Ignore pro-Beijing artists
Two weeks have passed since President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration. A few days after the inauguration, China Central Television, a Chinese state-run media outlet, posted a series of absurd comments such as “Taiwan has never been a country and it never will,” and “Taiwanese independence is a dead end. Unification with the motherland cannot be stopped” on a Chinese microblogging site.
At its heart, this is a typical example of Chinese diatribe in China’s war of words and military posturing against Taiwan.
However, what happened next was unexpected.
From out of nowhere, multiple Taiwanese artists and performers rushed to post similar statements online, all kissing up to the CCP, acting like accomplices.
These performers include several singers and actors such as Angela Chang (張韶涵), Patty Hou (侯佩岑), Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), Aska Yang (楊宗緯), Lai Kuan-lin (賴冠霖), Jiro Wang (汪東城), Ming Dao (明道), Julian Chen (陳志朋) and Ouyang Nini (歐陽妮妮).
These are just the better-known ones, as there were also many others the public would not be so familiar with.
Taiwanese should pose a question for these performers. Which country was it that gave them their first platform? Was it not Taiwan?
Today, they are falling over themselves in a dash to fawn over an authoritarian, communist China intent on annexing Taiwan.
These performers lack any morals or ethics. It is an incredibly lamentable situation.
A few years ago, a local Internet celebrity gained some notoriety for his cover and adaptation of a song in which he had changed some of the song’s lyrics to: “There’s few Taiwan artists, just a mindless herd rushing to China with no self-respect. How can they get up off their knees and face their Taiwanese ancestors?”
If these performers are only making these comments to keep the yuan flowing into their bank accounts by heaping praise on China, even though people have the right to freedom of expression — including by pandering to China’s dictates — Taiwanese do not need to give them any more attention.
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) once said that “nobody should have to apologize for how they identify.”
Still, I cannot fathom why these singers want to identify as Chinese citizens while needing to trample all over and devalue the country that got them to where they are in the first place, let alone praising China’s military threats and media manipulation to do so.
Hung Yu-jui
Taipei
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