Now that somewhat-direct Lunar New Year charter flights have been approved by Taiwan and China, the next "meat and potatoes" issue that must be dealt with in cross-strait relations is whether to allow large numbers of Chinese tourists into Taiwan.
American Institute in Taiwan Director Douglas Paal alluded to this in his speech to the annual general meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday: "We are encouraged by signs of progress toward cross-strait charter flights and the further opening of Taiwan to tourists from [China]. These measures promise important economic benefits for both sides."
Experts from the tourism industry feel that they will benefit greatly by having hordes of Chinese tourists swarming through Taroko Gorge and scuttling around Yangmingshan. And maybe they will. But surely the more important issue to be addressed is whether this influx of tourists will benefit Taiwan's continued survival as a de facto independent nation.
It may be that having erstwhile communists enjoy a little capitalism and freewheeling democracy will be a positive thing -- surely it can not hurt to temporarily remove them from their imposed shell of state control. A few hours watching cable news coverage, perusing local newspapers, or arguing politics with a taxi driver will do more to shape a person's opinion of Taiwan than years of programming by Xinhua.
However, regardless of a person's views toward China, whether one supports unification or independence, any Taiwanese who has traveled to China knows that, for all of the "shared language and culture," the two countries could hardly be more different. After all, one is a developed, freedom-loving democracy, and the other is, well, not.
Even the most die-hard unificationist, when traveling abroad, takes care to let people know that they are from Taiwan, not China. Even taishang, Taiwanese businesspeople operating in the "mainland," mostly live in enclaves, isolated from their counterparts on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
It isn't that Taiwanese have a problem with China or their Chinese heritage necessarily. It's just that the modern histories of the two countries have diverged so dramatically that people on either side really have little understanding of the other society.
However, this does not mean that the two sides have nothing to gain from interacting; indeed, in many ways both countries are becoming more and more interdependent.
Therefore, Chinese tourists should be welcomed. It is unlikely that the possible threat of Fifth Columnists will greatly affect the security of this country, which after all, is already within striking range of hundreds of Chinese missiles and aircraft.
But it will not be easy to deal with the large influx of Chinese. There are cultural issues to which Taiwan should be sensitive.
For this reason, and in the spirit of cross-strait reconciliation, there are a number of phrases which should not be employed when speaking to tourists from China. Failure to not say these things will only exacerbate the mutual misunderstanding and cultural rift that exists between the two countries.
Therefore, do not -- under any circumstances -- say any of the following 10 phrases to Chinese tourists: One, noodles, paper, gunpowder. What have you done for us lately? Two, one-child policy plus patriarchal society equals no women. Three, 5,000 years of civilization, and all you have to offer us is pandas? Four, welcome to Taiwan. Please don't spit. Five, Simplified characters for simple people. Six, Mr. Hu, tear down that wall! Seven, our opposition leaders get to have dinner with your president, but your opposition leaders get shot. Eight, our Chinese culture is better than yours. Nine, my dad owns the factory your dad works in. Or finally: We were going to "retake the mainland," until we went there.
Thus, we can maintain cross-strait harmony.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
RSS