Four Japanese and a Chinese co-worker were enjoying a quiet dinner on Thursday when, out of nowhere, a group of people approached them and roughed them up, the kicks and punches accompanied by queries — some warped idea of due process, perhaps — as to whether they were indeed Japanese.
This “welcome” to China dispatched the Japanese and their Chinese friend, whose hand was apparently slashed by an assailant’s knife, to hospital. According to a Japanese consulate official, the attack may have been linked to the escalating tensions between China and Japan over the Diaoyutais (釣魚台). Given a series of similar attacks on all things Japanese across China in recent weeks, the official’s assessment was probably not too far off the mark.
What is worrying about this latest incident is that it didn’t occur in some backwater, where lack of exposure to foreigners would perhaps explain the ignorance and xenophobia that led to the attack. No, it was perpetrated at the heart of China’s commercial hub, in “modern,” glitzy Shanghai.
Now there are some people who would like to equate China’s nationalistic — and frequently violent — response to the sovereignty dispute with actions taken by Taiwan, which also claims the islets. In their view, the way President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration is handling the crisis is the result of some secret agreement between Taipei and Beijing to “gang up” against Japan. However, there is a serious flaw in that supposition: Where Chinese are turning to violence, Taiwanese will not.
Admittedly, some members of the Ma administration have made this a sovereignty issue, but we have it on good authority that the divisions at ministerial level and within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are very deep. Yes, some tour agencies have canceled trips. Yes, there have been protests, and yes, the Taipei City Government felt it had to distribute silly stickers reaffirming Taiwan’s claims over the islets during last week’s National Day celebrations.
However, in stark contrast with the hostile environment in China, Taiwanese remain friendly toward Japanese, and not a single act of violence or vandalism has been reported. So peaceful has the public response to the dispute been that the crowd that gathered at Taipei City Hall early in the morning on National Day could only respond with a mixture of awkward silence and uncertainty when organizers asked them who the Diaoyutais belong to. Fortunately for Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm for the issue was made clear before he climbed on stage, where, perhaps in a last-minute alteration to his script, he wisely decided not to repeat the question.
The difference in public reactions tells a far more important story. It highlights the fundamental differences that exist between Taiwanese and Chinese attitudes and how, in the end, the two communities are irreconcilably distinct. Taiwanese will not assail others because of their identity or some dispute between their governments over forlorn rocks in the middle of the sea.
In fact, they have shown tremendous respect, patience and courage since tourism by Chinese, whose government continues to threaten Taiwan with a military attack, became a fact of life.
As Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) and Hung Yao-nan (洪耀南) wrote in a brilliant piece in this newspaper recently, Taiwanese national identity and values are stronger today than ever before, amid (or some would say despite) efforts by the Ma administration to increase ties across the Taiwan Strait. Yes, they will support social and economic exchanges with China, but never at the price of sacrificing who they are. Their ability to transcend politics, where their Chinese counterparts turn to violence (including against their own) sends a clear signal that Taiwanese are not Chinese, and that they know it.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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