Racist propaganda
Is not the timing of the recent little furore in your letters pages over allegations of racism in Taiwan brought by Callum McGovern (Letters, Jan. 21, page 8) perhaps somewhat serendipitous given the revelation in today’s news of just what will be inscribed on the red envelopes that Chinese billionaire philanthropist Chen Guangbiao (陳光標) plans to give out to poor Taiwanese prior to this Lunar New Year?
“The day is cold, the ground freezing, but the people’s hearts are warm. The Chinese race is one family and a fire in the winter (中華民族一家親,冬天裡的一把火).”
To ascribe the term “family” (with its implicit connotation of moral obligations) to other people on the basis of race alone is pure racial collectivism and ought to be condemned by every decent person. Whether a person is Chinese, American, Japanese, English, Vietnamese, French or whatever other nationality in origin, or whether the color of their skin is black, white or yellow is of no moral import whatsoever. What is of moral import is, in the words of murdered civil rights activist Martin Luther King, the “content of a person’s character.” Period.
I do not condemn Chen’s wish to help the poor, even though I suspect this particular help may be partly a propaganda stunt, but he could have easily phrased that description differently, for instance replacing the words: “The Chinese race is one family and a fire in the winter” with the non--collectivist and non--racialist: “Everyone needs a fire in the winter” (人人在冬天需要火爐). Such an inscription would preserve the benevolent nature of his intentions in handing out red envelopes to the poor, while rejecting unfortunate racial collectivist propaganda.
As it stands, Chen’s inscription is not a little ironic — a fire is indeed a likely outcome when one member of the “family” threatens the other member with more than 1,000 missiles.
MICHAEL FAGAN
Tainan
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
Media said that several pan-blue figures — among them former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), former KMT legislator Lee De-wei (李德維), former KMT Central Committee member Vincent Hsu (徐正文), New Party Chairman Wu Cheng-tien (吳成典), former New Party legislator Chou chuan (周荃) and New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) — yesterday attended the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. China’s Xinhua news agency reported that foreign leaders were present alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) is expected to be summoned by the Taipei City Police Department after a rally in Taipei on Saturday last week resulted in injuries to eight police officers. The Ministry of the Interior on Sunday said that police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by an estimated 1,000 “disorderly” demonstrators. The rally — led by Huang to mark one year since a raid by Taipei prosecutors on then-TPP chairman and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — might have contravened the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), as the organizers had
Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) last week made a rare visit to the Philippines, which not only deepened bilateral economic ties, but also signaled a diplomatic breakthrough in the face of growing tensions with China. Lin’s trip marks the second-known visit by a Taiwanese foreign minister since Manila and Beijing established diplomatic ties in 1975; then-minister Chang Hsiao-yen (章孝嚴) took a “vacation” in the Philippines in 1997. As Taiwan is one of the Philippines’ top 10 economic partners, Lin visited Manila and other cities to promote the Taiwan-Philippines Economic Corridor, with an eye to connecting it with the Luzon
RSS