Since the March election we have become used to interpreting everything the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) says through the filter of Orwellian 1984-style doublespeak -- "war is peace," that sort of thing.
Take KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (
This "don't read my lips" interpretation has recently had heavy usage. For example, readers might remember how in the election's immediate aftermath the riots were predictably called "peaceful protests" by "dissatisfied voters" who actually were blue rent-a-mobs.
We were told that it was of the utmost urgency to speed the recount, so urgent that declaration of a state of emergency was suggested. What this was shown to mean was that the pan-blues would try every gambit they could find to drag their feet on getting the recount under way, even down to the world's richest political party saying it could not afford the NT$60 million bond it had to hand over to the court to make sure it wouldn't default on the case's cost if it were required to pay.
We were told that the pan-blues were only interested in fairness, meaning that they were not interested in fairness but only in making sure that their patrician "right to rule" went unchallenged by the democratic hoi polloi. We were told they wanted to "get to the truth" of the March 19 shooting, only to find out quite clearly that this meant "to believe any wacky conspiracy theory, even in the face of the evidence provided by the specialist whom we ourselves insisted investigate the case."
KMT doublespeak reached its apogee at the inaug-uration. The slogan, remember, was "Taiwan, we continue to move forward," which really meant "We want to go back to the Chiang family dictatorship." In his speech at the pan-blue rally that day, Lien told supporters: "What we care about here is not winning or losing, but about right and wrong," which in Lien-speak means his right to be president and the wrong of anybody else's having the job.
Lien also said he would work to integrate the pan-blues "as one big family," which means that by merging the KMT with the People First Party (PFP) he could keep his job by plying on the widespread loathing in the KMT for the man who would take over if he were toppled: PFP Chairman James "Chung-hsing Bills" Soong (宋「興票」楚瑜). And we were told that the pan-blue meeting was a spontaneous rally of supporters, and of course found that many KMT members only attended because they were ordered to.
So far the "understand the opposite of what is said"tactic has served us well. Even on Saturday, as the party claimed that it had no intention of trying to kick out pro-localization members, we understood that this was exactly what Lien and the KMT leadership had in mind, egged on by the anti-localization PFP.
How then are we to interpret Saturday's remarks by spokeswoman Kuo Su-chun (
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The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
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