Taiwanese have launched a sarcastic “Say sorry to China” contest on social media after a Chinese filmmaker replaced a local actor for allegedly supporting Taiwanese independence.
The contest on Facebook has attracted more than 24,000 followers and 6,000 posts since Saturday, organizers said.
Netizens have been apologizing to Beijing for a wide variety of reasons — from calling Taiwan a country to eating Japanese food and using iPhones.
“I suggest everybody say sorry to almighty China before dinner every night. We should all thank the Chinese for giving us food and letting us know China’s greatness,” read one scathing post.
The contest came after award-winning Taiwanese director and actor Leon Dai (戴立忍), a known supporter of the 2014 Sunflower movement, was dropped by Chinese director Zhao Wei (趙薇) from her movie No Other Love (沒有別的愛) for allegedly supporting Taiwan’s independence.
Zhao said in a statement on a Chinese microblogging site that Dai was replaced for failing to clarify his political stance.
She offered a sincere apology for “using the wrong person.”
“We are all Chinese and we firmly uphold our mother country’s unification objective... We cannot tolerate any falsity and ambiguity, especially regarding national interests,” Zhao said.
Dai later issued a statement saying he is “deeply sorry” to the film’s investors and crew for his past behavior causing controversy, adding that he does not advocate Taiwanese independence.
Wang Yi-kai (王奕凱), an active participant in the Sunflower movement protests, said he launched the Facebook contest “to mock China’s suppression and bullying” of entertainers.
Some Chinese agreed.
“I am a Chinese netizen. I am sorry that there are so many brain-damaged [people] in China, but most people are not like that and we support Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜),” read one post.
Chou, a 16-year-old Taiwanese K-pop singer, was in January forced to apologize for waving a Republic of China (ROC) national flag during an Internet broadcast, which stoked online anger in China and accusations that she was a pro-independence advocate.
Her video apology went viral on Jan. 16, when Taiwan held its presidential and legislative elections. Some analysts believe it might have cost the Beijing-friendly Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hundreds of thousands of votes.
Pop diva Madonna sparked anger in China after draping herself in an ROC flag during a concert in Taipei in February.
Chinese over-the-top (OTT) service provider iQiyi cannot register as a provider in Taiwan after the Mainland Affairs Council declared it to be an illegal service, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday. Both iQiyi and WeTV were deemed to be illegal Chinese OTT operators in an interdepartmental meeting on Friday last week, officials said, adding that this prohibits them from marketing their services in Taiwan or seeking subscribers. The government plans to block a local server that iQiyi has been using to transmit content to domestic audiences, which would disrupt its content transmission. OTT Entertainment Ltd, which is enlisted by iQiyi to
The Taipei Grand Mosque yesterday said its earlier decision to cancel Eid al-Fitr celebrations on Sunday to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan would stand, even though there have been no new domestic cases of COVID-19 in more than a month. It will be the first time in 60 years that the event has not be held at the mosque. The Ministry of Labor had asked all mosques to suspend Eid al-Fitr celebrations and prayers this year, due to COVID-19 concerns, and encouraged Muslims to pray at home. This year Ramadan began on April 23 and is to
KAOHSIUNG VOTE: A city official allegedly wrote a message calling on supporters of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu not to participate in the vote next month Prosecutors on Wednesday initiated an investigation of Kaohsiung Civil Affairs Bureau Director-General Tsao Huan-jung (曹桓榮) for allegedly telling supporters of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) to interfere with a recall vote against Han, while pan-green politicians denounced the mayor and his team for devising ways to obstruct voting. After receiving complaints from residents, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office launched its probe of Tsao for alleged breaches of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法). Complainants provided evidence that Tsao on Saturday last week wrote on messaging app Line that Han supporters should not vote in the June 6 recall vote, saying:
BILINGUAL ASSISTANCE: The center launched a chat bot that features Chinese and English interfaces to provide foreigners with instant information about the pandemic The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that it would discuss with other nations the possibility of allowing businesspeople to visit on a case-by-case basis. Asked about loosening border restrictions, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said at the daily CECC news briefing that while the center is cautious about opening the nation’s borders, it would aim to diminish obstacles for important trade interactions without risking transmission of the novel coronavirus. Several foreign representatives in Taiwan have expressed an interest in the matter and the center would conduct related negotiations with the help of the
RSS