2025-15 Taiwan
Monday, August 18, 2025 The USA is split. Taiwan's politics - green versus blue - umm; maybe a less binary polity would be wiser: and this was the thesis of my talk in Taipei's National University on Aug 14th.
...western ideas have come to dominate many aspects of modern life. But was it right, we may ask in retrospect, to impose our rules on land ownership on the nomadic peoples of Sudan, for example; or our ideas on finance, so that the first possessions of a UK new-born baby are a mummy definitely, a daddy perhaps, and guaranteed: £10,000 worth of debt; or our ideals of democracy, which is what I want to talk about today.
And may I suggest that one of the greatest mistakes of the 20th Century was for Europe to impose majority rule on sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular on Rwanda? So I start in Kenya, and then via Russia come to China, not least to talk about the role of religion in the development of democratic structures. And I’ll finish in the USA.
* * * * *
I was teaching maths and physics in Nairobi in the1970s, in English, in a school where nearly every pupil was more educated than their teachers, for they were all at least bi-lingual, whereas many of the teaching staff were mono-lingual English speakers.
2 Africans tend to be very patient. And traditionally, African leaders – mainly (but not always) men – would meet under a tree and try to get a consensus. It might not be the 1st preference of many, but if it’s the 2nd or 3rd preference of nearly everyone, then they might settle for that. It took time, sometimes days… but the European is impatient: oh come on, make a decision, just take a vote, ‘for-or-against’!
3 But “asking yes-or-no questions is very unAfrican,” to quote Rwanda’s Senator Ephrem Kanyarukiga. We nevertheless insisted: democracy is majority rule. And although we ourselves used the opposite during the colonial period – a form of minority rule – we then imposed this most unAfrican majority rule.
4 In Rwanda, this meant that the losers of yesterday, the Hutu, could be the winners of tomorrow: and in 1994, the genocide started with the slogan, “We are the majority, Rubanda nyamwinshi.”
* * * * *
5 Exactly the same slogan, “We are the majority,” was used in Russia when the Social Democratic Workers’ Party took a vote – 19:17:3 – and split: now 19 is not a majority of 39, but the 19 nevertheless called themselves the members of the majority – bolshinstvo, большинство, the Bolsheviks – and the 17 became the Mensheviks, members of the minority or menshinstvo, меньшинство.
6 I first went to Russia, the Soviet Union as it was, in 1984, under Konstantin Chernenko. One year later, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, and life became very exciting. But, as you Chinese would say, and as maybe the Georgians, Bosnians and Ukrainians did say, “I hope I do not live in exciting times.”
7 Now the basic principle of western diplomacy is that we in the West know, well, everything (apart from a foreign language). Which means, of course, that others know little… or nothing… and especially Gorbachev who, after all, was a communist. So lots of advisers rushed over to Moscow to tell him what to do. Unfortunately, I assume, some were mono-lingual. You need elections, they said, and a parliament. You, as President, can propose legislation, but parliament must debate it, and they may argue all day, but eventually they’ll take a majority vote; most likely, it will pass; it may then be enacted; and that is democracy.
8 In a word, we were saying, Mr Gorbachev, you need majoritarianism. But he doesn’t speak English. So the translators said, Mikhail Sergeevich, Вам нужен большевизм.
9 Next, in the Balkans, “all the wars started with a referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, 7.2 1999). “Are you Serb or Croat?” But they are the same; they are both Yugo- (i.e. southern-) Slavs; they’re both Christian, Orthodox or Catholic; and they both speak the same language, albeit using different scripts. The only difference is only huge: 1,000 years of history.
And now, in Ukraine, more majority voting: in 1991 and then in 2014 in Crimea, “Are you Russian or Ukrainian?” But they really are the same… the same ethnicity, the same Christianity, and virtually the same linguistically… or they werethe same. The question is not a duality.
(We may note in passing that while the Serb and the Croat can talk with, but not write to, each other; in China, it’s the other way round; as you know, the 普通话Mandarin speaker can write to, but not talk with, the 广州话Cantonese.)
But the point is this: in the West, we reduce everything to dichotomies, and ‘resolve’ everything by majority vote. In the Christian tradition, this is sort of ok: "Whoever is not with me is against me,” (Matthew 12:30), but in Buddhism, majority voting is not good, and asking, “Are you Ukrainian or Russian?” was a bit like asking a Chinese electorate, “Do you favour Yīn 阴or Yáng 阳?” Let me quote Longchenpa, a Buddhist monk of the Nyingma tradition: “…the nonduality of right and wrong [is] the state of a buddha.” Of which, more in a moment.
* * * * *
10 But first, China. Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, NeiMengu. Xinjiang, Gansu. Tibet, Qinghai.
11-5 Photos
16 In stark contrast to Africa, as you know, China invented pretty well everything… and China was using majority votes over 2,000 years ago. Was this because the emperor was as impatient as the English colonialist? And was it a result of Greek influences in Central Asia, not least under Alexander the Great? I don’t know.
17 Meanwhile, Europe had started to think about multi-option voting in the year 105…
18 …but the first government to actually use multi-option decision-making was Chinese, in 1197. As you know, as far as Beijing was concerned, the three peoples to the north of the Great Wall – the Khitans, Jurchens and Mongolians – were all ‘barbarians.’ But all three were using assemblies, not least to elect their leader, like Chinggis Khan. Was this the source of their pluralism? And was Buddhism a cause? Umm, again, I don’t know. But the vote for (i) war, (ii) an alternating policy, or (iii) peace, was 5:33:46.
19 There again, sitting in circles to debate things is universal, as in the Chinese words, 圆坐 yuán zuò and 圆议 yuán yì; and as in Africa – the word is baraza; as with the native peoples of North America in their pow-wows; as with the English King Arthur and his round table; and so on. Sadly, however, and despite its own cultural and religious heritage, China also started to use western majoritarian decision-making. Was this because of the huge influence of the Bolsheviks? Maybe.
20 Whatever the immediate cause, Máo Zédōng was a majoritarian. Writing in 1964, (and so unlike the words of Nelson Mandela), he said, “We must win over the majority, oppose and smash the minority. . .” Then came the anti-rightist campaign and the Great Leap Forward, binary politics at its worst, followed by the famine.
China now has its one-party state: ‘democratic centralism,’ they call it… (the phrase is not much different from what the British call ‘democratic leadership).’ Furthermore, today, China’s biggest argument against any western definition of democracy is Donald Trump.
* * * * *
21 In the West, as you know, the dominant religion is Christianity, and a principle teaching is “love thy neighbour.” That’s on Sunday. For the rest of the week, in everyday decision-making, we vote (‘for’ or) ‘against’ our neighbour.
Surely, it would be more Christian – and more Buddhist – to use an egalitarian, multi-option procedure, a voting system in which:
+ nobody votes ‘no’!
+ nobody votes against a person or another person’s option.
+ everyone votes ‘yes,’ albeit in order of preference.
Instead, people would vote {not (for or) against but} with their neighbour(s).
In a nutshell, we need a preferential voting procedure in which the final outcome is the option with the highest averagepreference – as in Africa. For an average includes every voter, not just a majority of them.
In effect, on any matter considered to be controversial, we should never use a majority vote. Accordingly, may I suggest Taiwan should adopt, not a binary polity, as in the US – Republicans or Democrats, green or blue – but (in the spirit of the Jurchens and other ‘barbarians’), a pluralist polity, more along the lines of a Buddhist philosophy perhaps, using a multi-option, preferential, non-majoritarian procedure.
The Modified Borda Count MBC does this: as in Africa, the final decision is the best compromise, i.e., that which gains the highest average preference, the highest level of support from everyone. In other words, if the topic is controversial, the number of options ‘on the ballot’ should never be a stark choice of just two options, but rather a short list of about 5 or 6 options… such as might be ideal for a multi-party parliament, as in Taiwan, or a multi-ethnic congress.
A huge danger in Taiwan is that, with such a divisive polity – mainly first-past-the-post in elections, and always binary voting in decision-making – you too, green versus blue, might divide… and get a Taiwanese Trump.
So maybe you and we, and certainly any Americans, should just follow the advice of George Washington. In his farewell address of 1796, he warned of “a frightful despotism” and, as we all know, the United States today are not united at all… instead, they are divided into two, with the winning side under a frightful despot.
