To what lows would China stoop to protect its already tarnished image and save face? Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of knee-jerk reactions out of China when it comes to projecting its prowess — the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the mass roundup of Falun Gong practitioners, the “Anti-Secession” Law and shrill reactions to US arms sales to Taiwan — but Wednesday’s twist of fate in the women’s taekwondo event at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, really takes the cake.
Officials disqualified Taiwanese taekwondo athlete Yang Shu-chun (楊淑君) for wearing electronic socks that had passed inspections prior to the event, sending her packing just as she was beating her Vietnamese opponent Vu Thi Hau 9-0.
What prompted this? On the surface, it would seem that Chinese authorities didn’t want to see a Taiwanese athlete do well in a tournament they were organizing.
The World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) had certified the brand of electronic socks that led to Yang’s disqualification. She said she had brought two pairs of WTF-sanctioned socks, but officials rejected one pair, so she was allowed to wear the other pair in the event. The chief judge had examined her socks before the match began, so it seems unreasonable that she was disqualified in the first round of her bout with Vu.
Taiwanese anchorwoman Chen Yi-an (陳怡安), an Olympic taekwondo gold medalist, likely hit on the truth when she angrily denounced the decision, saying she suspected a plot to discredit Yang because she was likely to meet Chinese competitor Wu Jingyu (吳靜鈺) — who beat Yang at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — if she won against Vu.
Now it seems judges at the Asian Games eliminated the risk that the “pride of China” would be beaten by the “pride of Taiwan.”
The controversy over this decision is not going to die down soon, even though the five-member WTF technical committee confirmed the disqualification and the Asian Games arbitration committee rejected a formal protest from the Taiwanese delegation.
In a rare show of unity, Taiwanese lawmakers across party lines have condemned this decision as unfair. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄), a former taekwondo athlete, called the ruling “inconceivable and ridiculous,” while Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) urged the Sports Affairs Council to do everything it could to overturn the decision, “even if it means we have to boycott the Games.”
Chinese authorities have demonstrated time and again their lack of respect for Taiwan, which they consider a renegade “province” that should bow to their every whim.
Most of the time, this disrespect is manifested in greater forms — stealing Taiwan’s allies, exerting economic or military pressure and rejecting Taiwan’s UN membership bids.
However, sometimes its attitude toward Taiwan is put on display in much smaller, yet equally unsubtle ways — this time, seemingly twisting the rules to have a legitimate athlete disqualified from the Asian Games.
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
On today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. Matsumura writes that Taiwan’s military budget would be better allocated elsewhere, and cautions against the temptation to allow politics to trump strategic sense. What he does not do is question whether Taiwan needs to increase its defense capabilities. “Given the accelerating pace of Beijing’s military buildup and political coercion ... [Taiwan] cannot afford inaction,” he writes. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity,
RSS