Culture, violence don’t mix
In your page one story you say that Chinese Minister of Culture Cai Wu (蔡武) and Council for Cultural Affairs Minister Emile Sheng (盛治仁) sort of agreed that cultural relations promote peace and that they are good and well (“Officials propose Taiwan, China cultural exchanges,” Sept. 7, page 1).
My big problem with this is that Sheng didn’t have the courage to stand up to this Chinese official and say that when someone is cultured, they don’t promote violence.
China has more than 1,500 missiles aimed at Taiwan. How can Cai say China wants to enhance cultural exchanges while holding a gun to Taiwan’s head?
Second, China has not budged on its “Anti-Secession” Law. How is that cultured? Where I come from, you get respect when you show some.
Taiwan greets and hosts all these officials from China who openly tell the Taiwanese things can work out, as long as the “one China” principle is adhered to. I say “Expletive” NO!
Moreover, in other articles in this week’s paper, Cai seems to sidestep particular questions. It almost felt like he didn’t want to rock the boat.
Taiwan and China can be friends, but only if and when China comes to terms with reality. A cultured person is by definition: “civilized: marked by refinement in taste and manners.”
If you threaten a country with war, please don’t ask for improvements in cultural ties. Unless China changes its approach toward Taiwan I see no reason to go beyond economic talks, let alone engage in political ones.
Harry Adamopoulos
Taipei
It was — for me at least — extremely distressing to read your article about Cai and cultural exchanges. There is a line in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, where the First Fury proclaims — “Ha! I scent life!” After reading the article, all that I can say is — “Ha! I scent a trap!”
Taiwan had better beware lest it see its precious culture co-opted by the Chinese, trampled on and warped beyond all recognition.
Cai on Monday proposed “institutionalizing cultural exchanges between Taiwan and China.” Cai suggested “that both sides hold visits by high-level cultural officials and sign an agreement on the matter.”
Hmm ... we can only wonder what this future “agreement” will be called.
Cai told a cross-strait forum in Taipei that “it took more than the economy to sustain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
“The economy is no doubt important, but it is no substitute for cultural exchanges and the sharing of ideas. Now that the two sides have signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement [ECFA], it is time to begin talks on cultural exchanges to create a situation that is mutually beneficial and will make both sides understand each other better,” he told the forum.
Bullshit. Cai is a viper hiding in the grass, its jaws agape and its fangs at the ready for an unsuspecting victim to expose the heel.
With the “cultural exchanges” that Cai — and others within both the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — are planning, there can be only unilaterally beneficial results, to China’s great advantage.
Cai said that “he hoped China would push for cultural change, meet the needs of the market, help upgrade his country’s tastes and resist culture that was mediocre, hollow and vulgar.”
We all know what Cai means by this last phrase. Resisting culture that is “mediocre,” “hollow” and “vulgar” means squelching the voices of political dissidents — be they Han Chinese, Uighur or Tibetan.
Cai himself is nothing but a third-rater; a mediocre, hollow, vulgar bureaucrat who knows naught about culture, and who “achieved” his post through bootlicking and toadyism.
However, Sheng was spot on when he said that “culture was an exchange of values and ideas.”
He urged mutual tolerance and respect, “adding that the biggest obstacle to cultural exchanges was forcing individual values on other people.”
Once again, Sheng is 100 percent correct in his assessment.
Paradoxically, this paramount notion is precisely what the Chinese are utterly oblivious to.
For an example I would ask everyone interested to consult the New York Times archives for Oct. 18 last year, in the “Asia/Pacific” section. The article bears the title “Uneasy Engagement,” and it details China’s dealings with officials at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The article begins by stating the truism that China has increased efforts to promote its culture to “counter Western influence and improve its image in the wider world.”
But things did not end up exactly as had been hoped for. When the fair’s German organizers and diplomats urged the Chinese to allow a prominent storyteller and musician, Liao Yiwu (廖亦武), to come to Frankfurt, the Chinese authorities refused to lift Liao’s overseas travel ban, and ordered him to stop talking about it.
Fair organizers withdrew invitations to two dissident writers — Dai Qing (戴晴) and Bei Ling (貝嶺) — whom the Chinese organizers had wanted to exclude, but ultimately caved in to pressure by journalists and politicians and invited the pair at the last moment. When the pair made statements, the Chinese delegation walked out.
The delegation returned, but only after an abject apology — no doubt accompanied by the requisite kowtow — by fair director Jurgen Boos.
Michael Scanlon
East Hartford, Connecticut
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
China’s recent aggressive military posture around Taiwan simply reflects the truth that China is a millennium behind, as Kobe City Councilor Norihiro Uehata has commented. While democratic countries work for peace, prosperity and progress, authoritarian countries such as Russia and China only care about territorial expansion, superpower status and world dominance, while their people suffer. Two millennia ago, the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (孟子) would have advised Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that “people are the most important, state is lesser, and the ruler is the least important.” In fact, the reverse order is causing the great depression in China right now,
This should be the year in which the democracies, especially those in East Asia, lose their fear of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China principle” plus its nuclear “Cognitive Warfare” coercion strategies, all designed to achieve hegemony without fighting. For 2025, stoking regional and global fear was a major goal for the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Little Red Book admonition, “We must be ruthless to our enemies; we must overpower and annihilate them.” But on Dec. 17, 2025, the Trump Administration demonstrated direct defiance of CCP terror with its record US$11.1 billion arms
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
RSS