Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to imitate Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) political stance by saying that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family.”
Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), one of the student leaders of the 2014 Sunflower movement, said in an op-ed in the British publication The Diplomat: “Ko’s accommodation of Beijing has not assuaged its assertiveness toward Taiwan in any way. Rather, it has given Beijing more leverage to infiltrate Taiwan’s domestic political debates and signaled a reincarnation of the KMT’s [Chinese Nationalist Party] past approach.”
Ko’s Internet army attacked the article, with some even labeling Lin a “pro-Taiwanese independence dog” (台獨狗).
Ko’s opportunistic defense of Taiwan and China being “one family” and “a community of shared destiny” prompted Lin to write: “As a rising political force, Ko’s tendency to embrace ‘one China’ has introduced a complicating factor into Taiwan’s future trajectory... Neglecting the fact that ‘the two sides of the Strait are one family’ serves as a core concept of Beijing which traps Taiwan in an endless cycle of independence-unification debates will not help us to transcend domestic divergence.”
Compared with New Power Party (NPP) Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), a political hypocrite, and NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐), who told Ko to “eat shit” for supporting the “one family” claim, but then flip-flopped on the issue, the clear and resolute attitude that Lin — a young Taiwanese of the new era — holds toward Taiwanese identity is quite significant.
Lin not only criticized Ko and slapped the NPP in the face, but also clearly delineated between choosing Taiwan and choosing China in the Nov. 24 nine-in-one municipal elections.
Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智), Taipei mayoral candidate for the Democratic Progressive Party, has also demanded to be told the difference between Ko’s “one family” and the KMT’s so-called “1992 consensus.”
Ko brags that he has left a deep “imprint” on the under-30 generation, believing that young people forgive him and support his mistaken position. For this reason, he continues to play the blue-green card to attract young voters dissatisfied with politics and to distinguish himself from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who steadfastly refuses to recognize the “1992 consensus,” by supporting Xi’s invasive “one family” stance.
Since bowing to China politically, Ko has won praise from Beijing, as well as China’s political groups and media, but he is shredding Taiwanese values, confusing the national identity and inciting conflict.
Shocking all of Taiwan, the Sunflower movement — civil disobedience that went beyond the blue-green divide — was launched by young Taiwanese against then-president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pro-China policies and the “1992 consensus” of the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party.
By contrast, Ko has been manipulating opposition between the blue and green camps and their divergence on national identity until he has fallen in line with former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰), People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), Ma and their “one China” policy.
Lin became the target of a broad offensive by Ko’s Internet army shortly after his article was published, but Ko did not respond until two days later, using his same sly way of answering factual criticism with meaningless responses.
The values of the Sunflower movement are clearly punching holes in Ko’s deceitful “one family” campaign, his way of charming the younger generation.
Chen Tsai-neng is a doctoral student at National Chung Hsing University’s Graduate Institute of International Politics.
Translated by Eddy Chang
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
RSS