Despite the touted economic benefits of flourishing Chinese tourism to Taiwan, it is becoming increasingly clear that the dividends are coming at a price — one that, sadly, some seem willing to pay.
With some People’s Republic of China nationals able to travel independently to Taiwan beginning later this month, the Yilan County Business and Tourism Department last week announced it wanted to open a Web site in China and, in doing so, would likely drop the “.tw” suffix to make itself more palatable to Chinese authorities.
A representative from the Yilan County Lodging Association also said that homestays and bed-and-breakfast operators in the county would probably encounter severe difficulty attracting Chinese tourists if they insist on using the “.tw” suffix, an indication that operators and officials may have little compunction in making such a sacrifice in the name of business.
Ostensibly seen as a small compromise on the part of Yilan officials, their willingness to abandon yet another symbol of Taiwan’s sovereignty nevertheless risks engaging the nation further down what could be a very slippery slope. Not only is this flexibility voluntary, it sends a signal to Beijing that a simple nudge or threat will likely suffice when it wants to exact further concessions from Taiwan in the future.
Just as Yilan officials were expressing their willingness to throw “.tw” to the wolves, beautiful Green Island (綠島), one of the nation’s top tourism destinations, was coming under threat after Chinese officials said last week they might remove the island from the “approved” list of package tour destinations after it emerged that some Chinese tourists had been ruffled at the sight of the decades-old anti-communist slogans that pepper the island.
While Taitung County tourism officials were quick to point to the historical value of the slogans, adding that similar etchings were found on other outlying islands much closer to China, it is evident that Beijing will make their removal a condition for the resumption of Chinese tourism there. Should Green Island refuse to comply by censoring propagandistic leftovers of a bygone era, it risks being marginalized while other parts of the country — those that agree to play by Beijing’s rules — reap the economic benefits. This is China’s age-old strategy of isolating the few while engaging the many.
The situation brings back memories from September 2009, when China “punished” parts of southern Taiwan with thousands of hotel cancelations following a decision by Kaohsiung authorities to allow World Uyghur Congress chairperson Rebiya Kadeer to attend a film festival.
The danger is that the more local governments comply with Beijing’s requests, the easier it will be for China to chip away at the foundations of Taiwan’s sovereignty. Some could argue that the willingness to make small concessions in return for economic benefits does not constitute the abdication of sovereignty, but even if this were the case, such actions still send signals of weakness to China.
Over time, this will make it increasingly difficult for tourists from other parts of the world not to think that they are in China whenever they visit Taiwan or reading about China whenever they peruse its increasingly censored literature. While gradual and relatively painless, we could wake up one day to the realization that in the eyes of the world, Taiwan as a sovereign entity has ceased to exist.
Internet suffixes and the removal of silly slogans from the former dictator Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) era are indeed small things, but they are no less part of a grand strategy by Beijing to whittle away at Taiwanese nationhood. If Taiwanese cannot oppose even the small things, it is hard to believe they will step up to the plate when Beijing sets its sights on more substantial prizes.
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
The Legislative Yuan on Friday held another cross-party caucus negotiation on a special act for bolstering national defense that the Executive Yuan had proposed last year. The party caucuses failed to reach a consensus on several key provisions, so the next session is scheduled for today, where many believe substantial progress would finally be made. The plan for an eight-year NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.59 billion) special defense budget was first proposed by the Cabinet in November last year, but the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers have continuously blocked it from being listed on the agenda for
On Tuesday last week, the Presidential Office announced, less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to depart, that President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned official trip to Eswatini, Taiwan’s sole diplomatic ally in Africa, had been delayed. It said that the three island nations of Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar had, without prior notice, revoked the charter plane’s overflight permits following “intense pressure” from China. Lai, in his capacity as the Republic of China’s (ROC) president, was to attend the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession. King Mswati visited Taiwan to attend Lai’s inauguration in 2024. This is the first
RSS