After months of high expectations, tour organizers confirmed over the weekend that music legend Bob Dylan would not be coming to Taiwan. In fact, he won’t be going to Hong Kong and China either, because Chinese authorities feared the political message behind some of his songs is “too sensitive.” After permission to perform in Shanghai and Beijing was denied, the promoter pulled the other dates — including Taiwan.
Once again, because of Beijing’s fear of pluralism, an entire region — including China itself — suffers the deafening silence of censorship, while free countries like Taiwan are denied the unforgettable experience of seeing the legend perform live.
This, worryingly, comes at a time when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his Chinese counterparts endeavor to accelerate artistic and cultural exchanges between Taiwan and China. The more this becomes reality, the more censorship could become part of our lives. Is this what Taiwanese want for themselves?
An early victim of this catastrophic drift in China’s cultural sphere of influence was the Taiwanese movie Miao Miao (渺渺), which had to be pulled from the Melbourne International Film Festival last August amid pressure by Beijing on festival organizers not to screen a film about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. One of the producers of Miao Miao, as it turns out, was Jet Tone Film Ltd of Hong Kong.
A similar controversy occurred over the Kadeer documentary 10 Conditions of Love when Kaohsiung planned to feature it at a movie festival. Beijing retaliated by canceling hotel reservations and tours to southern Taiwan. Organizers of the Kaohsiung film festival were undeterred by the threat and the film was shown, but this came at a cost, including the alienation of the tourism industry.
It is unfortunate that Dylan’s tour organizers (or maybe the artist himself) chose to cancel other venues after being barred from performing in Chinese cities. Aside from denying an unforgettable experience to thousands of music enthusiasts, this sends the unfortunate signal that Beijing’s dictate extends outside its borders and applies to some “greater China” artifice. Repression won, and rather than fight back by performing in the region, the great American voice of freedom and resistance chose to be silenced. In the wake of Google’s decision to pull out of the Chinese market over censorship issues, this turn of events is disappointing.
Having prevailed over Dylan, there is no knowing what else Beijing will consider “too sensitive” in the arts, which could leave us with a depleted palette of artists whose work is deemed acceptable by Beijing. True art risks being sacrificed, to be replaced by the safe, albeit inane, would-be artists that populate the airwaves nowadays.
For the sake of artistic integrity, freedom and liberty, Dylan should come to Taiwan, where there is no doubt the legend would receive a welcome worthy of his status.
As Dylan put it: “Come senators, congressmen / Please heed the call / Don’t stand in the doorway / Don’t block up the hall / For he that gets hurt / Will be he who has stalled / There’s a battle outside / And it’s ragin’.”
The battle is raging and people who cherish their freedoms can’t afford to stall. There’s a battle outside, and oh, could only the great Bob Dylan heed the call.
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
On Friday last week, tens of thousands of young Chinese took part in a bike ride overnight from Henan Province’s Zhengzhou (鄭州) to the historical city of Kaifeng in search of breakfast. The night ride became a viral craze after four female university students in June chronicled their ride on social media from Zhengzhou in search of soup dumplings in Kaifeng. Propelled by the slogan “youth is priceless,” the number of nocturnal riders surged to about 100,000 on Friday last week. The main road connecting the two cities was crammed with cyclists as police tried to maintain order. That sparked
RSS