Taiwan's Little Big Man

By Karl Taro Greenfeld/Taipei

He wonders about greatness, about what it takes. As the blue-and-white presidential Sikorsky lifts off from Nantou air-force base, he considers the evolution he must make from brilliant lawyer and astute politician to wise leader, perhaps, and even great man. It is a question raised by the very aspirations of his people and the potential of his state: Is Chen Shui-bian good enough, smart enough, man enough, to take Taiwan where it deserves to go? The helicopter takes flight, pushing the President back into his silver seat. He looks even smaller than his 5 ft. 4 in. You can't help thinking of the mission ahead of him--to lead Taiwan through a treacherous geopolitical landscape while propping up a floundering economy and fending off hostile domestic opposition--and wondering if this retiring, eager-eyed former maritime lawyer can remake himself into a world-class leader. The transformation, he hopes, begins today. "This is a great moment," Chen says. "We're writing the history of Taiwan. This moment, right now, is the most influential in our history. We can decide what our nation, our path, will be."

Taiwan, at this moment, is an island on the brink of embroilment in superpower conflict, of descent into economic distress and of an unprecedented national awakening and cultural flowering. It is on the brink of, dare anyone say it, nationhood--not in constitutional terms but, perhaps more important, in cultural terms. The 22.2 million Taiwanese and the rest of Asia as well have posited a Taiwan that is so much more than a cold war bulwark and superpower pawn. The island that used to be thought of as the un-China, the anti-Mao or, later, the chip fabricator, the hardware producer, is now, in its eyes at least, the bustling cultural center of Greater China. Of course, the mainland still dominates the Chinese world in geopolitical and economic terms, but whose soap operas are they watching in Bangkok? And whose Mando-pop CDs are they buying in Kuala Lumpur? After Japan, Taiwan is Asia's leading pop-culture exporter. And when you're exporting music, movies and TV shows, other countries are interested in what you think and who you are. The upshot is a state that confidently and pragmatically goes about its business--even though much of that business is on the mainland. To wander through Taipei or tour the countryside is to realize that the hoary topic of reunification is not so much an issue as an irrelevance, a political parlor game fraught with linguistic and semantic tricks played out in Beijing, Washington and Taipei.

As he prepares to embark on a state visit to Latin American that will include stops in New York City and Houston, Chen is readying a turn on the global stage. In Beijing, his plan to visit the U.S. has caused barely a blip. China is "firmly opposed" to the visit, of course, but since Chen took office, Beijing's position has been to have no position on him. State-run media have yet to mention his name. And Chen's offer last week to meet his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, was flatly rejected by the Chinese.

So far, Chen has been more a reactive Chief Executive than an agenda-setting statesman. Although elected as the candidate of a party formally identified with Taiwanese independence, Chen has been trying to soften his position on that issue. Upon taking office, he immediately sought to soothe frayed relations with Beijing.

A year into his term, he is still struggling, personally and politically, to find his voice. He has surrounded himself with a group of thirtysomething aides known as the "Boy Scouts." That has emboldened critics and possibly created a gap that even his enthusiasm can't bridge. "He freezes too many people out, even from his own party," complains former adviser turned political columnist Hu Chung-hsin. "He doesn't know how to make a deal." Chen has vowed to form a coalition with one of the two opposition parties after December's legislative elections. The challenge may be to find a partner. A year ago, Chen was able to bolt together a leadership team simply because he was Taiwan's pioneering, non-Kuomintang President, the first head of state not affiliated with Chiang Kai-shek's founding party. That novelty has worn off. He's the mainstream now.

They call him A-bian, a diminutive that can be traced to his boyhood in Hsi-chuang, a village 40 min. from Tainan, Taiwan's fourth largest city. This is the Taiwanese heartland, where kids still play marbles with pits of the dragon-eye fruit the way Chen did as a boy. They still go swimming in the creek and roast water chestnuts on charcoal braziers. His family's red-roofed Taiwanese house consisted of four rooms built around a courtyard and an open hearth. They used chalk to write on the charcoal-stained walls how much they owed neighbors and merchants. His father was a day laborer.

