China and the 228 Incident
As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a genius of ideologically manipulating the public’s opinion on the Nanjing Massacre, it also knows how to manipulate the issue of the 228 Massacre.
On the one hand, the PRC creates an illusion that Beijing is psychologically in line with Taiwanese against the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) fascist dictatorship, and on the other, it solidifies the sentiment of “one China, one family” of people in China and Taiwan.
History is always on the victor’s side, so history is, in fact, rendered linear and complete by discourse rather than by itself.
On Nov. 11 last year, China commemorated the 150th anniversary of Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) birth.
In his remarks, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) called Sun a “revolutionary pioneer,” and then he continued: “I call on all Chinese who revere Mr Sun Yat-sen ... to unite, no matter their political affiliations.”
In his talk, Xi explicitly employed Sun as the symbol of the imagined Chinese community.
This case shows that China is versed at scheming the historical discourse to render itself righteous and legitimate. China knows how to employ the history of a massacre to manipulate the mentality of its compatriots and thus applies such a scenario to the 228 Massacre, particularly perpetrated by its counterpart, the KMT regime.
The PRC understands that the 228 Massacre serves as the trauma that connects the mentality of Taiwanese, as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is also good at interpolating “Taiwanese” in the previous years of elections.
As the PRC successfully intercepted the historical discourse of Sun from the KMT last year, it also intends to intercept the discourse of the massacre from the pan-green parties this year.
By commemorating the 228 Massacre — an event that the KMT tries by any means to gentrify from the history textbooks and discourse — China easily creates psychological intimacy among the “compatriots” across the Taiwan Strait, and meanwhile, it slaps the face of the KMT.
This scheme is strategically calculated and concocted. China is consciously aware of the fact that the KMT is no longer a match for the PRC, especially in the wake of the KMT’s fiasco in last year’s elections.
War is sometimes enacted by demarcating the distinction between friend and enemy. However, the distinction between friend and enemy becomes blurred and indistinct in this case. China is usually conceptualized as the potential enemy of Taiwan, but now it claims to stand in line with Taiwanese by commemorating the 228 Massacre.
From this case, we can see how China maneuvers Taiwan’s mentality. The enemy does not always reside outside, but sometimes remains on the inside.
Chuang Shih-hung
Kaohsiung
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