China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday.
China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday.
The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said.
Photo: Taipei Times
The documents “reflect cross-strait historical ties and exchanges, and carries the memory of Chinese, attesting to the fact that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait originate from the same root… and belong to one China,” she said.
The act says that the document preservation units “may collect documents on Minnan-Taiwan relations through donations, purchases, replication and other approaches,” while non-state museums would be encouraged to “take part in the preservation and use of Minnan-Taiwan relations documents via collection, compilation and exhibition.”
“People from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, as well as overseas Chinese people, are encouraged to actively promote the documents on Minnan-Taiwan relations and take part in the preservation and use of the documents,” it says.
In Taipei, Hung Chin-fu (洪敬富), a professor of political science at National Cheng Kung University, yesterday said these are attempts to tie Taiwan to the Minnan region ethnically and culturally through efforts such as the demonstration zone for cross-strait integrated development set up in China’s Xiamen City.
The act is an escalation of cultural warfare against Taiwan to the legislative level and constitutes “lawfare,” a type of influence operations, he said.
Beijing attempts to prevent Taiwan from culturally separating itself from China by using laws to strengthen ties between Minnan and Taiwan in terms of cultures, customs, traditions and festivals, Hung said.
While threatening to take Taiwan by force using “guns,” Beijing also uses “pens” to claim that Taiwanese culture is “part of Chinese culture” and Taiwan and China “share the same ancestry and bloodline,” he said.
By emphasizing the Chinese origins of Taiwanese religions and cultures, such as the sea goddess Matsu (媽祖) and god of war Guan Gong (關公), Beijing attempts to form and fuel public opinion that could influence the political views of people in Taiwan, Hung said.
“This is ‘united front’ tactics without gunfire,” with the goal of undermining Taiwanese subjectivity and subsuming its cultural sovereignty under China, he said.
DEFENSE: The National Security Bureau promised to expand communication and intelligence cooperation with global partners and enhance its strategic analytical skills China has not only increased military exercises and “gray zone” tactics against Taiwan this year, but also continues to recruit military personnel for espionage, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said yesterday in a report to the Legislative Yuan. The bureau submitted the report ahead of NSB Director-General Tsai Ming-yen’s (蔡明彥) appearance before the Foreign and National Defense Committee today. Last year, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted “Joint Sword-2024A and B” military exercises targeting Taiwan and carried out 40 combat readiness patrols, the bureau said. In addition, Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s airspace 3,070 times last year, up about
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
RSS