A total misreading of the situation in Taiwan by an official with China’s Association of Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) should come as no surprise, but it is still dispiriting, given the extensive number of Chinese delegation visits promoted under former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration.
A misogynistic opinion piece in the Xinhua news agency-run International Herald Leader on Tuesday criticizing President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was quickly pulled from Chinese Web sites, but no one who knows how tightly the Chinese media is controlled should be in any doubt that some people at high levels initially thought it was a good idea.
The commentary by People’s Liberation Army Major General Wang Weixing (王衛星), a “senior scholar” at the Academy of Military Sciences and an ARATS member, said that because Tsai is unmarried, she is extreme, emotional, prone to radical action and focused on short-term goals since she does not have “‘the burden’ of love, family and children.”
Wang also claimed that Tsai was insecure because her father had had several wives, and then criticized her family’s connections with Japan during World War II and her fondness for Japanese rice balls.
Wang’s commentary, headlined “Exposing Tsai Ing-wen,” only served to expose the rampant sexism that remains at the heart of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), despite Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) oft-quoted aphorism that “women hold up half the sky” and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) pledge at the UN in September last year to promote gender equality.
While the lives of girls and women have changed tremendously in the past several decades in China, women remain conspicuous by their almost total absence from the CCP politburo and their omission from the party’s top organ of power, the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, in contrast to their increasingly prominent role in Taiwanese politics.
That a female politician should come under misogynistic attack is not uncommon in many countries in this day and age, whether on social media or publicly — as in the case of the ramblings of a Republican presidential hopeful in the US — and the vitriol in Wang’s writing did not rise to the level seen in so much of the trolling and shaming of females on the Internet and Twitter.
Unfortunately, such incidents have not been rare in Taiwan either, for those who remember how one-time democracy activist Shih Ming-teh (施明德) in April 2011 said Tsai should “clarify” her sexual orientation before the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chose its candidate for the 2012 presidential election, or who remember the insults and mocking heaped upon former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) while in office or during her years as a lawmaker.
However, while Tsai’s decision to focus on a career over marriage and a family might have been questioned since she entered politics, her sex and marital status were clearly not an issue for a majority of Taiwanese voters in January.
While the Presidential Office and the DPP’s ignoring of Wang’s commentary showed it the contempt it deserved, it was heartening to see how quickly and heartily he was condemned by average Chinese and Taiwanese.
Wang said China’s dealings with Tsai would basically be a contest of will and wisdom.
He showed little of the latter, while Tsai has, throughout her career and in her resurrection of the DPP and two presidential campaigns, shown just how much willpower she has.
Personal attacks come with the territory for those in political life and this incident is unlikely to be the last blast from Beijing. However, more worryingly, it showed just how little those in ARATS or positions of power in China understand Taiwan or Taiwanese.
It is that kind of stupidity that will cause trouble, not Tsai.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under