You all ought to know
There were two very distressing news items this week. One was footage of Chinese Australians demonstrating in Sydney against Tibet, and another was a New York Times article about Grace Wang, a Chinese student at Duke University who became Public Enemy No. 2 in China because of her efforts to mediate an on-campus Human Rights demonstration and a pro-China rally.
What was really horrifying was that the participants here are, in the former, Australians, and in the latter, university students with access to information and seeking to be educated in a system that values pluralism and reason. If those Chinese demonstrators cannot see the irony of the situation or refuse to apply their critical thinking skills dispassionately, I have a message for them.
First, to the Chinese Australians: Why have you all naturalized and pledged your allegiance to Australia and then gather en masse to wave the Chinese flag and demonstrate your solidarity to China?
Are you all just there to take advantage and freeload off the kindness of a country that embraces people without regard to their race, religion or ethnicity? Or are you there because you earnestly believe that rights otherwise denied would improve the quality of your life?
Here’s the ironic part. Why are you all exercising freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in Australia to espouse support for a policy in China that denies such a right?
Is it because as Australians you cherish such a right so much that you could justifiably and selfishly guard it jealously from ever burgeoning in China? Or is it just a knee-jerk reaction to support Chinese Communist Party policies that permit freedom of speech and assembly only when it suits its purpose?
To the Chinese students in the US: You all have no excuse for your ignorance. In this country your Web sites are not filtered, you can access most information you want in your libraries and you have a legal right to almost all government documents thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. Don’t lose your critical reasoning skills — there’s some truth to what you perceive to be negative reporting of your country.
Will you ignore the entire message simply because you have a problem with the delivery? Go look up texts on human rights and learn what it actually means! The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 explains two fundamental ideas underlying the intellectual and substantive concept.
First is that the will of the most powerful is not and can never be the final and valid justification for actions that affect the vital interests of individuals.
Second is that simply being a human being is sufficient in and of itself to allow claims for particular goods that are basic for a life of dignity and autonomy.
In the pursuit of knowledge, you must realize that you cannot understand why you are right until you understand why you could be wrong. You have the right to be ignorant and misinformed, but I strongly suggest that in light of what you consider to be a concerted effort to make China look bad in recent weeks, you all would do well to moderate and educate yourselves on the grains of truth embedded in the criticism.
Mark Du
Miami, Florida
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then