In Taiwan's rigorous academic meritocracy, good students are praised and respected; superior students become objects of local pride. A-bian was the finest student Tainan County had ever seen. "He was always the brightest in his classes," says Chen Chia-cheng, his sixth-grade teacher. "He used to finish his homework for the night before lunchtime." His classmates recall a studious, diminutive boy, annoyingly prim, his hand shooting up to provide correct answers to teachers' queries. The takeaway from his childhood successes: as long as you have boned up on whatever subject is at hand, you will succeed. That principle carried him through a successful career as a lawyer and eventually stints as a legislator and as mayor of Taipei. Despite Chen's success, the grasping of a social climber is also detectable in his tireless rise through the meritocracy. "What Chen lacks is emotional intelligence," says columnist Hu. "He doesn't have that. How can you be a great leader without that kind of emotional center?"

To reach out better, Chen says, he has reached in, seeking that emotional center. As examples of travails that built his character, he cites his 1986 prison stay for libel and a traffic accident--some say it was a politically motivated hit--that left his wife paralyzed.

The President walks softly, his black sneakers squishing along the concrete path between lilies and the white stucco walls of the presidential mansion. As he points out a sculpture he admires and some work he has had done to the house, his bearing is quiet, but always lurking is the authority, of both his formidable intellect and his high office. In these moments, as he shows off his newly remodeled home, he becomes the Taiwanese Everyman--successful, middle class, proud of his detached home and little garden. His wire-frame glasses, oxford-cloth shirt and chinos give him the look of a millennial cyberpeasant. If he weren't President, his sartorial choices seem to say, he might have risen to run a chip-fabrication plant or dream up a B2B application.

He has stumbled into this image, this sort of regular Chou appeal. He strikes most Taiwanese as being like them, with the same values and aspirations for his family and his country. Isn't that what you desire in a President--someone who thinks like you and understands the complications of everyday living, yet is equipped with the mental tools to solve national problems? Chen communicates that sort of pragmatic intelligence. He's a Taiwanese Al Gore, and that's part of his problem. He could do with a bit more Clintonian warmth and charm. He struggles to connect, which is surprising, considering that during his campaign he conceived and delivered a cuddly, cute sort of marketability--the doe-eyed A-bian doll, which by all accounts, helped him charm younger voters in last year's election.

The cuddliness is the trait that keeps him from seeming smarmy. A politician who comes across as having schoolmarmish intelligence without a humanizing mushy center can have an abbreviated career. We all want a bright leader but one also equipped with an enormous heart. Whether Chen has that is a matter of some debate. Even his wife accuses him of being a purely sectarian animal, of having traded family for his political future. "He's a great politician," she says, "but a terrible father."

A tireless campaigner, he is on the road again, selling his message of party victory this December but, more important, selling the plucky little A student from Hsi-chuang. Only now he wants to be the popular kid instead of the smart kid, the one you want to hang out with rather than the one whose homework you want to borrow.

The helicopter sets down in Nantou County, next to a roadside restaurant where the waitresses and cooks have all come to stand by the road. The President and his entourage are hustled into waiting Ford Econoline vans and driven to Shi To National Park, where they attend a ceremony honoring efforts to rebuild after the September 1999 earthquake. Under a stained blue-red-and-white canopy, the President listens as Nantou's deputy mayor explains how they had to bore through rocks to reopen the highway.

Then Chen addresses the small crowd under the canopy, straining to find that memorable tone, his voice modulating through tenor registers as he praises the community for pulling together. He has done a hundred of these stump speeches, dedicating elementary schools, christening buildings, opening military bases. What he is saying is by now rote, the usual praise for Taiwan and the spirit of its people. The people seem to be listening, but they sit on their hands. Then it starts raining, and Chen's words are lost in the patter of drops on the canopy roof.

--With reporting by Matthew Forney/Beijing, Barry Hillenbrand/Washington and Don Shapiro and Jennifer Wang/Taipei