A China-based Taiwanese singer who drew public ire after criticizing a Taiwanese K-pop singer for waving a Republic of China (ROC) flag said he would hold a news conference in Taiwan on Feb. 3 to tell his side of the story.
Huang An (黃安) accused 16-year-old Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the Taiwanese member of the South Korean girl band TWICE, of supporting Taiwanese independence after she waved an ROC flag on a South Korean TV show.
The tip-off led to widespread criticizm of Chou in China.
An endorsement deal her group had with Chinese smartphone maker Huawei was jeopardized by Chou’s so-called pro-Taiwanese independence attitude.
Chou apologized to her management company JYP Entertainment and her Chinese and Taiwanese fans in a video released on YouTube on Friday, saying: “There is only one China... I have always felt proud of being Chinese.”
Park Jin-young, head of JYP Entertainment, also apologized.
The incident caused outrage among Taiwanese, who saw it as China bullying a teenager who was waving her nation’s flag.
The incident might have boosted president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) votes by 1 to 2 percentage points in Saturday’s election, said Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌), a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.
Huang wrote on Weibo on Sunday that he was not the culprit in the incident, saying that he was “lucky to become” a singer who could influence “Taiwan’s election.”
He said he would explain “the whole story” behind the incident and present the truth.
Huang said in a Weibo post on Monday last week that he was not associating waving the ROC flag with Taiwan independence, but the issue was what the person waving the flag stood for.
Pro-independence Taiwanese media were using the incident to manufacture provocative headlines to incite Chinese, Huang said, adding that Chou must be working with them unless she says otherwise.
There are many people who could trigger sensitive issues between China and Taiwan, since almost everyone has a Facebook account, former Mainland Affairs Council chairman and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Lawmaker Su Chi (蘇起) said on Sunday.
People should remain calm and set their sights on the common good when dealing with issues regarding cross-strait relations, Su said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS