Veteran entertainer Lisa Cheng (鄭惠中) was once more thrust into the public eye on Friday last week when she threw red paint on a portrait of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) at the memorial set up for him at the Taipei Guest House. Last year, Cheng caused a scene when she slapped Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) in the face.
When asked why she threw paint at Lee’s portrait, Cheng said, conversationally: “I hate the ‘Godfather of Taiwanese independence.’”
Given her previous statements, her avid support of former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and her presence at Chinese Unification Promotion Party events, it is not too difficult to see on which part of the political ideological spectrum Cheng resides.
There have been many examples of individuals defacing or beheading statues as a way to express their opinion. One could interpret this kind of action as “symbolic speech,” conforming to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Constitution.
However, some brazen forms of protest can go too far, and should be subject to some degree of legal sanction, either through the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) or the Criminal Code.
The motivation behind Cheng’s actions goes beyond her personal political leanings: It suggests a kind of psychological tethering to an education received under the party-state system.
For people like Cheng, Taiwan in the post-democratization era has given rise to grievances and grudges against the KMT’s “tripartite enemy” — the Chinese communists, domestic dissidents and the Taiwanese independence movement — that, within Taiwan, are naturally represented by independence advocates and the old dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement.
Through the nation’s democratization process, prior enemies of the state have evolved, taking on an entirely different aspect, an updated definition. Following three transitions of political power, Taiwan’s independence from China has become a majority position and the dangwai group has long become a party of government.
Even though the supposed war has ended, Cheng and her ilk continue to believe that they have a duty to safeguard Chinese nationalism and the party-state system.
Her crowd in the media and academic circles remain silent on China’s continued oppression of Taiwan, while echoing former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) capitulationist comments in newspaper articles and on TV shows, thereby jeopardizing national security.
The aggressive criticism over issues such as the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the “national team” of mask makers and the historic visit by US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar shows how superficial the “Team Lisa Cheng” objections are.
Even something as simple as a photograph of Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄), Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and Vice President William Lai (賴清德) wearing different-colored masks to promote the work of the “national team” was ridiculed, and people who think like Cheng derided a memorandum of agreement for US-Taiwan exchanges on public health, suggesting that Azar’s trip was a waste of time if he came without a vaccine.
People like Cheng support unification with China, failing to see the good in Taiwan, but receive just treatment in a free Taiwan, allowed to vote in the same way as advocates of rectifying the name of Taiwan and writing a new constitution — even though these advocates are forwarding reasonable proposals while Team Lisa Cheng continuously seeks to sow division.
The Lisa Chengs of Taiwan are always talking the nation down. If, in this process, they harm national interests or overstep a legal red line — be it throwing paint on the portrait of a statesman at his memorial, or colluding with a hostile state and cooperating with the Chinese communists — they can always hide behind freedom of expression guarantees. How very convenient.
Chen Kuan-fu is a graduate law student at National Taipei University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS