Taiwan on Monday celebrated Freedom of Speech Day. The commemoration is not an international day, and was first established in Tainan by President William Lai (賴清德) in 2012, when he was mayor of that city. The day was elevated to a national holiday in 2016 by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Lai chose April 7, because it marks the anniversary of the death of democracy advocate Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), who started Freedom Era Weekly to promote freedom of expression.
Thirty-six years ago, a warrant for Deng’s arrest had been issued after he refused to appear in court to answer charges of insurrection for publishing a proposal for a constitution to replace the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution written in China. He self-immolated in his office while police coming to take him into custody banged on his door.
Deng lived in a very different time. Lai last month officially identified the People’s Republic of China as a “foreign hostile force.” In 1989, the year of his death, Deng was grappling with a different kind of foreign hostile force: He was seeking more freedoms in Taiwan under the foreign regime of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that had taken control of Taiwan and imposed martial law in 1949.
Martial law had been lifted two years previously by then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), but the regime’s paranoia remained, hence the insurrection charge for calling for a replacement to the ROC Constitution. Taiwanese-born Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) became leader of the KMT and president after Chiang’s death in 1988, but direct presidential elections would not come until 1996 after pressure from the 1990 Wild Lily student movement. Lee would later become known as the “father of Taiwanese democracy,” but neither the movement nor the democratization that it led to would have been known to Deng. He had still been fighting in the dark, and yet could be called a trailblazer for the nation’s eventual democratization.
Were Deng still alive today, he would have witnessed quite a remarkable transformation. Taiwan has a vibrant and competitive democratic system, and is considered “free,” scoring an impressive 94 out of a possible 100 points in the Freedom in the World 2025 report by Freedom House. By comparison, the US scored 84, and China 9.
In the scoring system, a country is awarded 0 to 4 points for each of 10 political rights indicators and 15 civil liberties indicators.
Taiwan scored the maximum 4 points for free and fair elections of national government and legislative representatives; an independent judiciary; openness and transparency in government; due process in civil and criminal matters; the right to organize political parties; individual freedoms to express personal views on political subjects without fear of surveillance or retribution; and the existence of free and independent media.
One of the few metrics in which the nation dropped a point is whether people’s political choices are free from domination by “forces that are external to the political sphere, or by political forces that employ extrapolitical means.” The report points the finger for this directly at China.
Ironically, with freedom of speech comes the necessity to set judiciously defined bounds when the exercise of that freedom puts the existence of the nation at risk.
In a speech delivered to mark Freedom of Speech Day on Monday, Lai defined those bounds, saying that the government would act against anyone who echoes Chinese propaganda aimed at inciting an invasion of Taiwan or the subversion of the government.
Deng advocated pure freedom of speech to resist the foreign regime governing the nation. Now, Taiwan needs to set boundaries to resist the enemy from within assisting the enemy beyond its borders.
