The most urgent threat to Taiwan is in Taiwan

In his recent blog Ben Findlay wrote Why should I care about Taiwan's geopolitical future?, in which he talked about his observation on the lack of Taiwanese effort on the international platform:

Yes, Taiwan continuously tries to enter international bodies. Yes, there is going to be a referendum on the UN question. Yes, there are regular protests and marches against Chinese threats. But how is any standard westerner supposed to know about the convictions of Taiwan’s population? Where is the prolific debate in languages westerners understand?

Where are the regular blanket advertisements in western media? Where are the powerful NGOs loudly making Taiwan's case and vilifying the opposition's factual and moral flaws through well financed journals and websites? Why does Taiwan not have any lobbying influence remotely comparable to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee when the case is magnitudes less equivocal?

Where is the tireless, relentless campaign to reach Chinese people with the truth? Where are Chinese people’s funded opportunities to see reason? What possible hope can there be without this?

and what he learned from the above observation is:

I see little evidence that Taiwanese people really, really care.

thus an approach he follows:

Taiwan is a rich country of 23 million people. There are no excuses for their pathetic efforts. When they really start to show that they care, I’ll really start to feel justified in caring myself.

I totally agree with Ben on the lack of Taiwanese-launched international campaign. We do need to promote ourselves on the international platform. Many people, Taiwanese or not, do see this.

However, how people respond to this existing weakness depends on how much they know about Taiwan.

Many people don't understand that the most urgent threat Taiwan has been facing is not PRC military threat or any other lack-of-support from foreign countries, but the political struggle inside. There are still huge pro-china population (like KMT) in Taiwan, who rather see Taiwan as a sub-culture of China and treat Taiwanese as secondary citizens. In a sense those pro-china people in Taiwan serve as front soldiers of China. It's this infight that we have to win first. If we lose this fight to KMT, then don't have to wait for the PRC coming, we will go right back to a society in which Taiwanese are always discriminated.

Therefore we spend most of our resources at where we need most, that is, to spread the Taiwanese consciousness to our own people. There's no way we could put this nearby day-to-day threat aside to spend too much time and resources on far remote campaign.

And this is not an easy task. Think about how long it takes for brain-washed people to change their minds that have been with them since childhood. Simply asking a person to change his attitude toward his wife is not easy, if even possible. And we are talking about "mind change" of a whole country that has been brain washed for decades! This certainly limits the ability to educate more people for handling international issues.

That doesn't mean that we didn't try. Check out FAPA (http://www.fapa.org). It is one of the most influential lobbying groups in the US, second only to the Israel group. It plays a very crucial role in helping US understand the real struggle Taiwan has. Many Taiwan-friendly bills wouldn't have passed in US congress without the long time effort of FAPA.

People who know a little about Taiwan should have already learned this. Judging from Ben Findlay's question "Why does Taiwan not have any lobbying influence remotely comparable to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee", it seems to me that he is not even aware of FAPA.

In fact, it's in those long time foreign campaigns like FAPA has been doing when we realized where our real obstacle is. When we are fighting China's diplomatic suppression and international indifference up front, those pro-China people from Taiwan are pulling our legs from behind. These "pulling-legs" people include those who serve in Taiwan's diplomatic offices oversea, in which they are supposed to follow (DPP) government's orders. Many foreign friends are confused by "two versions of Taiwan" and don't know how to help. A lot of effort is thus wasted. Anyone who has observed Taiwan closely should have also known that whenever Taiwan's government launch a global campaign, those pan-bluers just jump right out to do it in the opposite way. That's how we realized that we have to reach a domestic consensus (i.e., to end the infight) before any effective international campaign can be done.

So this is where we are -- fighting hard for the domestic consensus and don't have enough resources and people to campaign in foreign platform effectively.

Ben's observation is right, lacking more international campaign is our weakness at this moment. But his response to the observed weakness is not appreciated. For one thing, this is not a new issue. People who have been fighting for a better Taiwan all know about this weakness, especially those fighting for Taiwan in the international stage.

Secondly, people who know better about Taiwan understand the difficulty involved and the priority we are facing, therefore know that a pure criticizing talk like Ben's is not gonna help. After all, it's always easy to criticize at the phenomena at its face value, but it's much much harder to get hands dirty to really spend time contributing.

In fact, instead of criticizing at the phenomena on its surface, some choose to jump in to write and speak for Taiwan using the advantage that common Taiwanese lack -- English speaking and composition ability -- to fill in the blank for Taiwan. Examples can be found in this blog and many others like Michael Turton, ah-Gu, ... etc. These are the people who are doing something helpful.