Despite the touted economic benefits of flourishing Chinese tourism to Taiwan, it is becoming increasingly clear that the dividends are coming at a price — one that, sadly, some seem willing to pay.
With some People’s Republic of China nationals able to travel independently to Taiwan beginning later this month, the Yilan County Business and Tourism Department last week announced it wanted to open a Web site in China and, in doing so, would likely drop the “.tw” suffix to make itself more palatable to Chinese authorities.
A representative from the Yilan County Lodging Association also said that homestays and bed-and-breakfast operators in the county would probably encounter severe difficulty attracting Chinese tourists if they insist on using the “.tw” suffix, an indication that operators and officials may have little compunction in making such a sacrifice in the name of business.
Ostensibly seen as a small compromise on the part of Yilan officials, their willingness to abandon yet another symbol of Taiwan’s sovereignty nevertheless risks engaging the nation further down what could be a very slippery slope. Not only is this flexibility voluntary, it sends a signal to Beijing that a simple nudge or threat will likely suffice when it wants to exact further concessions from Taiwan in the future.
Just as Yilan officials were expressing their willingness to throw “.tw” to the wolves, beautiful Green Island (綠島), one of the nation’s top tourism destinations, was coming under threat after Chinese officials said last week they might remove the island from the “approved” list of package tour destinations after it emerged that some Chinese tourists had been ruffled at the sight of the decades-old anti-communist slogans that pepper the island.
While Taitung County tourism officials were quick to point to the historical value of the slogans, adding that similar etchings were found on other outlying islands much closer to China, it is evident that Beijing will make their removal a condition for the resumption of Chinese tourism there. Should Green Island refuse to comply by censoring propagandistic leftovers of a bygone era, it risks being marginalized while other parts of the country — those that agree to play by Beijing’s rules — reap the economic benefits. This is China’s age-old strategy of isolating the few while engaging the many.
The situation brings back memories from September 2009, when China “punished” parts of southern Taiwan with thousands of hotel cancelations following a decision by Kaohsiung authorities to allow World Uyghur Congress chairperson Rebiya Kadeer to attend a film festival.
The danger is that the more local governments comply with Beijing’s requests, the easier it will be for China to chip away at the foundations of Taiwan’s sovereignty. Some could argue that the willingness to make small concessions in return for economic benefits does not constitute the abdication of sovereignty, but even if this were the case, such actions still send signals of weakness to China.
Over time, this will make it increasingly difficult for tourists from other parts of the world not to think that they are in China whenever they visit Taiwan or reading about China whenever they peruse its increasingly censored literature. While gradual and relatively painless, we could wake up one day to the realization that in the eyes of the world, Taiwan as a sovereign entity has ceased to exist.
Internet suffixes and the removal of silly slogans from the former dictator Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) era are indeed small things, but they are no less part of a grand strategy by Beijing to whittle away at Taiwanese nationhood. If Taiwanese cannot oppose even the small things, it is hard to believe they will step up to the plate when Beijing sets its sights on more substantial prizes.
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