China only leaving ‘Taiwan’
Case one: Japanese table tennis star Ai Fukuhara speaks fluent Mandarin with an authentic northeastern accent because she has trained in northeast China since her childhood. She is not only highly popular in China, but also one of the best-known Japanese faces in China.
On Sunday, Fukuhara posted an article on Facebook and other social media Web sites, saying that she is proud of her husband, Taiwanese table tennis player Chiang Hung-chieh (江宏傑), for working so hard.
She mentioned that Chiang was to compete in the National Table Tennis Championship the next day, although he had just returned from a trip to Japan to play in the Japanese Table Tennis league.
Fukuhara has posted more or less the same content on all her social media Web sites, but only her post on Sina Weibo caused controversy. The word “national” in “National Table Tennis Championships” offended many oversensitive Chinese Internet users and caused many of them to leave insulting comments.
Fukuhara, who had not expected such a strong reaction, was pressured into removing the post. She later reposted the article, but the phrase “the National Table Tennis Championships” has been changed to “games in Taiwan.”
Case two: the Taipei City Government paid National Geographic Channel nearly NT$6 million (US$199,933) to produce a documentary on the Taipei Universiade, which was to be broadcast in 43 countries, including Japan, South Korea, several Southeast Asian nations, China, Macau and Hong Kong after its premiere last month in Taiwan.
However, when the documentary was broadcast in Hong Kong, the TV station blurred Republic of China (ROC) national flags to meet local regulations. In response, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said it would ask for compensation from National Geographic, as it had violated the contract by changing the documentary without permission from the Taipei City Government.
Case three: This year’s China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair began at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center on Friday last week. Many books by Taiwanese publishers were featured.
A Taiwanese publisher of children’s books said that on the first day of the fair, a government censor looked through all the books displayed at their booth and said that one of them “cannot be displayed because of its ‘inappropriate’ content.”
Although confused, the publisher immediately removed it from display.
Why was the book considered “inappropriate”?
The publisher carefully studied the book and eventually realized that it was because one of the people who recommended the book listed on the back cover has a job title that includes the term “Republic of China.”
Case four: The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) commissioned the Commerce Development Research Institute to hold the “Symposium on Cross-Strait Economic and Trade Ties: Past, Present and Future” on Friday last week.
On the first morning, two Chinese academics who were originally going to deliver the event’s keynote address suddenly decided not to attend, although they had already arrived in Taiwan. The reason was that they had not known that the symposium was held by the Taiwanese government and that MAC Minister Katharine Chang (張小月) was going to speak at the opening ceremony.
As the nation’s 23 million people try to reach a consensus about their identity, “ROC, Taiwan ” has been the most widely accepted way of referring to the nation among supporters of the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
If China continues to relentlessly block the ROC, the only thing remaining will be Taiwan. When that happens, Beijing will have gotten what it deserves.
Chen Chang-jih
Taipei
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