In recent days the Chinese government closed down a local Wikipedia imitator, apparently for daring to refer to the Republic of China and a Falun Gong figure by name. The curious thing about this is that the Republic of China existed long before the controversy over Taiwan's status as a Chinese province, Japanese war booty or an independent state started in earnest.
The symbolism of censoring not just dissidents but also the historical record itself points to a government that is increasingly distant from the everyday world of Chinese people. But that's a problem for the Chinese people to solve.
From Taiwan's point of view, promises of a 2008 Beijing Olympics that would elevate China's status to that of responsible world player and achieve a better balance between politics and economics are looking rather empty. The threats are still there, repression is increasing and the unctuousness of the leadership entertains as thoroughly as always.
So why is our government pussy-footing around with the issue of the Olympics, given that one of its primary political functions for China will be to denigrate Taiwanese aspirations to self-determination? It's high time that the government sent out a short, sharp signal to China: cut out your patronizing and threatening behavior, or the Olympic torch will not be admitted into the country at all, regardless of where it comes from and where it then goes.
Instead, we have been witness to the same wishy-washy ambiguities that have characterized this battle over national symbolism. In the torch's case, this means the possibility of an itinerary that would allow China and Taiwan to each take a piece of the propaganda pie: Let the torch come from another country into Taiwan before hitting China, and both sides can claim whatever they want.
Need it be spelled out? Any agency that allows such ambiguity deserves to be mocked for its comprehensive tactical ineptitude. The effort to combat propaganda, if it is to have any effect whatsoever, must feature unambiguous repelling of the enemy, not just an appeasing of the treacherous and a soothing of the spineless back home.
Taiwan is a free country, at least for now. And in this spirit, Olympic officials should be duly warned: an Olympic torch that passes through Taiwan in the service of a predatory Chinese government will turn into an unprecedented debacle. Protests and specially placed activists positioned on every street corner would obstruct the relay and even extinguish the flame, maximizing embarrassing TV footage for all the world to see.
Given the unchanging tone of threat that China levels at Taiwanese, it would be a debacle richly deserved for local organizers and the International Olympic Committee, which has done Taiwan no favors by pandering to Chinese politics over the years.
Even symbolism born of racist demagoguery such as the Olympic torch relay -- courtesy of Hitler's propaganda geniuses -- can be subverted and turned into harbingers of peace. More than the others, the Sydney and Athens Olympics managed to take out much of the kitsch nonsense that accompanies Olympic ceremonial displays and turned the Games into a more human rather than nationalist event.
This will take a change for the worse with the Beijing Olympics. It is astonishing that are so many people -- including, astonishingly, opening/closing ceremony gun-for-hire Steven Spielberg -- outside of China who think otherwise. It seems that sporting glory is not the only fantasy that the Olympics are capable of producing.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
The cancelation this week of President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visit to Eswatini, after the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius revoked overflight permits under Chinese pressure, is one more measure of Taiwan’s shrinking executive diplomatic space. Another channel that deserves attention keeps growing while the first contracts. For several years now, Taipei has been one of Europe’s busiest legislative destinations. Where presidents and foreign ministers cannot land, parliamentarians do — and they do it in rising numbers. The Italian parliament opened the year with its largest bipartisan delegation to Taiwan to date: six Italian deputies and one senator, drawn from six
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
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