Taiwan Today

In the early 1970s, the government of the Republic of China (ROC), in exile on Taiwan, faced its worst national crisis since being forced to relocate to Taipei in 1949. One after another, nations were switching recognition from the ROC as the legitimate government of all of China to the People's Republic of China (PRC). In October 1971, the other shoe dropped. The United Nations passed Resolution 2758, which gave the China seat at the United Nations to the PRC, further isolating Taiwan on the world stage. The following April, a US table tennis team accepted an invitation to visit China, and over the course of a week, the world glimpsed the beginning of the thaw in relations between communist China and the fervently anti-communist United States, led by President Richard Nixon. Nixon traveled to China after the initial ping-pong diplomacy, and the contact eventually led the US to sever official ties with the government in Taipei. Taiwan faced a crisis of confidence.

Against this backdrop, a team of tiny warriors set out to restore Taiwan's pride in a most improbable arena--the Little League World Series. The competition, held every August in the US city of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, provided opportunities for publicity and international competition. In 1969, the Taiwanese team rolled over teams from both Guam and Japan to represent the Far East division in the Little League World Series. In the United States, the home of baseball, Taiwan's team soundly beat Canada and finished off two American teams in close games to win the championship. When the team returned to Taipei, the government held an all-day parade and half a million ecstatic Taiwanese turned out to celebrate. The tiny figures bobbing amid the cheering populace became a symbol of Taiwan's David-and-Goliath struggle to remain free of Beijing.

After a failed bid in 1970, Taiwan won the Little League World Series every year from 1971 to 1974--and many more after that. With every victory, the Little League games grew in importance. Speeches by politicians and newspaper editorials proclaimed that the players had restored Taiwan's dignity. The Independent Evening News wrote, "Jinlong [Taiwan's 1969 team] not only won glory for the country, but also wiped out the humiliation of a nation."

After the initiation of ping-pong diplomacy, the Gongshang Ribao wrote: "The Chinese Communist regime wanted to use hunger control and military-oriented methods to cultivate a few ping-pong players. These players were utterly tools without souls. We are not bothered though. The Taiwan Little League team is made up of purely innocent kids whose skills and tastes are better than those of the communist ping-pong players." Indeed, reading these quotes excerpted in Playing in Isolation, one might even assume that baseball won the Cold War.

Playing in Isolation is a highly original exploration of Taiwan's political history from the Japanese occupation (1895-1945) to the present through the lens of baseball's development on the island. The author, Yu Junwei, an assistant professor at Taiwan's Shu Te University, adapted the book from his Ph.D. dissertation, proving that academic studies can occasionally make good reading. By tracing the history of baseball in Taiwan, Yu manages to capture the political tensions of major periods of Taiwan's modern history. In some respects, it is unclear whether this book would be more enjoyable for a baseball fan interested in learning about Taiwan or a Taiwan watcher who is weary of traditional political histories. It would be good baseball-season reading for either.

The People Stand Up

Yu is most effective at revealing how baseball (and sports in general) channels nationalist sentiment. Baseball was introduced to Taiwan during the Japanese occupation, but was at first restricted to the Japanese, who feared that Taiwanese baseball clubs could act as percolators of nationalist sentiment. The Japanese later attempted to turn the Taiwanese, Japan's first colonial subjects, into loyal citizens of the empire. This Japanization policy included requirements to speak Japanese, revere the emperor and serve in the Japanese military. Physical fitness programs were developed in part to help prepare Taiwanese boys for the rigors of army life. Baseball provided an effective, if unlikely, avenue toward Japanization. Coaches were dispatched from Japan to organize baseball in elementary schools. Despite objections from many parents, baseball fever began to set in.

By the 1930s, baseball was a craze. Taiwanese were generally proud to see their players succeed. Some players eventually traveled to Japan to pursue careers in baseball. Yet the highly chauvinistic attitudes of the Japanese and their degrading racial ideology sparked the kind of resentment often found among colonized people. The Taiwanese began to long for an opportunity to trounce the Japanese on the baseball diamond. They would wait until well after the Japanese withdrew from Taiwan after World War II to get such an opportunity.

In 1968, Taiwan invited a Japanese Little League Baseball team to play in a series of exhibition matches against Taiwanese teams. The Japanese players were older, generally stronger and more experienced. They faced off twice against the Hongye (meaning "red leaves") team, named for a village in Taitung County, a rural, impoverished region of Taiwan. The Hongye players were generally from the Bunun tribe, one of Taiwan's non-Chinese aboriginal groups, who account for about 2 percent of the population. Nonetheless, when the scrappy Hongye team trounced the Japanese 7-0 (and won 5-2 in a second game), they became symbols of local pride. Hongye, wrote the Taiwan Shin Sheng Daily News, "did not let the country down; little soldiers shocked Japan."

The story of the Hongye victory is still told in Taiwan. This reviewer has heard it twice (with varying details)--and because the emotion of the narrator is so palpable, its excitement is infectious. Little League Baseball tapped into something very powerful: a quest for identity and national pride. Indeed, after the first victory in the Little League World Series, a representative of the overseas Chinese community in Japan remarked: "[T]he performance of these little national heroes has left a deep impression on foreigners, who no longer think of us as the 'sick man' of East Asia."

Of course, in 1968, the colonial legacy of Japan was no longer the central tension in Taiwan's political life. Lingering under martial law, many Taiwanese harbored resentment against the Kuomintang (KMT) government, which rapidly attempted to root out all Japanese influences and bring Taiwan back into the Chinese fold through a series of chauvinistic policies of its own. Democracy advocates were driven abroad, and even the dialect of Chinese spoken by most Taiwanese (and most Taiwanese baseball players) was suppressed. These tensions also found their way onto the baseball diamond.

At the 1971 Little League World Series in Williamsport, KMT officials who attended were given a comic reminder of the tensions back home when a plane flew overhead trailing a banner reading "Long Live Taiwanese Independence!" Yu writes that one KMT official fumed, "Taiwan independence activists even have an air force! Damn it!"

While these tensions still exist, the opening of Taiwan's political system and the election of a president from a pro-independence party have certainly removed them from the realm of baseball. In fact, the success of Little League Baseball in Taiwan did much to spread cooperation among Taiwan's various groups, who tended to care more about their team's success than the political views of their teammates. The greater obstacle to continued popularity remained entrenched ideas about the value of sports in general.

Wen vs. Wu

The government in Taipei reacted to the Cultural Revolution in China by reinvigorating traditional Confucian values as a counterpoint to the madness across the Taiwan Strait. The KMT regime saw itself as the guardian of Chinese culture. Traditionally, Chinese attitudes regarded sports and any other physical activity with disdain. They distracted from the study required for moral cultivation and social and economic success. This was the traditional tension between the wen (literary) and the wu (martial or physical).

The KMT government's emphasis on traditional education corresponded with a growing need for educated workers to contribute to Taiwan's industrial expansion. The 1970s and 1980s were boom years in Taiwan, and the possibility of financial prosperity sparked fierce competition for slots in prestigious schools. Hundreds of cram schools opened, and parents once again began to see the playing of games like baseball as detours on the arduous road toward success.

Sports once again struggled to emerge from the weight of tradition. Nevertheless, schools in Taiwan are highly modern, and sports remain a normal part of school life. As the political nature of baseball waned, the sport became more of a professional affair in Taiwan. Today, players are recruited and paid, and they circulate into the international baseball circuit. The games are also profitable, and Yu laments the professionalization of baseball in Taiwan. Indeed, the early years were more emotional, and the political undercurrents make for good reading. Yet, it is hard to share Yu's point of view. Taiwan's open political atmosphere and the normalization of its sporting organizations are surely indicators of a more confident and mature modern society. Baseball today is much more akin to baseball elsewhere; when local sports figures do well, people still swell with pride. Otherwise, the game is just a popular pastime, a recreation for languid summer evenings.

Should the United States follow the cycle of other great powers, waning until one day it is eclipsed, one legacy might prove more lasting than its political philosophy, its Hollywood movies or its processed cheeses--and that legacy is the game of baseball. It is most popular today in places influenced by the United States: Cuba, which the United States invaded; Japan, which it occupied; and Puerto Rico, which is still making up its mind whether or not it wants to be part of the United States. And in the United States, baseball teams are made up of players from all these countries and many more. Japanese pitchers are teamed up with Latin American catchers. Sluggers hail from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

The first Taiwanese player to be signed in the major leagues in the United States was Chen Chin-feng, who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Today, Taiwanese fans, no matter what their political views, root for Wang Chien-ming, the star pitcher of the New York Yankees, perhaps the most famous and successful team in the history of baseball. One of the most revealing facts about Wang's non-Taiwanese fans is that they simply don't care where he comes from, just that he keeps pitching like a star. For Taiwanese, however, one suspects that some of the excitement still comes from seeing a native son of Taiwan basking in the limelight, and remembering the past excitement sparked by teams like Hongye.
_____________________________
Robert Green is a regular contributor to Economist Intelligence Unit publications on Taiwan.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert Green