Dylan and freedom
Ian Inkster’s piece about Bob Dylan’s two very different shows in Taiwan and China this month said it well (“Bob Dylan challenges China,” April 11, page 8).
While both The Times They Are a-Changin’ and Blowin’ in the Wind were performed in free and democratic Taiwan, both songs were banned by authorities in China. The world needs to know this.
Maureen Dowd, writing in the New York Times recently about the Beijing concert and Dylan’s agreement with Beijing not to play those two songs in China, said: “Before Dylan was allowed to have his first concert in China ... at the Workers’ Gymnasium in Beijing, he ignored his own warning in Subterranean Homesick Blues — ‘Better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose’ — and let the government pre-approve his set.”
When I sent a brief note to Dowd telling her that both of the “banned in Beijing” songs were played in Taipei — and well-received by the audience — she wrote back and said: “Amazing. You must write a letter [to the New York Times] about this.”
So I did. I sent the following one-sentence letter to the New York Times editorial page, where I hope it will be published for all the world to see: “While Maureen Dowd correctly pointed out in a recent column that Bob Dylan allowed the communist Chinese authorities to dictate his song list in Bejing, Dylan did a concert in free and democratic Taiwan and was allowed to play anything he wanted to, including the two songs banned in Beijing.”
DAN BLOOM
Chiayi City
Chinese Taipei is 100% right
I have noted with surprise recent disparaging remarks in your newspaper in regard to the use of the term “Chinese Taipei” (Letters, April 11, page 8, and “Reporter’s Notebook: ‘Chinese Taipei’? Don’t you mean ‘Taiwan’?” Nov. 14, 2010, page 3).
Actually, the term “Chinese Taipei” is simply an abbreviation for “Chinese government in exile in Taipei” and is a 100 percent accurate statement of the true legal status of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan.
The ROC government likes to distort the historical and legal record, but in truth, neither the Allied forces nor any other countries recognized any transfer of the territorial sovereignty over Taiwan to the ROC regime upon the surrender of Japanese troops on Oct. 25, 1945.
In other words, “Taiwan Retrocession Day” is a vicious deception perpetrated on the Taiwanese populace. That day merely marked the beginning of the military occupation of Taiwan. Under international law, Taiwan remained a sovereign Japanese territory until Japan renounced all its rights in the Treaty of San Francisco, which came into force on April 28, 1952.
Therefore, when the ROC moved its government to occupied Taiwan in December 1949, it was relocating to an area outside the national territory of China and immediately became a government in exile. Importantly, international law specifies that there are no actions, procedures or methodologies whereby a government in exile can become the legally recognized government of its current locality of residence.
Such an interpretation is fully supported by the 1959 US District of Columbia Circuit Court case of Sheng v Rogers, where the judges found that Taiwan was not a part of the national territory of the ROC.
Considering this fact, it should not come as a shock that for many years the “Taiwan” entry in the US Department of State publication Treaties in Force has clearly noted that “The United States does not recognize the Republic of China as a state or a government.”
Other commonly seen references to governments in exile have included French London, Korean Shanghai and Tibetan Dharamsala, in addition to Chinese Taipei. None of these ever qualified or qualify now as countries because they do not hold the territorial title to their locations of residence.
ALEX CHEN
New Taipei City
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