Out of place criticism
Reading Callum McGovern’s letters (Letters, Jan. 9 and Jan. 21, page 8), I wonder if he was living in or talking about the same country I am living in.
Generalizing one’s own experience is always a dangerous thing. I have been in Taiwan on and off since 1983 and have lived here for the past 15 years. Not once have I experienced racism. My wife is Indonesian and does not speak Chinese or Taiwanese. She loves it here and says people here are very friendly, kind and helpful. We live in Kaohsiung, where the “light-skinned mainland Chinese” are in short supply, which might be part of the explanation. While we are stigmatizing and throwing prejudices around, he talks of politicians, but when were they ever human?
I have known several foreign workers here in Taiwan. None has any problem with the Taiwanese in general. The harshest, and in that respect the most racist, treatment they ever got was always from their employers.
Have you seen how workers, even Taiwanese ones, are treated at small companies or even multinationals such as McDonalds. That is not racism; it is exploitation pure and simple.
Having lived and worked on three continents, I settled in Taiwan because of its people. People here are kind, open-minded, always ready to help. As to their English ability, the first time I came here, 1983, I did not speak a single word of Chinese and to my surprise, wherever I went I found people that spoke English.
When was it ever the case that one could get by with English in Germany or France? Try to find someone that speaks English in any other place other than a major tourist stop. It’s impossible. Nine years ago I landed at Nurenberg Airport, an international terminal in Germany. Not a single person I spoke to there spoke English.
I have to disappoint McGovern when he states that English is the most widely spoken language on earth. Wrong! Chinese is. Check your facts. Only about 1 billion people speak English. Only 300 million are native speakers and their numbers are declining. Add Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore to all the Mandarin speakers in China and we easily get 1.33 billion people that speak Chinese as their native tongue.
GEERT ANTHONIS
Kaohsiung
In response to McGovern’s letters, I will cede that as in any society, there is indeed racism in Taiwan, but according to my experience it is relatively rare. Concluding the opposite after seeing Taiwanese staff writing waiguoren on your receipt for identification seems overly dramatic.
McGovern was apparently spat on, but never in my life did I get even close to this miserable treatment in Taiwan. Generally speaking, I am more embarrassed by the (positive) special treatment people give me.
In most cases, racism in Taiwan concerns “darker” Asians and blacks. I remember a ridiculous advertisement four years ago asking explicitly for a Caucasian English language teacher. McGovern’s claim that looking at the lawmakers’ ethnic background proves his point is also unfair. The Netherlands and the UK are often cited as some of the most liberal countries on earth, yet very few ethnic minorities have climbed up the social ladder far enough to get top positions in domestic politics there.
I would like to add that Taiwanese, South Koreans and Japanese are not just being forced to learn English, but display a genuine curiosity toward the Western world.
J.C. BRON
Luodong, Yilan County
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
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS