According to a Liberty Times report on Oct. 18, 72 arts students and six arts teachers from Tongsiao Junior High School, along with 22 students, three teachers and seven parents from the Tongsiao Elementary School baseball and softball teams in Miaoli County, visited Pingtan Island in China’s Fujian Province for exchanges between Oct. 10 and 14.
The visit was ostensibly sponsored by Weihsin Energy, which is owned by China-based Taiwanese businessman Ke Lin-hung (柯林宏), who is originally from Miaoli County. Each student paid only NT$1,000 for the trip. However, the event was organized and funded by the Chinese state-run Fujian Provincial Service Center for Cross-strait Social Organizations. Ke simply acted as intermediary.
The event was presented as a field trip and sports exchange, but the purpose was solely for the Taiwanese students to visit Pingtan. Why did the service center choose Pingtan as the site for educational exchanges?
As the center’s official Web site states, the center was established to explore a new model for exchanges and cooperation between social organizations on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, to create a new platform for such organizations’ joint development, to turn it into an experimental free-trade zone and to better serve such organizations as they jointly construct a common homeland across the Taiwan Strait.
It is easy to see that the center is a united front agency aimed at belittling Taiwan and that Pingtan follows China’s political vision of a “shared homeland across the Taiwan Strait” and an economic zone on the west side of the Taiwan Strait. The purpose of the island is to create an experimental “united front” zone designed to strengthen cross-strait exchange and cooperation.
In March, Ke made the same offer to Rihnan Junior High School in Taichung, of which he is an alumnus. Parents of students at the school later received registration forms for educational exchanges with Fujian Province. The registration fee was also NT$1,000, and all other expenses would be covered by Ke.
This summer, Ke contacted the track and field teams of Rihnan and Shalu Junior High School and Lishin Junior High School in Taichung. Sponsored by the Weitai Enterprise, also owned by Ke, the sports teams visited Pingtan for training. It seems that Ke is systematically working to establish contacts along the Miaoli and Taichung coastline.
On March 19, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) presided over a symposium for teachers of Chinese ideological and political theory in Beijing, demanding that they train “generation after generation” of students to support the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership, beginning at an early age.
It is easy for China to brainwash its own youth, but to brainwash Taiwanese, it needs help to cross the natural barrier of the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwanese businesspeople operating in China are the best helpers, and perhaps they even enjoy certain tax exemptions if they perform well. If they really want to give something back to Taiwan, they would do better to offer a subsidy of NT$1,000 to each student for a trip around Taiwan. Why does Ke always have students visit Pingtan, an experimental “united front” zone?
It seems Ke has already developed a complete “standard operating procedure” for educational “united front” work. Which school would next be lured by China’s “united front” project? Would the Ministry of Education intervene, or would it sit back and watch as schools comply with this educational “united front” work?
Koeh Ian-lim is vice chairman of the Taiwan Teachers’ Union.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this