Critics of Chinese philanthropist Chen Guangbiao (陳光標) might have recoiled in horror over the weekend after the tycoon said China was like a “big brother” to Taiwan. The fact of the matter is, China is indeed a “big brother” — but in the Orwellian sense.
In their tumultuous history of interaction with Chinese, which has intensified amid efforts by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to foster closer ties across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwanese often complain about China’s lack of knowledge about Taiwan. In the same vein, survivors of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 point to continued efforts by Chinese authorities to filter information on the mass demonstrations that led to the crackdown, with the result that ordinary Chinese now suffer from collective amnesia.
So much for the observation by Chinese intellectual Wang Hui (汪暉) that “history, experience and knowledge are resources we must use to overcome ourselves in our present state.”
Or, for that matter, the “one country, two systems” formula often touted for Taiwan, which risks sucking Hong Kong — the first experiment — into China’s cognitive limbo: More than two decades after the Tiananmen Square protests, former student leaders like Wang Dan (王丹) and Wuer Kaixi (吾爾開希) now find themselves unable to enter the territory.
The list of domestic abuse by the state and manmade catastrophes covered up by Beijing — from the Cultural Revolution to protests by Tibetans and Uighurs — is long and has given rise to a polity that, though it is becoming increasingly educated, remains largely uninformed about its past.
There are now signs that censoring information about domestic affairs is insufficient to ensure China’s stability. News reports over the weekend revealed that amid unrest in Egypt, where thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets calling on the largely undemocratic regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down, Chinese censors have blocked the word “Egypt” from microblogging Web portals, such as Sina.com and Sohu.com, with searches for the word saying results could not be displayed “in accordance with regulations.”
It is not difficult to establish the rationale behind China’s action: Beijing hopes to prevent events in Egypt (or other examples of the “color revolutions” that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union) from setting an example of political mobilization in China. Although Chinese censors cannot block every platform, just as they cannot prevent occasional reporting on government corruption or natural catastrophes, their actions nevertheless set the boundaries of “acceptable” political discourse.
The ever-changing nature of what is and isn’t permissible, added to the randomness by which the law is applied, is often sufficient to deter would-be inquisitive minds from engaging in dialogue “to overcome themselves in the present state.”
This leads to avoidance and self-censorship, with the consequence that over time, an increasingly wealthy, educated and mobile population remains unable to outgrow its antiquated mold and incapable of tapping into other people’s experiences in their quest for modernity.
The implications for Taiwan as it develops closer ties with China are alarming. Given that challenging the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) grip on power remains unacceptable to Chinese authorities, those in Taiwan who regard Ma’s strategy of engagement as a means to liberalize — and perhaps help democratize China — are in for a rude awakening. If knowledge of distant acts of rebellion, such as those that are reverberating across Egypt, is deemed too dangerous, one can only imagine the kind of treatment that would be meted out much closer to Beijing, when events involve a people with a similar culture and language.
Taiwanese might be regarded as “small brothers” and “family” to the Chinese, but in the end, should Taiwanese, with their democracy and freedoms, threaten to undermine the CCP’s foundations, a fate far worse than the blocking of a term on a search engine awaits them.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under