contemporary semiconductor dominance of Taiwan relative to China because of the fact that the advanced chips are produced in Taiwan, but the chips, in fact, are put together in China. For example, iPhones are put together in China, but the advanced chips are in Taiwan.

And it very much fits the pattern, then, of how the US created or sought to build up the economies in East Asia as a bulwark against the economic and political threats they faced during the Cold War. But then you had odd development in which there is dependence upon each other in the sense that, for example, advanced chips are built in Taiwan, but then in the 1990s when we see China and the Soviet Union disintegrated, there’s a shift towards global capitalism. There’s a notion then that there would no longer be such rivalries, and that is why Taiwan could rise to this dominance in the semiconductor industry in the post Cold War era.

And in this sense, I think that Taiwan now exists at a very strange place in which at times the US and China are against, at odds with each other. I think that now there is this notion that Taiwan is caught between the trade war between the US and China, which is true, also technology war, reflects how the Cold War, the shadow of it is back. And so many talk about this as the new Cold War and Taiwan is very caught between these different places. And there doesn’t seem to be a way out because it seems like many of the old geopolitical rivalries of the Cold War have resurfaced.

Ashley Smith:  What impact has all this had on working people and oppressed people on the island? How has the economic development and, in particular, the neoliberalization and opening up and export of manufacturing into China done to working people’s standard of living, oppressed groups, their experience, migrant labor forces, what has the reshaping of Taiwanese capitalism done to the majority of its people?

Brian Hioe:  I think the interesting thing is that many people are not actually totally aware of it because what happened, actually, in the past few decades is that the so-called 3D jobs, the dirty, dangerous, demeaning jobs were outsourced to Southeast Asian migrant workers who are often in Taiwan working in Taiwanese factories.

But then, in spite of the rising tensions and people actually do not necessarily feel, in terms of the working class, I think the era in which Taiwanese capital owned many factories in China has passed. It definitely is still the case, but with the rising tensions between Taiwan and China, actually many capitalists have relocated elsewhere, mostly to Southeast Asia or perhaps India. And so I think that people have not really felt it in that sense. It has not really affected life. I think, actually, the capital labor relations in Taiwan have not been that much affected.

But then I think there’s still this issue in which Taiwan is not aware enough of the so-called 3D jobs, the dirty, dangerous, demeaning jobs, have gone to Southeast Asian migrant workers. And so that has also occurred and Taiwan can be in between, I think, in terms of once these jobs went to China and now they’ve gone to Southeast Asia, Taiwan is both exploited in that sense, but also an exploiter, and I think that’s something that Taiwan could reflect on much more.

Ashley Smith:  So what does that mean for Taiwan’s position in the structure of imperial states? Because some people talk about it as an oppressed nation, other people talk about it as a regional power. How do you think it fits in? Because that’s important conceptually to figure out how the left should respond to the situation.

Brian Hioe:  Absolutely, and I think that’s very important to think about the various East Asian states, whether it’s South Korea or Japan or Taiwan because they are oppressors, but also caught between the US and China. And so, perhaps there’s a certain degree of economic level that Taiwan has risen to. But in turn, then Taiwan becomes the oppressor of other nations.

Because at one point, when there’s the era of “made in Taiwan”, those Chinese factory workers were taking on all these jobs. But after moving up the so-called value chain, now Taiwan outsources these jobs to other nationalities, whether within Taiwan itself, in factories in Taiwan, or outsourcing them directly to South Asian factories. And so Taiwan is caught in between.

I think we need to think beyond these binaries of victim and victimizer in terms of capitalism because it is this endless chain in which you are at different points in the so-called value chain. And so, Taiwan is somewhere in between there. And in that sense, to be honest, Taiwan is, I think, comparatively relatively privileged, but then it is in the meantime caught between the contention of geopolitical rivals. And I think there’s the unfortunate fact Taiwan is caught geopolitically at the certain nexus in which it has often been the object of contestation between empires. So I think there’s a lot of layers through there. There’s no good versus evil narrative here.

Ashley Smith:  So now let’s just dive into the relationship in this triangle of the US, Taiwan, and China. Taiwan’s trapped between global capitalism’s two main powers, the US and China. China claims Taiwan is a renegade province while the US supports and arms Taiwan while maintaining strategic ambiguity as to whether it would come to its defense in the case of an invasion by Beijing. How have the country’s main parties, the capitalist parties, the KMT, the DPP, and the TPP positioned themselves amidst this conflict?

