As happened on Nov. 11 last year, the Great Firewall of China appeared to suddenly spring a leak on Wednesday night and into Thursday, allowing tens of thousands of messages to flood president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) Facebook page with pro-Beijing messages, as well as sites belonging to SETN.com and the Apple Daily.
In reporting on the incident, some wire agencies spoke of young Chinese “scaling” the firewall — a nice image, but given the ban on accessing Facebook in China and the close monitoring by Beijing’s Internet Praetorians, completely unbelievable.
Just as unbelievable was the response by some that the outpouring was a “spontaneous” manifestation of young Chinese, even though an online forum named after Chinese soccer player Li Yi (李毅) claimed credit for inspiring this week’s deluge.
The truth is that temporary holes are deliberately created; if not, there would be continuous waves of such messages, not specifically timed dumps.
Tsai — and the Democratic Progressive Party — struck just the right note by not directly addressing the criticisms in the messages, but only saying the great thing about Taiwan was “that everyone has the right to be themselves.”
It is that kind of detachment that is needed now — and is likely to be needed in the coming weeks and years — to deal with other such spontaneous outbursts from China and Beijing’s evasive “who, us?” response when called out on such actions.
A perfect example of Beijing’s disingenuousness came yesterday when the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said that no one should be reading too much into China Central Television’s (CCTV) broadcasts this week of footage of live-fire military and landing drills along the coast, because the footage was simply “a summary of training maneuvers organized last year.”
However, CCTV said the footage was of “winter exercises” in “recent days.” Such obfuscation was clearly intended to ensure that Taiwanese and others would think the drills — or the broadcasts — were aimed at sending a message to post-election Taiwan.
Beijing knows full well the power of such television images on its domestic audiences, if no one else. That is why CCTV repeatedly broadcast two spurious confessions this week by two detained Swedish citizens, China-born Gui Minhai (桂民海), a co-owner of the Hong Kong publishing house Mighty Current (巨流), and rights activist Peter Dahlin.
Dahlin disappeared on Jan. 3, and after more than a week of blatantly denying any knowledge of him, Beijing on Wednesday last week confirmed that he was being held on suspicion of “endangering state security,” with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying that “coercive measures” had been taken against him. “Coercive” is a word the foreign ministry should rethink using, given that Beijing’s claims that Dahlin’s confession was voluntary and that it safeguards the legal rights of foreigners and its citizens. Dahlin’s confession looked about as voluntary as that of Gui, who tearfully said that he had turned himself in to Chinese authorities in October last year over a hit-and-run charge from 2003, with no explanation of how he disappeared from Thailand, or went without word to family, colleagues and friends for three months.
A “leaky” Great Firewall, misleading news reports and coerced confessions are all part of the Chinese Communist Party’s business model. While Beijing likes to bleat about the feelings of the Chinese people being hurt whenever someone criticizes China, it feels free to continuously insult the intelligence of the rest of the world.
It is time Taiwan and the world responded with equal disregard — to the trolling, the fake news, the posturing, the faux injured feelings. Not that we should turn a blind eye to military threats, cyberattacks and human rights abuses, for they are very real and should be condemned.
However, the rest of the pap coming out of Beijing should just roll off our backs.
Two weeks ago, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) raised hackles in Taiwan by posting to her 2.6 million Instagram followers that she was visiting “Taipei, China.” Yeoh’s post continues a long-standing trend of Chinese propaganda that spreads disinformation about Taiwan’s political status and geography, aimed at deceiving the world into supporting its illegitimate claims to Taiwan, which is not and has never been part of China. Taiwan must respond to this blatant act of cognitive warfare. Failure to respond merely cedes ground to China to continue its efforts to conquer Taiwan in the global consciousness to justify an invasion. Taiwan’s government
“If you do not work in semiconductors, you are nothing in this country.” That is what an 18-year-old told me after my speech at the Kaohsiung International Youth Forum. It was a heartbreaking comment — one that highlights how Taiwan ignores the potential of the creative industry and the soft power that it generates. We all know what an Asian nation can achieve in that field. Japan led the way decades ago. South Korea followed with the enormous success of “hallyu” — also known as the Korean wave, referring to the global rise and spread of South Korean culture. Now Thailand
This month’s news that Taiwan ranks as Asia’s happiest place according to this year’s World Happiness Report deserves both celebration and reflection. Moving up from 31st to 27th globally and surpassing Singapore as Asia’s happiness leader is gratifying, but the true significance lies deeper than these statistics. As a society at the crossroads of Eastern tradition and Western influence, Taiwan embodies a distinctive approach to happiness worth examining more closely. The report highlights Taiwan’s exceptional habit of sharing meals — 10.1 shared meals out of 14 weekly opportunities, ranking eighth globally. This practice is not merely about food, but represents something more
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
RSS