Notes from Central Taiwan: Caning as political theater

In 1904 the Japanese introduced caning to Taiwan. As a punishment, caning was applied by the Japanese to Taiwanese and Chinese subjects, never to the Japanese themselves (it had been outlawed in Japan in 1882). An imperial and colonial act, caning thus functioned to define and display social class boundaries.

So it is with the new legislation permitting caning proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators last week. According to the KMT proposal, individuals committing major fraud, aggravated sexual assault, driving under the influence of drugs and child abuse may be subject to caning. These are high-profile offenses that generate great public outrage.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) criticized the proposed legislation as populist. DPP caucus chief executive Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) put his finger on the social class element of the KMT’s bill, observing that caning would not be used for crimes committed by legislators, large-scale economic crimes and treason.

Photo: Lo Pei-te, Taipei Times

SINGAPORE AS MODEL

The KMT has long desired to turn Taiwan into Singapore, where caning is still practiced, an inheritance from British colonialism.

“Singapore is different from [Taiwan] as its emphasis is not on democratization. Nevertheless, it is professional, corruption-free and efficient, which is worth our learning,” said future president and KMT icon Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in 2007 about his visit to Singapore.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Ma also mentioned, with a certain wistfulness, the much higher salaries of Singapore’s officials. Singapore was where Ma shook hands with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平) in 2015. New Taipei City Mayor and failed KMT presidential candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) visited Singapore in 2023 on the eve of his presidential run.

Sure enough, the KMT legislator introducing this proposal not only pointed to Singapore as a model, but presented a Singapore citizen who had been caned twice as evidence that caning works. Track that: these KMT legislators thought a person whose first caning failed to change his ways was a model of how caning can work.

Note that other former colonies of the UK that practice caning, such as Malaysia and Brunei, are rarely exampled by caning advocates in Taiwan. Other former British colonies where caning was prominent deep into the 20th century, including Kenya, Uganda and South Africa, are also ignored for similar reasons. Singapore, on the other hand, is wealthy and run by Chinese, making it an acceptable ethnic and social class model for Taiwanese caning supporters.

Caning as criminal punishment retains a kind of enduring popularity. There is little evidence that it works to reduce crime, but it seems to make a certain kind of mind feel righteous and superior. When American teenager Michael Fay was caned in Singapore in 1994 (where people who overstay visas can be caned, a signal of how caning is used to enforce social class boundaries), the US government protested that it was a violation of international agreements on punishment and torture. Within the US, however, many state legislators called for its use.

SOCIAL CHAOS AND THE SCAPEGOAT

Proposals for caning long predate the current era. In 1997, at the height of the violent crime era, there were calls for flogging to be introduced as punishment. Singapore was identified as a model Taiwan should emulate. Then-minister of justice Liao Cheng-hao (廖正豪) said in July of that year that his ministry would consider flogging, if needed. To reassure the people that only criminals from the underclass would be flogged, Liao referenced the ongoing crackdown on gangsters.

DPP Legislator Hsueh Ling (薛凌), along with other DPP legislators, in 2007 proposed adding an amendment to the Sexual Assault Prevention Law (性侵害防治法) that contained language permitting caning for sexual offenders. The group was shot down by the Ministry of Justice, which said correctly that caning was a human rights violation that had no effect on recidivism.

Rene Girard, the insightful French thinker, argued in his book Violence and the Sacred that when social chaos threatens, societies attack the problem by arbitrarily selecting an individual for sacrifice. That person is then portrayed as both the cause of the problem, and the sacrifice through which it can be relieved: a scapegoat. That is how caning works: it turns criminals into human sacrifices whose suffering safely re-aligns the social disorder created by criminals, who represent the threat posed by the poor getting out of line.

That is why caning is invariably proposed in response to specific criminal actions that trigger public outrage, such as the heinous rape case used by DPP legislator Hsueh Ling (薛凌) to drive the 2007 proposal. It is never aimed at ubiquitous offenses such as criminal waste dumping, land theft, illegal factory construction, environmental pollution or embezzling money from one’s firm. Those are crimes committed by, or on behalf of, people with money.

Taiwan has outlawed corporal punishment in schools, because it has little positive effect, and as scholarship shows, simply makes children grow up to be more violent (see, for example, “Corporal punishment and violent behavior spectrum: A meta-analytic review” Frontiers in Psychology, Feb. 2024). The contrast between the calls for beating criminals with a bamboo stick and the treatment of children is striking, and shows how those proposals are simply calls for human sacrifice in an attempt to restore social boundaries.

WHY NOW?

Why is the KMT pushing a caning bill now? Taiwan is not in the midst of a violent crime wave — the vast majority of serious crime is white collar and kept beyond the public purview. The KMT has a huge problem: few of its policies have broad public appeal outside of its death penalty stand. The call for caning appears to exploit that public support for violent punishment of criminals at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy.

Like the death penalty, caning would have another effect. The EU, along with major international NGOs, protested the execution of Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱) last year. Brutal punishments are out of step with global human rights standards. One KMT policy is using irritants that perturb Taiwan’s relations with other nations, like the way it uses the Senkaku Islands (also known as the Diaoyutai Islands, 釣魚台) claim to irritate Japan. Caning would likely be widely condemned as a regressive move, harming Taiwan’s relations with the advanced democracies.

It would also have other benefits. Once a caning law is in place, public pressure on the ruling DPP to use the law would grow, no doubt fanned by KMT attacks. The DPP will thus be placed in the awkward position of having to carry out inhumane punishments condemned by the international community, or fail to please local voters.

Of course, a media focusing on the absurd theatricality of caning legislation is a media that is not focused on the continued assault on governance by the KMT. Once this bill starts moving through the legislature, it will become a hot item in the media.

Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.