Ma is not Hitler
A photograph of a recent rally held to protest Taiwan’s beef policy (“Rally held to protest beef policy,” April 2, page 2) showed protesters holding posters that compared President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to Adolf Hitler. While I do not support Ma politically and would never vote for him, I feel that such an attack goes too far.
I am not sure why the Taipei Times printed this photograph because just a few days earlier, Dan Bloom (“PRC claims Dalai Lama has ‘Nazi’ tendencies,” March 30, page 8) complained about the Chinese government calling the Dalai Lama a “Nazi.” As Bloom correctly pointed out, the Nazis were mass murderers, and the Dalai Lama is not. I have also been called a fascist for simply expressing an opinion (just google my name and “fascism”).
If anybody compares a democratically elected leader to Hitler, the peace-loving Dalai Lama to the Nazis, or an opinionated environmentalist to a fascist, it is nothing short of pathetic. It demonstrates the complete lack of moral compass and a basic lack of commonsense.
Why the Taipei Times would give a platform to people who cannot distinguish between democratic discourse and mindless insults, I do not know (unless the photograph was printed to embarrass the people in it).
The goal of hate speech is to dehumanize the subject of the attack so as to either ostracize or eradicate them (the Nazis used hate speech to prepare the ground for genocide). Vilification of the perceived enemy always comes before steps are taken to remove them. In a civilized, democratic country, such hate speech should never be tolerated.
Flora Faun
Taipei
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
A recent piece of international news has drawn surprisingly little attention, yet it deserves far closer scrutiny. German industrial heavyweight Siemens Mobility has reportedly outmaneuvered long-entrenched Chinese competitors in Southeast Asian infrastructure to secure a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, Vingroup. The agreement positions Siemens to participate in the construction of a high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. German media were blunt in their assessment: This was not merely a commercial win, but has symbolic significance in “reshaping geopolitical influence.” At first glance, this might look like a routine outcome of corporate bidding. However, placed in
China often describes itself as the natural leader of the global south: a power that respects sovereignty, rejects coercion and offers developing countries an alternative to Western pressure. For years, Venezuela was held up — implicitly and sometimes explicitly — as proof that this model worked. Today, Venezuela is exposing the limits of that claim. Beijing’s response to the latest crisis in Venezuela has been striking not only for its content, but for its tone. Chinese officials have abandoned their usual restrained diplomatic phrasing and adopted language that is unusually direct by Beijing’s standards. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the
RSS