It is a shame that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government has to wait until a small number of racist residents complain about dark-skinned foreigners before officials see the light and “decide to support the arts.”
The two would not seem to have anything to do with one another, but in a country where the absurd is witnessed on a daily basis — this is an independent nation with a president and a military, but many people consider it a province of China — it looks like xenophobia will lead to a cultural flowering at the Taipei Railway Station.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the Ministry of Culture have decided to transform the cavernous lobby of Taipei Railway Station into a temporary stage for young dancers, saying they are doing so to give young people a cultural space to express themselves.
This would be great if it did not come shortly after the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) started roping off certain areas of the lobby on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays after the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr brought too many dark-skinned Southeast Asians, as well as people from countries like India and Pakistan, who came to celebrate their holiday in a peaceful way.
Apparently, some Taiwanese commuters unaccustomed to multiculturalism — the kind of people with whom Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik would see eye to eye — complained that the crowds of foreigners made them feel unsafe.
In a typical overreaction, the TRA cordoned off what had been one of the few public gathering spaces for Southeast Asians in Taipei, and its announcement later of the dance venue, although on the surface a good thing, simply highlighted that foreign workers are not welcome.
The timing of these two ministries’ plan to promote the arts is suspicious. When has the Ministry of Culture ever been in a hurry to promote culture? More often than not, art venues in the country, such as the Huashan Creative Park and Treasure Hill Artist Community in Taipei, are utterly stripped of all free artistic expression as soon as the government gets involved. There never seems to be budgets available anywhere for painters, musicians, performers, actors, movie producers, or anything artistic, unless their art can become commercially viable in the short term. The Ministry of Culture has proven time and again that it does not support the arts.
So why the sudden change of heart and at a time when so many other cases of racial discrimination are surfacing around the country?
In Taoyuan County, a group of 30 Filipino workers are being forced to move out by next week because residents deem them to be a danger to the community.
In Taipei’s Shida area, police harass Westerners in the park at night even if they are quiet, while ignoring groups of Taiwanese, simply because of what one police officer said was a negative report in a local newspaper about Westerners “picking up drunk women” in the park.
Where will this end? Will Southeast Asians be welcome anywhere? Will foreigners someday be told to stay indoors after an 8pm curfew, while they are herded into foreigners-only dormitories and given no public space at all?
Taiwan, the open, welcome nation that it is, should not allow the forces of xenophobia to take control, because if it does, it will close itself off voluntarily from the rest of the region and the world.
George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This article will help readers avoid repeating mistakes by examining four examples from the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces and the Republic of China (ROC) forces that involved two city sieges and two island invasions. The city sieges compared are Changchun (May to October 1948) and Beiping (November 1948 to January 1949, renamed Beijing after its capture), and attempts to invade Kinmen (October 1949) and Hainan (April 1950). Comparing and contrasting these examples, we can learn how Taiwan may prevent a war with
A recent trio of opinion articles in this newspaper reflects the growing anxiety surrounding Washington’s reported request for Taiwan to shift up to 50 percent of its semiconductor production abroad — a process likely to take 10 years, even under the most serious and coordinated effort. Simon H. Tang (湯先鈍) issued a sharp warning (“US trade threatens silicon shield,” Oct. 4, page 8), calling the move a threat to Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” which he argues deters aggression by making Taiwan indispensable. On the same day, Hsiao Hsi-huei (蕭錫惠) (“Responding to US semiconductor policy shift,” Oct. 4, page 8) focused on
Taiwan is rapidly accelerating toward becoming a “super-aged society” — moving at one of the fastest rates globally — with the proportion of elderly people in the population sharply rising. While the demographic shift of “fewer births than deaths” is no longer an anomaly, the nation’s legal framework and social customs appear stuck in the last century. Without adjustments, incidents like last month’s viral kicking incident on the Taipei MRT involving a 73-year-old woman would continue to proliferate, sowing seeds of generational distrust and conflict. The Senior Citizens Welfare Act (老人福利法), originally enacted in 1980 and revised multiple times, positions older
Taiwan’s business-friendly environment and science parks designed to foster technology industries are the key elements of the nation’s winning chip formula, inspiring the US and other countries to try to replicate it. Representatives from US business groups — such as the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, and the Arizona-Taiwan Trade and Investment Office — in July visited the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) headquarters and its first fab. They showed great interest in creating similar science parks, with aims to build an extensive semiconductor chain suitable for the US, with chip designing, packaging and manufacturing. The
RSS