The forced apology of a Taiwanese entertainer, who landed in hot water for displaying a Republic of China (ROC) flag on a TV show in South Korea, helped drum up votes for the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in Saturday’s presidential election, an academic said.
The only Taiwanese member of the South Korean girl group TWICE, Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), 16, was apparently forced to apologize for waving an ROC flag on a South Korean TV show. The singer’s response to the incident had an impact on Taiwanese voters and might have added about 1 to 2 percentage points to Tsai’s vote total on Saturday, Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology research fellow Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌) said.
The display of the flag drew an angry response from fans in China after a China-based Taiwanese singer, Huang An (黃安), called Chou a supporter of Taiwanese independence. The allegation reportedly cost Chou an endorsement deal with a Chinese smartphone vendor.
Just hours before Taiwan went to the polls, a video clip was released on Friday evening in which Chou said that “there is only one China... I have always felt proud of being Chinese,” while seemingly reading from a prepared text in a shaking voice.
It was an apology that “profoundly affected people,” Hsiao said.
Chou’s wan and sallow appearance on the video sparked an outcry from Taiwanese netizens, who said that the young entertainer was forced to declare she is Chinese, drawing comparisons to Islamic State hostages.
In protest, Taiwanese returned home to cast their votes, social media posts said.
Psychiatrist Kung Fan-chin (孔繁錦) said that had the Chou case happened earlier it would not have affected election results, but because it happened on Friday voters reacted immediately.
The apology was a commercial move by Chou’s management company to save her career as an entertainer, Kung said, but the case evoked “the deepest fears” of Taiwanese that they could be forced to give up their nationality if they wanted to do business with China, he said.
The incident caused online conflict between young Internet users in Taiwan and China, said Chang Wu-yueh (張五岳) director of the Graduate Institute of China Studies at Tamkang University. The case also exposed the unstable side of cross-strait relations, he added, urging Tsai to seek mutual trust with high-ranking officials in Beijing and act to lower misgivings between Taiwanese and Chinese.
“Peace and stability will mean nothing if there is no mutual trust,” Chang said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400