Beijing’s apparent crackdown on Taiwanese textbooks aims to sever ties between the children of Taiwanese businesspeople in China and their native Taiwan, academics said yesterday.
Chinese customs on Sunday released a video of officers seizing a shipment of Taiwanese textbooks sent from Taiwan, claiming they contained “problematic maps” that incorrectly label “the Chinese province of Taiwan” as an independent country and do not include territories such as the Diaoyu Islands (釣魚台) and South Tibet (the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh) within China’s borders, violating the “one China” principle.
Screenshot from a video released by China Customs
Academics yesterday said that China had previously “turned a blind eye” to the content of Taiwanese textbooks.
However, Beijing now aims to sever ties between the children of Taiwanese businesspeople in China and Taiwan, Taiwan Thinktank researcher Wu Se-chih (吳瑟致) said, adding that he fears only patriotic educational materials would be available in the future.
China has never previously adopted strict surveillance of educational books or printed materials, and has allowed the use of Taiwanese textbooks in Taiwanese schools in China, Wu said.
These exceptions were not unusual, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wanted to appease Taiwanese businesspeople to ensure their continued local investment, he said.
However, this latest seizure of textbooks shows that the CCP no longer wants to maintain this “gray area,” Wu added.
Wu said he believes that had recent Taiwanese investment in China been more substantial, the CCP would not have taken these measures.
However, as more Taiwanese are leaving China and Taiwanese investment is rapidly declining, it is possible that the CCP no longer recognizes the importance of Taiwanese schools in China, and so has begun gradually adding pressure, Wu said.
This latest development reflects the predicament faced by China in losing Taiwanese businesspeople, he added.
Hung Chin-fu (洪敬富), a professor of political science at National Cheng Kung University, said CCP officials had previously maintained a level of tolerance and allowed the use of Taiwanese textbooks in China’s three Taiwanese schools in Shanghai, Dongguan and Huadong.
Now the need to respect the “one China” principle shows that, in a time of fervent Chinese nationalism, Taiwanese educational materials are beyond what the CCP is willing to tolerate, he added.
The Taiwanese textbooks’ descriptions of national sovereignty and a democratic, constitutional political system make the CCP uneasy, Hung said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) wants to draw a clear party line and there would no longer be room for any “gray area,” he said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS