As China conducted military exercises encircling Taiwan after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, China Central Television News posted an image online with the text: “There is only one China in the world.”
To show their support for China’s ideology, some Taiwanese artists have voluntarily reposted or were “compelled” to repost the image under public pressure, drawing fire from Internet users.
It should not have been a surprise when long-term pro-China artists, such as Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), reposted the image right away, but what was unexpected was that many other Taiwanese artists followed suit.
The artists have no right to feign innocence by saying that their social media accounts are handled by management companies, because they need consent to post on their behalf.
“Little pinks” — Chinese nationalists who forcefully push their ideologies on the Internet — have played a crucial role in this situation, acting like “Red Guards” by watching like hawks the accounts of celebrities to see who had not shared the image and launching mass posting attacks on those who had not.
While most celebrities would buckle under pressure, some of the most popular remained unperturbed, including Jolin Tsai (蔡依林).
Although the malicious behavior of the little pinks was expected, it reminded people of the “fumi-e” policy — a ritual dating to the 1600s during Japan’s Tokugawa period in which suspected Christians were ordered to trample on images depicting Jesus or the Virgin Mary and persecuted if they would not.
It is hard to believe that after a few centuries, little pinks are using a similar approach.
I agree with the statement “there is only one China in the world,” as long as it does not come with hidden clauses, such as “Taiwan is part of China.”
Even though the image did not say the second part, the intention of unification of Taiwan and China is as clear as day — a stance that is widely rejected by Taiwanese.
China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy, relentless military drills, and the provocations and preposterous behavior of little pinks have reduced the possibility of Taiwan sitting down for peace talks with China.
If anything, their chances of achieving unification have only gotten bleaker over the years.
Hung Yu-jui is a Japanese-language teacher and translator.
Translated by Rita Wang
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
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,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS