Norwegian massacre suspect Anders Behring Breivik obviously knows less than he thinks he does about Taiwan, or he wouldn’t hold it up as a model of monoculturalism, a problematic and highly improbable political philosophy to begin with.
In a 1,500-page manifesto that he e-mailed before he allegedly detonated a car bomb in Oslo and gunned down dozens of young people on an idyllic island, Breivik repeatedly referred to Taiwan’s so-called anti-immigration policies as a model for Europe, lumping this nation with Japan and South Korea and praising their adherence to racial purity.
What a farce.
Breivik knows little about the dynamic in Asia. If you were to put a Filipino, a Chinese, a Japanese, an Indonesian, a South Korean and a Thai next to each other, Breivik would likely applaud the group for keeping its racial identity pure.
Breivik, in his hate for anybody not European, not Christian and not white, looked around the world for superficial examples that would support his warped vision of reality. Somehow he lit upon Taiwan, maybe because it does have somewhat stricter immigration policies than some Western countries.
However, these policies do not make this nation a monoculturalist society. In Taiwan at the moment, there are hundreds of thousands of foreigners. The majority of them come from Southeast Asia and China. Tens of thousands of cross-cultural marriages are now providing one of the most reliable sources of newborn babies in a nation that has a plummeting birthrate.
Although foreigners from all over the world — Westerners, Africans, Asians and South Americans — might find it difficult to become Republic of China citizens, they have the right to look for employment, gain residence and eventually gain permanent residency. They are allowed to own property and invest in businesses. Calling Taiwan a country that maintains racial purity is a gross misunderstanding of the facts.
When was Taiwan ever a racially pure nation? Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), in his rambling way — saying Taiwan possessed a “juicy culture” — had a point: Taiwan has absorbed the cultures of many parts of the world. First there were the Aboriginal tribes, then an inflow of Han Chinese, many of whom married Aborigines. The Han were followed by Dutch and Spanish influences, then more waves of Chinese, not all of whom spoke the same language. Taiwan was then colonized by the Japanese, who left many imprints in the culture and society, before the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) brought yet another version of Chinese culture that allowed and encouraged Taiwanese to embrace aspects of US culture.
What Taiwan has been left with is a fairly vibrant culture that is abundantly open and friendly to outsiders, and readily incorporates aspects of foreign cultures. This is far different from the monoculturalist society that Breivik envisioned, and that’s before mentioning the mix of religions found in this nation: animist, Buddhist, Taoist, Christian and Muslim.
Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are safe, comfortable places to live, not because their societies restrict foreign influences, but because their societies have inculcated a good set of morals into their people.
Breivik was looking around for an excuse to justify his murderous rampage and hopes to find modern-day examples of some mythical racist society he believes Nazi Germany could have created. It would be best if he didn’t look to Taiwan, because this place is nothing like what he envisions. In fact, it’s unlikely his ideal for a country exists anywhere on this planet.
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
India is not China, and many of its residents fear it never will be. It is hard to imagine a future in which the subcontinent’s manufacturing dominates the world, its foreign investment shapes nations’ destinies, and the challenge of its economic system forces the West to reshape its own policies and principles. However, that is, apparently, what the US administration fears. Speaking in New Delhi last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned that “we will not make the same mistakes with India that we did with China 20 years ago.” Although he claimed the recently agreed framework
RSS