Maybe it’s something in the water, but Chinese officials have developed the bad habit of airing their extreme nationalistic tendencies with a little more boldness when they find themselves in Japan, resulting in situations that often undermine Beijing’s objectives.
The latest such incident occurred on Saturday at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival, when the head of the Chinese delegation, Jiang Ping (江平), accompanied by a robotic-looking Chinese actress, attempted to drill into the heads of the Taiwanese delegation that they were all Chinese. Faced with the refusal of Government Information Office Department of Motion Pictures director Chen Chih-kuan (陳志寬), who headed the Taiwanese delegation, and the organizers of the film festival to change Taiwan’s name to “Taiwan, China” or “Chinese Taipei,” an outraged Jiang announced that China was partially pulling out of the festival.
The Chinese delegation decided to pull out of festival-related events because the organizers “covertly violated the ‘One China’ policy Jiang was quoted as saying by the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-run publication.
Interestingly, Jiang was also quoted as saying that the spat, and the decision to pull out of the film festival, had “nothing to do with our Taiwan compatriots” and was rather “the fault of the Tokyo organizers.”
Given Beijing’s silence on the matter, added to the fact that the news was covered in a state-owned publication, we can assume that Chinese authorities gave tacit approval to Jiang’s actions and that he wasn’t simply being overzealous. What this also points to is China’s efforts to portray Taiwanese as being on their side: It was all Tokyo’s fault, as it refused to respect the “one China” policy. In the process, Chen’s protest and clear declaration that he and his delegation were Taiwanese, not Chinese, was ignored, as if the opinion of the principal party in the equation — Taiwanese — didn’t count.
There is no doubt that Chen’s commendable resistance to Chinese bullying, rather than that of the film organizers, was the main reason behind Jiang’s fit, but no sooner had the delegate finished foaming at the mouth than party-controlled publications endeavored to portray this as the continuation of Japanese intervention in China’s domestic affairs.
In fact, the same Global Times article felt it necessary to add that the film festival is being held “amid simmering tensions between Tokyo and Beijing over the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai [釣魚台] Islands.” Nearly half the article focuses on recent developments surrounding the contested islands, as if the simmering crisis were the real cause of the walkout at the film festival.
The article, coming as it does with Beijing’s blessing, highlights yet again the fact that China’s strategy for the annexation of Taiwan does not take the will of the people into consideration. This it does to such an extent that when Taiwanese express their opposition, their voices are silenced altogether. The root of the problem — Taiwanese identity and resistance to irredentism — is taken out of the equation, and the anger is deflected toward an external enemy, Japan.
However hard and often they try, however angrily, Chinese officials will not change the fact that their so-called “Taiwanese compatriots” are unwilling to forsake their identity, even as relations between the two countries improve in certain areas. Chinese tourists may come in droves, students can enter our classrooms and Chinese firms can invest all they want in various sectors of the Taiwanese economy, but when it comes to identity, Chen put it as simply as one could near the “green carpet” in Tokyo: “You are Chinese, I am Taiwanese.”
The government and local industries breathed a sigh of relief after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co last week said it would relinquish surface rights for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) to Nvidia Corp. The US chip-design giant’s plan to expand its local presence will be crucial for Taiwan to safeguard its core role in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and to advance the nation’s AI development. The land in dispute is owned by the Taipei City Government, which in 2021 sold the rights to develop and use the two plots of land, codenamed T17 and T18, to the
US President Donald Trump has announced his eagerness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un while in South Korea for the APEC summit. That implies a possible revival of US-North Korea talks, frozen since 2019. While some would dismiss such a move as appeasement, renewed US engagement with North Korea could benefit Taiwan’s security interests. The long-standing stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang has allowed Beijing to entrench its dominance in the region, creating a myth that only China can “manage” Kim’s rogue nation. That dynamic has allowed Beijing to present itself as an indispensable power broker: extracting concessions from Washington, Seoul
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
Taiwan’s labor force participation rate among people aged 65 or older was only 9.9 percent for 2023 — far lower than in other advanced countries, Ministry of Labor data showed. The rate is 38.3 percent in South Korea, 25.7 percent in Japan and 31.5 percent in Singapore. On the surface, it might look good that more older adults in Taiwan can retire, but in reality, it reflects policies that make it difficult for elderly people to participate in the labor market. Most workplaces lack age-friendly environments, and few offer retraining programs or flexible job arrangements for employees older than 55. As
RSS