Brian Hioe:  So, I think the fundamental splits in Taiwan between the two major parties, the DPP and the KMT is that one is the party of domestic Taiwanese capital, let’s say the bourgeoisie, whereas the other one, the KMT, the former authoritarian party, is the party of the cross-strait hopping bourgeoisie, which you jump between Taiwan and China, that’s how you operate. You’re operating on the interests of those two countries — Or two entities, rather. And so that is the source of conflict between the parties.

And so the DPP has really doubled down on strengthening ties to the US, building up domestic Taiwanese capital. In the meantime, the KMT claims that Taiwan’s prosperity is built on economic relations to China. Instead, in the era in which US power is potentially reigning, that Taiwan should go in the direction of China. And so there’s that contestation.

The TPP, in the meantime, is a party that tries to track swing voters, those who are between the KMT and the DPP, but has generally drifted much towards the KMT in past years, which is [the] strategy, I think, on their part, but I don’t actually think it’s totally successful. I think [in] the long run, they will eventually become absorbed back into the KMT.

And so, that is the source of tension between the two. The DPP calls for stronger ties with the US, the KMT calls for stronger ties with China. But I feel that in this present era in which Chinese young people increasingly identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, even someone like myself who’s descended from those who came to Taiwan with the KMT identify more as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. And so I don’t think the KMT really has a long-term future, but it’s still doubling down on that path. And so, it is to be seen what happens going forward.

Ashley Smith:  So what is the current DPP government doing? What’s their strategy? What’s their political and economic strategy amidst this conflict?

Brian Hioe:  Part of it, interestingly, is Trump throws a wrench into things because of the fact that there [are these] tariffs that are imposed on the world. He has created a lack of faith in US power, and so forth. And so there is that. But the DPP has tried to reassure or stabilize ties to the US which, honestly enough, they cannot actually do. In the meantime, the KMT has tried to reassure that China will continue to grow and also pass the US inevitably based on demographics, based on economy, but also, I don’t think people really have faith in that either. And so there’s a question, and if the left was stronger in Taiwan, there could be a third path that emerges, but unfortunately the left is not that strong currently in Taiwan. And so attempts to articulate a third path have usually not succeeded. It’s to be seen what allows for that in the future, but I’m not terribly optimistic currently.

Ashley Smith:  So let’s dive into that a little bit because we’ve talked mainly about geopolitics and politics from above in Taiwan and in the region and with these imperial powers. But let’s dive in a little bit to the history of militant popular struggles of workers and oppressed people against their Taiwanese bosses and exploiters and oppressors. Give us a sense of the history of that struggle in the democratization of the country, and how do people in such struggles view the US? How do they view China? as well as the workers in those countries and in the region?

Brian Hioe:  I think it’s a very important question. I think that, in the past, during democratization, that occurred in a context in which there were many struggles in the region that were from democratization, the Philippines for example, or South Korea. And there’s this knowledge of a global struggle against authoritarian leaders that are usually US-backed — And, of course, the KMT was US-backed.

But in the decades since, that has receded in favor of capitalist struggle. And so, you have people that were part of the DPP, which is, interesting enough, did have a current that was closer to the left wing that has very poor labor in the past, but that’s now receded in terms of this national self-strengthening, the idea of building up the nation is taking precedence over, for example, building ties to workers movements in the region.

And I think that’s a real challenge already against that narrative that there’s a need to actually resist capital rather than just become another capitalist power. But I think that is also what happened with other left movements in the region as well in terms of South Korea and the Philippines.

And so, that has led to this issue. There’s a desire even for Taiwan to become this powerful capitalist exploiter. And that is the vision of articulating self-determination, I think, rather than connecting with other workers’ movements. I think that is still something to be worked on. I think that people have not thought that through, that history has really receded, and that has actually been very visible recently, with regards to, let’s say, Palestine, that there are people that are DPP-aligned that are very supportive of Ukraine, for example, but then desire to align with Israel because Israel is, of course, a much more important economic, let’s say, trading partner compared to Palestine.

And so, a lot of the movements of the past have also fragmented. They do not have that power as in the past, or the movement leader. Let’s say, even something like the 2014 Sunflower movement, which I was part of, a student movement against the KMT which had taken power and sought to sign trade agreements with China. A lot of these people have also entered government and they don’t think about this desire to build ties with movements but to build up Taiwan as a national power in the region. And actually, we haven’t seen this tilt towards the very top-down narrative rather than bottom-up struggle.

