In any other country, a crudely produced sex guidebook written by a nobody -- a mere 20 copies of which were imported -- would not attract any special attention, let alone become a hot news item. But in Taiwan precisely this sort of trash has made waves in the nation's capital.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was enraged by the Japanese sex guide Paradise in Taiwan (極樂台灣), seeing it as an insult to the city and even invoking the Criminal Code to try and stop it. Ma ordered the seizure of the book. Book importers were interrogated by police and found themselves at the mercy of the criminal justice system.
What an awe-inspiring air of righteousness Ma has clothed himself in, defending the integrity of both nation and city, and delivering a tough lesson to those shamelessly sex-mad Japanese. But his management of the situation has hardly been faultless.
In a democracy, when the government seizes publications of any nature -- political or pornographic -- questions are raised about the extent to which the country's Constitution protects freedom of publication. Paradise in Taiwan may be a guide to Taiwan's sex industry, but does it really approach "obscenity," as defined in the Criminal Code? Should it be treated any differently from other pornographic publications? Further, even if seizure of the book is lawful, is it constitutional?
Although Ma studied law, he has clearly based his treatment of Paradise in Taiwan not on the criminal law, nor on constitutional law, but on morality. Ma's charge that this book "offended the citizens of Taipei" is a moral accusation.
But morality is not law. If a book can be seized because it "offended the citizens of Taipei," then the number of other publications that could be confiscated is virtually limitless.
The real reason that Ma has banned Paradise in Taiwan is that he is offended by it. The book has frustrated his anti-obscenity campaign, causing him to lose face. It was fury born of humiliation that prompted Ma to order the seizure of the guidebook. That was his first mistake.
His second mistake was to make a mountain out of a molehill. If the author of Paradise in Taiwan were famous, or if the book were a bestseller -- or if it were entirely fictional or even unthinkably obscene -- Ma's indignation would be somewhat justified. But by giving the matter such a high priority, Ma has, as we Chinese say, "used a battle axe to kill a chicken."
Ma clearly overreacted, unlike Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who downplayed the entire matter.
Since becoming mayor, Ma has constantly been in the news. On city government matters of all shapes and sizes, it has been Ma who has made all official statements, rendering the heads of the various bureaus and departments effectively voiceless. In the case of Paradise in Taiwan, a statement by the directors of either the Department of Information or Police Headquarters would have sufficed. Ma, however, has insisted on being commander in chief, as if he were the only one capable of handling a crisis.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) has criticized Ma for being a showman, and frankly, that is fair comment. His han-dling of the book issue makes his showmanship perfectly clear.
The unwarranted seizure of goods; the building up of trifling issues into matters of national indignation and the failure to authorize those who should have been authorized. On this single affair, Ma has made three mistakes.
If Ma isn't aware of these mistakes -- or if he fails to learn from them -- he won't have much of a future.
Wang Chien-chuang is president of The Journalist magazine.
Translated by Scudder Smith
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS