This week, the popular singer Chang Hui-mei (
It was expected that Chinese nationalists would continue to make a big deal of A-mei's "green credentials." With Chinese authorities continuing to encourage or tacitly allow extreme nationalism, these people will continue to find scapegoats against whom to vent their nationalist sentiment. A-mei is just one of their targets. So long as the Chinese government continues to foster nationalism, similar incidents will continue to occur -- and these future incidents may be even bigger and more violent.
Other groups in China also dare to make themselves heard, and clashes occur between these groups and nationalists. That this occurs in China, a highly oppressive authoritarian country, is something that inspires further thought. Does it mean that Chinese officials, following market reforms, are beginning to tolerate dissent? Or was the recent clash the result of official support for nationalists?
Then there is A-Mei herself. Because of the huge profits and market possibilities of performing in China, since the national anthem incident she has frantically sought to disassociate herself from Taiwan's pan-green camp. She has kept her distance from politics, and when interviewed in China went so far as to suggest that singing the national anthem at President Chen Shui-bian's (
The statements she has made in order to be able to perform in China again may disappoint the Taiwanese public. But to resist the temptation of money and her fans in China could only be expected of a saint. There is no reason to make such demands on A-Mei, who is only an entertainer and not some model of civic virtue. In order to develop her career, she has indeed compromised her principles and attitudes. But as long as this doesn't hurt the national interest, she is free to do as she pleases.
The irony of the national anthem incident is that if China hadn't boycotted her performances, she would never have drawn the attention of the international news media, or made it onto the cover of Time. A-Mei wouldn't be such an influential figure or be used as an index of cross-strait relations. So although A-Mei may have lost some business because of the boycott, this "disaster" has actually brought her considerable good fortune. It's made her one of the Chinese-speaking world's foremost entertainers.
To be more specific, it is her "green credentials" that have made A-mei famous. Without these credentials, she would probably be just another singer who, seeing the end of her career in Taiwan, has no choice but to try to develop in China.
In recent years, Taiwan has been the index of a performer's popularity in the greater Chinese-speaking region. If the singer is well-received in Taiwan, he or she is very likely to be popular in China. Failure in Taiwan's market predicts the same result elsewhere.
However, no Taiwanese performer has ever attained fame in China because of being labeled "pro-blue." This reminds us of Taiwan's own supermodel Lin Chi-ling (
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS