Brainwashing and caffeine
Dear Johnny,
I read with great interest your response to Arthur Waldron on "mainland China" still defining Taiwanese politics (Johnny Neihu's Mailbag, Dec. 23, page 8). I have been a student of Chinese and Taiwanese history for years and wrote a doctoral thesis on the subject. I found your response to be spot on.
However, I think one important point was overlooked. It is my belief that the "red-herring pro-China/anti-China opposition" has deeper ramifications than just differences of opinion.
One of the chief issues facing Taiwanese today is the lack of a Taiwanese national identity. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has waged a cultural war since the 1940s against any such concept, marginalizing Taiwanese thought and trying to assimilate them into "Chinese society."
I have many Taiwanese friends here in Seattle; we meet often over coffee and in our Taiwan clubs. I have asked them the question: "Are you Taiwanese or Chinese?" Often they will become completely confused and flummoxed.
They usually give me what I call the "shackled" response: "I am both Taiwanese and Chinese." This is a response resulting from years of brainwashing the KMT has waged against Taiwanese society.
You are correct in saying that there is no more effective way of essentializing Taiwanese than portraying them as one-issue voters, and this has been accomplished through cultural brainwashing such that some today are embarrassed to say they are Taiwanese.
Taiwanese will never have a chance of controlling their political and cultural future until they overcome this bias towards them as a society. If you look at the Chinese as an occupying entity who brutally ravaged the local population, then you begin to understand the difficulty facing the Taiwanese who desire to control their own fate. I have seen signs that this issue is beginning to reverse itself, but until then the KMT will maintain a stranglehold culturally and politically over their Taiwanese "subjects."
Sam Small
Johnny replies: Points taken, though I'm sure you would agree that Seattle's expatriate Taiwanese who join clubs and drink coffee may not be representative of Taiwanese at home or abroad. For example, you haven't accounted for the ethnic status of your Taiwanese friends. Dare I say a chunk of them are Mainlanders? It doesn't pigeon-hole people to say that an overwhelming proportion of Mainlanders vote for a party that wants Taiwan under the control of "China." This is mostly because Mainlanders have China in their immediate family histories, and "brainwashing" by the KMT does not account for this devotion. I put it to you that Mainlander offspring were and are much more influenced by their families than the former party-state.
In my experience overseas Taiwanese are rather clear about their distinctiveness. Maybe your friends have been drinking too much bad coffee and their brains are muddled. Or maybe they haven't been subjected to enough smug lectures by know-it-all Chinese youngsters who have the "Taiwan problem" all figured out. I hear there's a cabal of Taiwanese independence fanatics in Ohio; I bet they'd be willing to deprogram your friends -- and for free.
CBC fiddles as 101 burns
Dear Johnny,
You were bang on with your criticism of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC, "Get some hubbub in your hotpot," Jan. 6, page 8). To a Canadian living in Taiwan, the CBC's reportage of Taiwan and Asian affairs is grossly incompetent and embarrassing.
For example, New Years Eve coverage showed the fireworks over Taipei 101, but the video was labeled as coming from Hong Kong. This really pissed me off. The CBC, a public broadcaster, has faced funding cutbacks in recent times. This has increased the playing of cheap fiddle music and lazy journalism, both of which are bad to the ears.
Mike Parkes
Changhua
Johnny replies: Yet public broadcasters so often play a balancing role in terms of bringing quality to their markets (and training staff for commercial stations). Of course, this doesn't make them more knowledgeable on Taiwan. Send the CBC a scabrous e-mail, Mike, and remind 'em that the Hongkies have much better fireworks.
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
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not