The Mainland Affairs Council on Wednesday voiced concern over reports that Chinese authorities are planning a “one country, two systems” museum in Beijing that would include a section on Taiwan.
The council said such a museum would be yet another step in China’s “united front” tactics and “brainwashing” efforts, and it warned Taiwanese against participating in the planning of such a facility.
The council’s statement followed Hong Kong media reports about the museum plans, and it was pretty pro forma, which is all it should be.
There is nothing Taiwan can do if China wants to build such a facility, which would basically be targeting Chinese visitors to their capital. After all, it is hard to see such a museum being a popular addition to the itinerary of foreign tourists, including Taiwanese, amid tours of the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven or sections of the Great Wall.
It would be just another bald piece of propaganda, such as the exhibition of photographs and maps at the Yonghe Temple in Beijing that highlights the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) claims that Tibet has been a part of China since the Yuan Dynasty — a claim that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his Republic of China (ROC) government long upheld as well.
It would be refreshing if the council — and other government agencies or officials — could just respond with “balderdash” when pressed by reporters for comment about China’s actions. However, the council has one problem with doing that, and not just in terms of diplomatic niceties: One of its seven departments is “Inner Mongolia and Tibet Affairs,” so it is in effect promoting the same kind of propaganda that it complains about from Beijing.
Balderdash is an apt description of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman An Fengshan’s (安峰山) comments that the “one country, two systems” model reflects China’s good intentions and concern for Taiwanese, and was aimed at protecting their interests and welfare.
If council officials and the rest of the government want to reinforce Taiwan’s — or the ROC’s — distinctness from the People’s Republic of China, they have a great opportunity to do so on Tuesday, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Political leaders, including those seeking election next year, should speak out about the massacre — and against the CCP’s repression of this nation — and continue to speak out on each anniversary.
Several human rights groups yesterday urged them to do that by joining a commemoration on Tuesday evening at Freedom Square in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, where a balloon installation by Taiwanese artist Shake (雪克) erected last month portrays one of the most iconic images from the massacre: Tank Man.
“I think it is important to the Taiwanese to continue discussing this topic — preventing people from forgetting this event and reminding Taiwanese that the regime in China is dangerous,” Shake told reporters after her green balloon tank and white-shirt-clad figure were erected.
Her comments are similar to those of exiled Chinese filmmaker Su Xiaokang (蘇曉康), who told South China Morning Post reporter Jeffie Lam for her six-part series last month on Tiananmen veterans and the overseas democracy movement: “All we can do is to keep the memory of 1989 alive and fight against forgetting.”
One of Taiwan’s strongest weapons against the CCP is the ability to speak out about what the party has tried so hard to hide and wipe from the collective memory — from past atrocities such as the Great Chinese Famine, the brutal excesses of the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square Massacre — to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) crackdown on human rights and democracy advocates and the concentration camps in Xinjiang.
China likes to wage wars of words. Let us fight back.
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