Racist propaganda
Is not the timing of the recent little furore in your letters pages over allegations of racism in Taiwan brought by Callum McGovern (Letters, Jan. 21, page 8) perhaps somewhat serendipitous given the revelation in today’s news of just what will be inscribed on the red envelopes that Chinese billionaire philanthropist Chen Guangbiao (陳光標) plans to give out to poor Taiwanese prior to this Lunar New Year?
“The day is cold, the ground freezing, but the people’s hearts are warm. The Chinese race is one family and a fire in the winter (中華民族一家親,冬天裡的一把火).”
To ascribe the term “family” (with its implicit connotation of moral obligations) to other people on the basis of race alone is pure racial collectivism and ought to be condemned by every decent person. Whether a person is Chinese, American, Japanese, English, Vietnamese, French or whatever other nationality in origin, or whether the color of their skin is black, white or yellow is of no moral import whatsoever. What is of moral import is, in the words of murdered civil rights activist Martin Luther King, the “content of a person’s character.” Period.
I do not condemn Chen’s wish to help the poor, even though I suspect this particular help may be partly a propaganda stunt, but he could have easily phrased that description differently, for instance replacing the words: “The Chinese race is one family and a fire in the winter” with the non--collectivist and non--racialist: “Everyone needs a fire in the winter” (人人在冬天需要火爐). Such an inscription would preserve the benevolent nature of his intentions in handing out red envelopes to the poor, while rejecting unfortunate racial collectivist propaganda.
As it stands, Chen’s inscription is not a little ironic — a fire is indeed a likely outcome when one member of the “family” threatens the other member with more than 1,000 missiles.
MICHAEL FAGAN
Tainan
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS