Trumpism in Taiwan: the issue is not that Taiwanese can’t see Trump’s conservatism, but that it takes a leap of faith to believe that it’s critical to connect our local struggles to the progressive movements in the US beyond the singular issue of China’s threats.

This faith comes in our analysis of history and politics. Unfortunately, the failure to see the connection results in the division btw the so-called “left” and the “geopolitical realist.” In non-crisis time, we should be able to have a rational debate.

But this debate is now sidelined by increasing threats to Taiwan’s national security. It’s an effect of the empire itself: to dismiss issues of equality, rendering them secondary to nation. This has put Taiwanese progressives in the most awkward spot in this U.S. elections.

For Americans, this election may be a huge democratic crisis, but the US has always been the most resourceful and powerful nation. The level of threat or crisis Americans feel now, is really in no way comparable to that of Taiwanese today.

Therefore neither am I siding with Trumpism in Taiwan, nor trying to empathize with it. But the existential threat is so affective and materially real. We will need to take an even bigger leap of faith to build our movements across in this new era of the dawn of US empire.

It will require the international left to also take up the question of China seriously, and not reserving to Dem’s neoliberal multiculturalism or worse, tankism. Without that support, Trumpism will only live. The Asian diaspora can only turn more conservative and disillusioned.