Merchants Have No Motherland!

Merchants Have No Motherland!
China Post editorial
by Bevin Chu
June 1, 2009

"Shang ren wu zu guo!"

How many times have we heard this lament?

The expression means "Merchants have no Motherland!" It could also be translated, with darker overtones, as "Merchants have no Fatherland!"

It is usually mentioned in reference to merchants from Taiwan who have "pulled up roots" and moved their businesses to the Chinese mainland.

The expression, needless to say, is pejorative. It suggests that merchants in general, and "Taiwanese" merchants in particular, display insufficient loyalty towards the nation state. Green Camp champions of Taiwan independence consider these merchants' actions "disloyal" at best, and "traitorous" at worst. They refer to their behavior as "mai tai," i.e., "selling out Taiwan."

For the past twenty years, Green Camp champions of Taiwan independence, most notably former President Lee Teng-hui and former President Chen Shui-bian, abused the power of their office attempting to prevent these merchants from taking their private property and leaving the island. Put bluntly, they attempted to keep these merchants imprisoned on Taiwan.

Ironically, Green Camp champions of Taiwan independence argue that these merchants' actions are "disloyal" or even "traitorous," because "Taiwan (their term for the Republic of China) is a free country where people are the masters, whereas China (their term for the mainland) is an authoritarian dictatorship where people are servants of the state."

But if Green Camp champions of Taiwan independence actually believe their own rhetoric, where precisely is the "disloyalty" or "traitorous" behaviour they speak of?

If people really are the masters, and nation states their servants, as indeed they ought to be, then precisely what "loyalty" do individuals "owe" nation states?

If people really are the masters, and nation states their servants, then how did individuals wind up owing fealty toward their servants, "fealty" being defined as the obligation of vassals to their lords?

If people really are the masters, and nation states their servants, then shouldn't individuals be free to discharge their servants at their own discretion, depending on how well their servants served their needs?

The core justification, the raison d'etre, of the modern nation state, is that it "serves the people," that it is the "servant of the people." Officials of the modern nation state habitually refer to themselves as "public servants."

As US Senator Edward Kennedy's official website puts it: "The enduring legacy of the Kennedy family is public service. The members of the Kennedy family have always believed in public service."

These "Merchants without a Motherland" took Pan Green champions of Taiwan independence at their word. They decided that the Green Regimes of "Father of Taiwan" Lee Teng-hui and "Son of Taiwan" Chen Shui-bian were no longer acting as their "public servant."

Far from serving these merchants, far from helping these merchants survive, these Green Regimes were treating them as their servants, as milch cows of the "Nation of Taiwan."

These merchants decided they would be "better served" on the Chinese mainland. Therefore they moved there, at their own discretion, of their own free will.

Well over one million of these "Taiwanese" merchants now live on mainland China. Since the Taiwan region has approximately 23 million people, that means between four and five percent of the population currently resides on the mainland.

These "Taiwanese" merchants are not there "temporarily." They and their families are there "permanently." They are currently referred to as "Tai shang," or "Taiwanese merchants." But as the years roll by, they and their children will no longer be "Taiwanese merchants." They will become "da lu tong bao," i.e., "mainland compatriots," or god forbid, that three letter expletive, "zhong guo ren," i.e., "Chinese."

Deep Green champions of Taiwan independence, and even some Pale Blue champions of an independent Taiwan, would have us believe this constitutes some sort of awful tragedy.

But is it really? They seem to forget that during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the ancestors of these "Taiwanese" merchants "pulled up roots" and traveled east across the Taiwan Strait and settled on Taiwan. That of course is how Green Camp champions of Taiwan independence came to classify them as "Taiwanese" in the first place.

Now the descendants of these same merchants have again "pulled up roots" (as if people were plants) and traveled west, back across the Taiwan Strait, and resettled on the Chinese mainland.

One is tempted to say, somewhat mischievously, that these "Merchants without a Motherland" have merely "gui xiang," i.e., "returned home." They have merely returned to their Motherland.

But from an even more enlightened and cosmopolitan perspective, it would be more useful to say that they have asserted their status as sovereign and independent members of the Twenty-first Century Global Village. They have merely exercised their inalienable natural right to move about freely on Planet Earth, mankind's shared "Motherland."