Musician and actress Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜) yesterday reignited public criticism for writing on a Chinese microblogging account: “Let our motherland be proud of us” after a post on Thursday that said: “I am proud to be Chinese.”
Ouyang reposted yesterday’s comment on Facebook, prompting more than 75,000 mostly critical comments and 4,000 shares.
The Chinese-language China Times on Friday published a story quoting Ouyang in an interview in China as encouraging Taiwanese to “bravely express themselves, unite and let the “motherland” be proud of us.”
Photo: Chen Yi-chuan, Taipei Times
The newspaper quoted her as saying that whether she were from Hong Kong, Beijing, Taiwan or anywhere else, she would still be “Chinese,” and this was her true feeling and came from the bottom of her heart.
The 18-year-old might have been pressed into making the statements in response to accusations from Chinese Internet commenters calling her a “Taiwanese separatist,” Chinese-language media reported.
The accusations might be rooted in a statement her father, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesman Ouyang Lung (歐陽龍), made three years ago about Taiwan being a “country,” reports said.
At the time, Ouyang Lung was also accused by Chinese netizens of being a Taiwanese separatist.
After Ouyang Nana’s post on Thursday sparked controversy, Ouyang Lung said that his daughter was a “sacrificial victim of strained cross-strait relations,” and that she was not in the wrong for calling herself a “proud Chinese.”
His daughter has had her films dropped from Chinese television stations in recent months, which he said was probably because of the criticism of her.
Accusations against himself were also baseless, as he has always supported the so-called “1992 consensus,” Ouyang Lung said.
The “1992 consensus” is a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000 that refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
Comments on Professional Technology Temple (PTT) — Taiwan’s largest academic online bulletin board — have mostly criticized Ouyang Nana.
One person wrote: “Have you gained your Chinese citizenship yet?” while another said: “This is absolutely not a performance. It’s quite frightening how powerful money is!”
One commenter claiming wrote that despite being ethnically Chinese, they were first and foremost Malaysian.
“If you ask me where I come from, I will say I’m from Malaysia, and I’m proud of that,” they wrote. “My identity is based on where I was born, where I grew up, where the food I eat is from and where my accent developed.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods