Beijing’s passage of legislation to promote patriotism, and including Taiwanese in the law, is an exercise in futility and runs counter to common sense, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday.
China’s national legislature on Tuesday passed the Patriotic Education Law to strengthen patriotism among children and families so as to counter challenges such as “historical nihilism” and to safeguard “national unity,” state media reported.
The legislation provides a legal guarantee for carrying out patriotic education, Xinhua news agency said, adding that it would take effect on Jan. 1 next year.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“Historical nihilism” is a term Beijing uses to describe views that are critical of the Chinese Communist Party’s version of historical events.
The legislation states that it applies to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Speaking from the sidelines of a legislative session, Chen said that it is common sense that the rights and duties of Taiwanese can only be defined by laws and regulations passed by the Taiwanese legislature through democratic due process.
“A state that demands patriotism from its people has to earn that love by governing well and being worthy of public trust,” he said.
“Trying to legislate patriotism is like ‘climbing a tree to catch fish (緣木求魚),” he added, using a Chinese idiom describing a futile act.
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Jan Jyh-horng (詹志宏) said the council is assessing the potential impact of the law on the safety of Taiwanese in China, although the legislation does not stipulate any penalties for noncompliance.
“The experience of countries around the world, especially democratic ones, shows that patriotism can only flow naturally from the heart of the people and cannot be compelled,” he said.
“Compulsory patriotism has a checkered history of success,” he added.
“If China is bent on promoting [patriotism], we would advise it to focus on encouraging Chinese to voluntarily care about their nation,” he said.
Beijing’s passage of a flurry of laws on national security, espionage and patriotic education is a concentrated attack on freedom of speech, said Yeh Yao-yuan (葉耀元), associate professor of international relations at the University of St Thomas.
The vagueness of the legal language in these pieces of legislation is a built-in feature to empower the authorities to more effectively suppress personal freedoms, he said.
The Patriotic Education Law is the latest push in China’s efforts to strengthen state control over speech and provide a basis for imposing penalties and consequences for defiance, said Chen Kuide (陳奎德), executive director of the US-based nonprofit Princeton China Initiative.
Additional reporting by Reuters and CNA
Taiwan aims to open 18 representative offices and seven Taiwan Tourism Information Centers worldwide by next year to attract international visitors, the Tourism Administration said on Saturday. The agency has so far opened three representative offices abroad this year and would open two more before the end of the year, it said. It has also already opened information centers in Jakarta, Mumbai and Paris, and is to open one in Vancouver next month and in Manila in December, it said. Next year, it would also open offices in Amsterdam, Dubai and Sydney, it added. While the Cabinet did not mention international tourists in its
EYES AT SEA: Many marine enthusiasts have expressed interest in volunteering for coastal patrols, which would help identify stowaways and illegal fishing, the CGA said Six thousand coastal patrol volunteers are to be recruited for 159 inspection offices to enhance the nation’s response to “gray zone” conflicts, Coast Guard Administration (CGA) sources said yesterday. Volunteer teams would be established to increase the resilience of coastal defense systems in the wake of two unlawful entries attempted by Chinese over the past three months, Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said. A former Chinese navy captain drove a motorboat into the Tamsui River (淡水河) in Taipei on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival in June, while another Chinese man sailed in a rubber boat into the Houkeng
NEXT LEVEL: The defense ministry confirmed that a video released last month featured personnel piloting new FPV drone systems being developed by the Armaments Bureau Taipei and Washington are pushing for their drone companies to work together to establish a China-free supply chain, the Financial Times reported on Friday. A delegation of high-level executives and US government officials were yesterday to arrive in Taipei to discuss with their Taiwanese counterparts collaboration on drone technology procurement and development, the report said. The executives represent 26 US manufacturers of drone and counter-drone systems, while the officials are from the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, along with Dev Shenoy, principal director for microelectronics in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
‘ANONYMOUS 64’: A national security official said that it is an attempt by China to increase domestic anti-Taiwanese sentiment and inflame cross-strait tensions The Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM) yesterday denied accusations by China that it had undermined regional security by carrying out cyberattacks against targets in China, adding instead that Beijing was responsible for raising tensions and undermining regional peace. The Chinese Ministry of State Security on WeChat accused a hacker group called “Anonymous 64” of targeting China, Hong Kong and Macau starting earlier this year through frequent cyberattacks. The group carried out cyberattacks to seize control of Web sites, outdoor electronic billboards and video-on-demand platforms in China, Hong Kong and Macau, it said, adding the hackers’