Earlier this month, Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) said he had extended an invitation to Chinese film director Zhang Yimou (張藝謀) to produce an outdoor show at Taroko Gorge.
The news drew little attention, and it has yet to be announced whether Zhang, whose production company has created the Impression series of shows in West Lake, Lijiang and Guilin, has accepted the invitation, though his company has reportedly dispatched a team to assess the feasibility of the project. Still, the invitation itself is troublesome, showing local officials’ willingness to turn to China for talent when there is plenty of it right here in Taiwan. It is simply inconceivable that no one in the Taiwanese artistic community would be capable of orchestrating an outdoor show in Taroko. Neither Kaohsiung nor Taipei found it necessary to go abroad to find people to put together the opening and closing ceremonies of last year’s World Games and Deaflympics.
Also problematic is the fact that over the years, Zhang has been employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to beautify its propaganda efforts, turning him into a modern-day Joseph Goebbels. Aside from the Impression series and the opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Zhang also organized last year’s Oct. 1 National Day parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, a show that was marked by military displays — mostly targeted at Taiwan — worthy of a fascist state at the height of its power.
That an artist who played a role in this display of aggression would be invited by its principal target to put together a show at one of the nation’s premier tourist spots is a sick irony, to put it mildly, not to mention that he would be paid with taxpayer money.
Fu, whose yen for unprincipled machinations is by now legendary, argues that if Zhang agreed to produce the show, it could help draw Chinese and international tourists to Taroko. If Fu had any appreciation for nature’s grandeur, he would know that Taroko, with its unique 19km marble canyon and towering cliffs, does not need to be accessorized to attract tourists. Better publicity campaigns abroad and making the area more accessible is what is required, not cheap eye candy exploiting the box office successes of a foreign moviemaker.
His claim that more Chinese tourists would visit Taroko if Zhang were to produce a show there, meanwhile, goes against everything we’ve been told so far about Chinese tourists — that they are curious about Taiwan and seek to learn more about it. If what attracts them is a show by Zhang, then why bother coming to Taiwan when his work is readily accessible in China?
When we look at this development as part of a larger campaign to Sinicize Taiwan launched by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, however, the move makes perfect sense. By dint of awarding contracts to Chinese artists for productions in Taiwan, not only could all local essence and flavor be elbowed out, but for people abroad, the contrasts between Taiwanese and Chinese culture would become so narrow as to become virtually insignificant. Of course, this is what the Government Information Office did for decades under the previous authoritarian Chinese Nationalist government — marketing Taiwan as a place of true Chinese culture and traditions.
Zhang undeniably has talent, and his production of the ceremonies at the Beijing Games was indeed grandiose. (Of course, Zhang also bragged that China was the only country besides North Korea where he could have produced such spectacles because labor unions and laws would have prevented him rehearsing his performers for hours at a stretch.)
We don’t need someone who has struck a Faustian deal with a repressive regime to propel his career to do what we can do at home.
During the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum’s third leadership summit on Aug. 31, US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said that the US wants to partner with the other members of the Quadrilaterial Security Dialogue — Australia, India and Japan — to establish an organization similar to NATO, to “respond to ... any potential challenge from China.” He said that the US’ purpose is to work with these nations and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region to “create a critical mass around the shared values and interest of those parties,” and possibly attract more countries to establish an alliance comparable to
On August 24, 2020, the US Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, made an important statement: “The Pentagon is Prepared for China.” Going forward, how might the Department of Defense team up with Taiwan to make itself even more prepared? No American wants to deter the next war by a paper-thin margin, and no one appreciates the value of strategic overmatch more than the war planners at the Pentagon. When the stakes are this high, you can bet they want to be super ready. In recent months, we have witnessed a veritable flood of high-level statements from US government leaders on
China has long sought shortcuts to developing semiconductor technologies and local supply chains by poaching engineers and experts from Taiwan and other nations. It is also suspected of stealing trade secrets from Taiwanese and US firms to fulfill its ambition of becoming a major player in the global semiconductor industry in the next decade. However, it takes more than just money and talent to build a semiconductor supply chain like the one which Taiwan and the US started to cultivate more than 30 years ago. Amid rising trade and technology tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, Beijing has become
With a new White House document in May — the “Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China” — the administration of US President Donald Trump has firmly set its hyper-competitive line to tackle geoeconomic and geostrategic rivalry, followed by several reinforcing speeches by Trump and other Cabinet-level officials. By identifying China as a near-equal rival, the strategy resonates well with the bipartisan consensus on China in today’s severely divided US. In the face of China’s rapidly growing aggression, the move is long overdue, yet relevant for the maintenance of the international “status quo.” The strategy seems to herald a new
RSS