As those who care about such matters take a moment to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, an incident in Hong Kong on Monday was a reminder of just how fragile freedom is, of how vulnerable it is to those who would cage it for their own selfish interests.
Just as he was leaving his office in Hong Kong’s Chai Wan district, Chen Ping (陳平), the 58-year-old billionaire publisher of the political weekly iSun Affairs, was assaulted by two baton-wielding thugs in their 20s or 30s, sustaining injuries to his head, arms and chest, and requiring hospitalization. An investigation has been launched and it is not known who was behind the attack, but one can guess.
Just 12 when the Cultural Revolution was unleashed upon China, Chen was beaten and detained for comparing former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) — the architect of the madness — to an “emperor” and a “tyrant.” He was also branded the offspring of a “Soviet revisionist rebel” after his father, a military expert within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was captured by Soviet forces. After being “rehabilitated,” Chen worked as a businessman and as a researcher at a government policy think tank, but left all that after the events at Tiananmen in 1989.
He once said in an interview that those experiences had a strong influence on his desire to promote democratic change in China, and were behind his decision last year to launch iSun Affairs, which quickly built a reputation as a hard-hitting critic of Beijing and of the self-censorship that now haunts Hong Kong media as it courts the rich and powerful in Beijing (the weekly will turn into an online-only monthly publication later this year).
Needless to say, the weekly, which is also distributed in Taiwan, Macau and Malaysia, is banned in China, as is Chen’s TV channel, Sun TV. An issue of the magazine in December last year, which showed the heart-wrenching scene of a Tibetan man setting himself ablaze, highlighted the extent to which Chen was willing to criticize the Chinese government. His reporters, some of whom are veteran journalists based in China, have faced harassment by state security authorities, and his chief editor was denied a visa to work in Hong Kong.
June 3, about 6pm, and Chen is assailed. A coincidence, or a random act? Perhaps, but given how China treats — or mistreats, that is — freedom of expression, one can be forgiven for assuming the worst: that the attack was politically motivated and an attempt to silence a man of means who stands up to the CCP.
It is a stark reminder, one day ahead of the anniversary of the state-sponsored atrocity, that the CCP and its cronies in the much freer territory will stop at nothing to muzzle those who refuse to be co-opted and who continue to fight for liberty, freedom and the democracy that has long eluded the Chinese.
As Taiwan continues to deepen its interactions with China, its freedom-loving people must keep a close eye on what goes on in places like Hong Kong and China, as the fate of individuals like Chen is, like it or not, increasingly tied to that of each and every one of the 23 million Taiwanese. Twenty-four years after Tiananmen, the butchers of Beijing, as one former US president once referred to them, remain relentless in their willingness to crush dissent both at home and, increasingly, in the near-abroad.
Those who gave their lives for the cause of freedom must not be forgotten, and those who, like Chen and many others across China and here in Taiwan, continue to do so.
Father’s Day, as celebrated around the world, has its roots in the early 20th century US. In 1910, the state of Washington marked the world’s first official Father’s Day. Later, in 1972, then-US president Richard Nixon signed a proclamation establishing the third Sunday of June as a national holiday honoring fathers. Many countries have since followed suit, adopting the same date. In Taiwan, the celebration takes a different form — both in timing and meaning. Taiwan’s Father’s Day falls on Aug. 8, a date chosen not for historical events, but for the beauty of language. In Mandarin, “eight eight” is pronounced
Having lived through former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s tumultuous and scandal-ridden administration, the last place I had expected to come face-to-face with “Mr Brexit” was in a hotel ballroom in Taipei. Should I have been so surprised? Over the past few years, Taiwan has unfortunately become the destination of choice for washed-up Western politicians to turn up long after their political careers have ended, making grandiose speeches in exchange for extraordinarily large paychecks far exceeding the annual salary of all but the wealthiest of Taiwan’s business tycoons. Taiwan’s pursuit of bygone politicians with little to no influence in their home
In a recent essay, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, Christian Whiton, accuses Taiwan of diplomatic incompetence — claiming Taipei failed to reach out to Trump, botched trade negotiations and mishandled its defense posture. Whiton’s narrative overlooks a fundamental truth: Taiwan was never in a position to “win” Trump’s favor in the first place. The playing field was asymmetrical from the outset, dominated by a transactional US president on one side and the looming threat of Chinese coercion on the other. From the outset of his second term, which began in January, Trump reaffirmed his
Despite calls to the contrary from their respective powerful neighbors, Taiwan and Somaliland continue to expand their relationship, endowing it with important new prospects. Fitting into this bigger picture is the historic Coast Guard Cooperation Agreement signed last month. The common goal is to move the already strong bilateral relationship toward operational cooperation, with significant and tangible mutual benefits to be observed. Essentially, the new agreement commits the parties to a course of conduct that is expressed in three fundamental activities: cooperation, intelligence sharing and technology transfer. This reflects the desire — shared by both nations — to achieve strategic results within
RSS