In commenting on the mayoral elections held in Taipei and Kaohsiung, many political pundits have said that the results reflected trends among pan-green and pan-blue supporters on the issue of national identity.
The importance of national identity for voters raises questions about how best to tackle the issue.
Ruan Ming (
However, the China that must be understood is not the one that has been deliberately eulogized by pro-China media outlets, but the empire of lies depicted in L'annee du Coq: Chinois et Rebelles by French writer Guy Sorman.
As admirers of Chinese culture, most Western China experts tend to paint a rosy picture of the country.
Many of them are also leftists who loathe capitalism and yearn for the communist ideal of equality for all.
The doyen of sinology, late Harvard professor John Fairbank, was deeply puzzled by Beijing's decision to violently suppress pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and said that China was too complex for Westerners to read.
Today, many Westerners fail to see the dark shadow that looms behind the bright lights of China's economic boom.
What makes Sorman different is that he is a right-wing academic who supports US neo-conservatism and loathes socialism.
He does not paint a rosy picture of China, but has the courage to criticize it instead.
When commenting on L'annee du Coq: Chinois et Rebelles, Pu Ta-chung (
More importantly, Sorman's book is based largely on first-hand research.
It reveals that in China, legal contracts are often unenforceable, the judiciary has no independence and corruption is rampant.
Sorman also mentions that once foreign businesspeople arrive in China, they begin to lose their sense of judgement and disregard the universal standards adopted by economies around the world.
Sorman finds that economic statistics are worthless in China, for they are compiled by a government that cares little about their accuracy.
For example, during the early 1990s, official Chinese statistics persistently claimed that the country's cultivated land only amounted to about 95 million hectares, a figure that gave China less arable land per capita than Bangladesh.
However, satellite photographs indicate that China has a total of 150 million hectares of arable land. By under-reporting the amount of arable land by almost one third, the Chinese authorities' purpose was to highlight the government's efficiency in feeding its people despite a considerable land "shortage."
Mao Yishi (茅以軾), a Beijing-based economist, said that although China's economy is growing at a rate of 8 percent annually, it has wreaked havoc on the environment.
The resulting land exhaustion, pollution and disease have in fact caused a decline of 10 percent. Thus, China's economic development is really a disaster.
Anyone who attempts to tell the truth in China is suppressed, either by intimidation or by force. Small wonder Sorman views China as a barbarian country.
Cao Changqing is a Chinese writer based in the US.
TRANSLATED BY DANIEL CHENG
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not