In the meantime, the third parties that did emerge after Sunflower mostly have petered out and have lost strength as time has gone on because, I think, maybe they have not managed to play this game of how to appeal to voters when people focus disproportionately on the geopolitics or the condensation between the two parties.

Ashley Smith:  So what has that done to people’s attitude towards these ruling parties? I know there’s enormous questions about the cost of living, the conditions of work not only of migrant workers like you described in the 3D jobs, but of regular labor under the conditions right now in Taiwan. Is there an opening there between the sentiments of the majority and dissatisfaction with these mainstream capitalist parties?

Brian Hioe:  I think actually it’s quite a challenge there because the two parties both agree on many of the economic woes facing the Taiwanese electorate, which is that there are long hours for low pay, the cost of living is rising, housing is unaffordable. And so they don’t differ too much based on their platform apart from the independence versus unification platform, or whether they should be closer to the US versus whether they should be closer to China. And so that actually is this further Taiwanese society being further mired in these issues. So I think that’s a challenge because basically both parties do not offer alternatives. They offer basically the same platform, and on social policy, they don’t differ substantially. And so it’s actually quite interesting.

I think, that being said, Taiwan, both parties do support a welfare state. And so, for example, both parties are rather in favor of universal healthcare which does exist, and they do not differ on that respect. And so still the main difference is then do you want a welfare state that is more in terms of foreign policy closer to China or closer to the US? And that ends up being the difference between voting.

Ashley Smith:  So now let’s turn to the position of Taiwan in geopolitics because there are two major events that have set ominous precedents for Taiwan: first, Hong Kong, and then second, Ukraine. In the case of Hong Kong, China crushed its pro-democracy movement, an outcome that would likely befall Taiwan in the event of an invasion. In the case of Ukraine, Russia, Russian imperialism invaded the country to rebuild its old empire while the US backed the country’s resistance for its own imperial purposes. How have Taiwan’s capitalist parties and its people viewed these events?

Brian Hioe:  Interesting. And there’s a lot of interest in Ukraine because that was viewed as offering a template of what could occur to Taiwan in the event of warfare. I think there was a lot of similarities between Taiwan and Ukraine in terms of how, for example, China or Russia have claimed that Taiwan or Ukraine have no independent culture or language, that’s always been part of China or Russia. And so people really saw themselves in that.

But then, I think in terms of how people imagine scenarios and warfare, it is along those lines and how to actually have a much more nuanced understanding of where Ukraine is caught between Russia and the US. That’s not been arrived at because I think Taiwan has historically been very pro-US.

It’s a very interesting paradox of the fact that despite the democratization movement opposing a US-backed authoritarian regime, there was not this awareness of that, well, that’s why they could actually maintain power [for] so long because many of the democracy activists were educated in the US. They only learned about the history that’s banned from being taught in Taiwan because they studied in the US. And so, that has led to this blindness.

And so, I think that there’s a need for the Taiwanese left to learn from the Ukrainian left in terms of dealing with these challenges, but there’s not been a lot of dialogue along those lines. That’s something that my organization has tried to do. But it’s much easier, I think, for Taiwanese to look to state actors. I think even the Taiwanese left has often looked much more to state actors. To look at it in terms of understanding Ukraine, various left-leaning actors have only focused on the actions of the Ukrainian government rather than building ties with Ukrainian leftists that are also dealing with similar challenges.

Ashley Smith:  Flesh out a little bit more about the impact of the crushing of the democracy movement in Hong Kong because I know lots of Hong Kongers fled to Taiwan in the aftermath of the crushing of the democracy movement. So, how do people view what happened in Hong Kong? How do the mainstream parties view it, and then how do regular people view the threat of Hong Kong as a crushed democratic area? How do people view that?

Brian Hioe:  There’s a protest slogan which was “Today, Taiwan, tomorrow, Hong Kong.” We see the opposite as well, “Today, Hong Kong, tomorrow, Taiwan.” And so, Hong Kong is seen as offering a potential of what would occur if Taiwan fell under Chinese governance. But that has passed already, in terms of five years since the 2019 protests, and Hong Kong is then viewed as a kind of lost struggle.

So, in Taiwan there was a lot of sympathy towards Hong Kong asylum seekers, people who are activists that sought to flee to Taiwan. And now there actually is a view as though Hong Kong [inaudible] cut out of entering Taiwan, as though Hong Kong has become part of China and so they should not be thought of. I think it’s the usual anti-asylum sentiment that one sees after the initial wave of wanting to support a cause.

And it’s actually quite unfortunate because I think this is [inaudible] as well because Taiwan and Hong Kong in the age of the East Asian Tigers I alluded to, or in terms of the 1990s and 2000s, were always actually economic rivals. And so there’s a halo around Hong Kong because of the shared threat of China, but that has since faded. And so that has led to a shift since then. And now Hong Kong is thought of as a scary place as though it were China.

And so, there actually is a much more visible population of Hong Kongers in Taiwan now that are much more active in social movements and, a lot of the time, civil society. But then, I think, in the meantime, the majority of Taiwanese civil society views Hong Kong as a lost cause. It’s quite unfortunate, I think, in terms of even the fact there’s a wave of solidarity towards Ukraine. One has seen a similar sentiment in which basically there has been a receding of that enthusiasm for Ukraine.

Ashley Smith:  What does that mean in terms of solidarity with other struggles for self-determination? You’ve talked about it a little bit in the case of Hong Kong and in Ukraine. How about in the question of Palestine? More from the left, how has the Taiwanese left seen that struggle, and has there been an ability to raise awareness of from Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime? Is there a kind of resonance with that viewpoint?

Brian Hioe:  Unfortunately not. Basically there’s one left group which is in support of Hong Kong, Ukraine, and Palestine, which is Near Bloom. There has been this issue in which the nominal support of China for Palestine has led to this tarring of Palestine in Taiwan, in which Palestine is associated with China. And so people will view Palestine as associated with China, therefore not support it, and see Taiwan as potentially needing to be in alignment with Israel, which I think is absurd as a self-determination struggle. And in the meantime, because the US is nominally in support of Ukraine, then Taiwan will be supportive of Ukraine.

And so, very much the view of the world that emerges from Taiwan is very campist — Not in terms of the campism we talk about in terms of leftists that see the world according to geopolitical blocs and according to nation states. And so, there are very few groups that are actually in support of Hong Kong, Ukraine, and Palestine, and New Bloom is maybe one of the only few.

It’s very unfortunate because I think it should be self-evident, but then I think the imagination, the political imagination, many times in people, is still according to this very Cold War imagination of camps against each other of geopolitical blocs against each other and has been very occluding to solidarity, I think. And so I think that really remains to be worked on.

The ways to build ties or to point to actual connection between empires, or the fact that, for example, China will have nominal support of Palestine, but, of course, similarly, Israel is a much larger economic trading partner, or in terms of technology and so forth, it is much more important then. That also leads to this perspective. And so, actually, it’s still a challenge, I think, how to convince people, I think not from the perspective of states, but from the perspective of peoples.

Ashley Smith:  Now let’s turn to the unfortunate reality that Donald Trump is president of the United States and, despite all the chaos of the new Trump administration, its policy documents, especially those issued by the Heritage Foundation, have made Washington’s imperial conflict with China and support for Taiwan its top priority. And he’s trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to bring Russia’s imperialist war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal war in Palestine to some kind of closure so that the US can focus on China. Pete Hegseth has made this very clear, the Heritage documents make it very clear. How have Trump’s policies impacted Taiwan’s politics, economy, and military? What are the patterns of response among its working and oppressed people to it?

Brian Hioe:  Interesting enough, the first Trump administration led to the rise of what is termed “US skeptic discourse”. This discourse, which is sometimes conspiratorial and sometimes realistic, that Taiwan cannot trust the US. There’s the obvious fact that the US cannot be trusted. It did back the right-wing authoritarian dictatorship in Taiwan, and, of course, it may throw Taiwan under the bus in order to build ties with China. But some of it is verging [on] conspiratorialism, for example, saying the US engineered COVID to destroy the world and that kind of thing.

And so, this mixture of sentiments have emerged, some of which I think can actually be productive for the left in calling for criticality of the US. The US is, of course, not reliable as an ally. But then, of course, I don’t think the US created COVID, or I don’t think China did either for that matter, as a way to destroy the world or this kind of conspiratorialism.

And so, I think particularly with Trump 2.0, that’s returned. And I think, if anything, compared to Trump 1.0, there’s some more competence there because he’s held the levers of power once. And so, having this desire to go in and tear down the state and rebuild it in his own image, that has occurred.

In the meantime, I’m not sure if Taiwan is always so aware of it because the coverage of US politics that does occur in Taiwan is through very specific filters. It’s very self-selective and not the whole picture of things. But I do hope that more people are aware of this deterioration of free speech and freedom of assembly or the freedom protests in the US because Taiwan has long looked at the US as this representation of democracy, which maybe it was not always and often has not been, but Taiwan has often idealized the US in a sense.

And I think that perhaps things can change now, but in the meantime, I think it’s still a question. I think Taiwan often is thinking much more about itself and how to navigate its relation with the US, how to keep the US happy, rather than thinking in terms of, how are we against authoritarian actors or how is, for example, things in the US reminiscent of Taiwan’s past authoritarianism.

But I do see some interesting phenomena of people who are part of the democracy movement in Taiwan that have since immigrated to the US, usually elders, that are actually present in the streets in the US protesting, often with slogans that are taken from Taiwan’s democratization.

Ashley Smith:  Like what? Flesh that out a little bit. That’s fascinating to hear.

Brian Hioe:  So some of the historical slogans, for example, there’s a slogan that’s popular which is taken from Portugal’s Carnation Revolution: “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty.” And so, I’ve seen that in traditional Chinese and older people, older Taiwanese people holding up signs in the US. And that’s been really interesting to see. And so I think that actually, perhaps there is some potential to work with there. And I think there’s potential to erode this idealization of the US, idealization of the US empire through that, witnessing this change in the US. And it’s another way in which I think many of the struggles that we see worldwide are, in fact, quite linked now.

Ashley Smith:  I wanted to get a sense from you how Trump’s trade tariffs are impacting Taiwan and, in particular, the pressure to disconnect investment in China and Mainland China and redirect it elsewhere, in particular to the United States. How is the economic shift that Taiwan is undergoing? Is that just economic, is it under the pressure of the US, and how does that fit into this conflict?

Brian Hioe:  Yeah, actually I personally think that it hasn’t figured too much because the tariffs effect everywhere in the world, and they were eventually scaled back. But before that, there was already the pattern of Taiwanese businesses trying to get out of China, which did not necessarily have to do with the US. China itself was targeting Taiwanese agriculture, construction industry, mining industry, and labeling businesses as pro-independence and targeting them. And oftentimes the business, in fact, had nothing to do with pro-independence stances. So the Chinese market was already starting to be viewed as politically risky, could be arbitrarily targeted. So I felt a lot of times corporations are moving to Southeast Asia because China was viewed as risky.

The US and its current moves do add more incentive to that move out of China, but I think that it was already happening. So actually, I don’t think it’s had so much impact. It’s also possible, though, it’s too early to know the outcome.

Ashley Smith:  And what do people think about this then? At a popular level, what’s the reaction, and what is it doing to the political space for the left?

Brian Hioe:  I think that there’s a view that Trump is just seeking what is maximalist self-interest for the US. I think there’s not a sense of this moving back and forth and this chaos and this lack of coordination, the fact that they’re shifting back and forth within positions. But the left in particular, I think, is still very bifurcated between the independence camp and the unification camp. And the unification camp will just look at that and point to that, well, this just says that China will rise and that the US is declining. And the independence camp will sometimes just paper over the fact there are so many things happening in the US.

And so, actually, I think it points to the fact that the left in Taiwan, between the independence camp and the unification camp, are still very much trapped in the narrative of nation states. They haven’t really thought beyond that. And so I think that there’s still this inability to get around that. This crisis of American imperial power, I think, has really shown that, but I don’t see critical discourses rising yet. In my organization we do try to articulate that, but I think it’s not really catching on.

Ashley Smith:  Let’s turn to the political response of the left to this situation. So, Taiwan is obviously the key flashpoint in the US-China rivalry, with enormous geopolitical and economic stakes as well as high stakes life and death for the working classes and oppressed peoples in Taiwan, China, and the entire region including the United States. So how has the Taiwanese left responded to this dangerous situation? What are the main patterns of politics, and how can the left combine opposition to both imperial powers, defend Taiwan’s right to self-determination, and at the same time build solidarity with working people in the region against militarism and war?

Brian Hioe:  I think this is the million dollar question, so to speak. And I think that the issue is that I find a lot of left, whether pro-unification or pro-independence, still caught between the narrative of nation states. And so, from someone that is from a more pro-independence-leaning organization, we often will point to that, we stand in solidarity with Chinese workers who are resisting their bosses. And in the meantime, the pro-unification left will not talk about this ever because of the fact that they’re still living this narrative of nation states. And so, they don’t want to talk about the wrong the Chinese state does because they still have this fixation on them. And I think there’s still this challenge in which there are very status narratives that exist among the left. Leftism is thought of as just having a strong, powerful state that can regulate the market rather than thinking beyond that.

And so, I think thinking beyond basically the US-China contention, I think also aspiring towards something that is having opposition towards the international capitalists, international working class, reuniting us [inaudible] capitalists, that narrative is still very difficult because people are still caught in this. And in the meantime, I don’t see enough discussion of this among the Taiwanese left.

There’s a powerful left liberal civil society that does exist and can be critical, but then they still will, I think, at the end of day, side with the US over China. And there’s a pro-unification left that, in the meantime, I think lives in a very delusional world in which they don’t ever talk about the Chinese working class or oppression that occurs in China, and they have a cultural fixation on China, but they actually know very little about China.

In the meantime for the region, even the recent social movement uprisings, whether in the Philippines or Indonesia or South Korea, they just don’t pay attention to that. And that’s actually still very isolating. And so they’re trying to build a way to think about international solidarity of peoples of the working class rather than nation states. That’s still, I think, something that needs to be articulated. And so, there’s still a long way to go, I think.

Ashley Smith:  What do you think, in terms of workers in the United States in particular, what do you want to communicate to working people in the United States about why to build solidarity with Taiwanese working-class people and oppressed people and Chinese working-class people? Because I think the danger all around the world is nationalism in its various forms, great power nationalism, subimperial nationalism. It’s different with oppressed nations, but still there’s a task of building solidarity from below among working people. So how does New Bloom and how do you articulate that in Taiwan?

Brian Hioe:  I think that the working class of different countries in the world have more in common with each other than with the capitalists in the world. But then there’s the identification of nation states, of peoples with states over the nation state itself. And so, then the workers of another country are viewed as competition rather than actually that you should align together with them against the interests of capital. And that’s a challenge.

I think that particularly America, having spent much time in America, it’s very hard to build international solidarity because of the fact that America views itself as self-enclosed because it is a very large nation state. It is a world power. And Taiwan, though, not a world power. It is an island. And so you have that island mentality. It also feels very enclosed. And so, there’s always this challenge I think you get when you bring this up: Why should we think about this thing happening so far away from us? It’s remote from us. It’s remote from our everyday concerns. And so people dismiss attempts at international solidarity using that kind of argument.

But then how do you work against that? Because I think, at the end of the day, it is these large and powerful interests of capital that affect our lives. And so having a protest in one country is not going to actually be able to change the structure of world capital because capitalism itself is international. And so, we need to be internationalist in order to oppose how internationalized capital itself is. And I think there’s no way to have just a country by country struggle against the interest of capital. And I think that’s what people really need to understand. It’s a challenge I think the left has faced for over a century because of the fact that we often lose to nationalism rather than anything else.

Ashley Smith:  One other question: are there signs of hope in this struggle? I know, for example, there have been labor conferences that have tried to pull together workers and trade unions regionally in Asia. Is there a sign of the building blocks of the kind of internationalism that you’re talking about taking place?

Brian Hioe:  I hope so. I think actually a lot of it is reacting against those that view the struggle against capitalism only in terms of nation states, aka campists or tankies and so forth. And so I think the reaction to that, I do see some hope because how do you bring together Taiwanese and Chinese leftists in the same room to discuss this? And when I have been in those situations, that gives me a great deal of hope. But it’s easier said than done. I think that right now it’s still a long ways to go to become the mainstream. But when that does occur, that is, I think, what is helpful.

I think also the spaces to have those meetings have become increasingly more difficult because connecting across distances is so difficult, even in spite of the internet technologies we have today. And in terms of the repression in the region, it’s harder and harder to have those meetings because of the fact that getting people in a room together where we can talk freely is actually more and more difficult in the age of rising repression, whether from states, whether from digital technology, and so forth. And so I think it’ll require a lot of creativity to think about that, but I hope there are ways to do that.

Ashley Smith:  Thanks to Brian Hioe for that revealing discussion of Taiwan, its entrapment in the US-China rivalry, the challenges its working people face, and the urgency of building solidarity from below between the region’s working classes against the US, Beijing, and Taipei.

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