Students in certain private universities who have expressed support for anti-extradition bill protests in Hong Kong and who have put up “Lennon walls” on the campuses have been provoked by Chinese students at school. The university authorities’ response has been to try to keep the peace and not do anything that might offend the Chinese students.
This phenomenon could be a side effect of a policy of opening up to Chinese students, in which university authorities, trying to mitigate the effect of Taiwan’s slowing population growth, have opened their arms to Chinese students.
This approach has not been without problems. There have been reports that many universities have signed agreements to the effect that they would not expose students to anything that could be regarded as opposing the idea of “one China” and have had to remove from their curriculum any mention of “sensitive” concepts such as “one China, one Taiwan,” “two Chinas” or Taiwanese independence.
While accepting these students might have helped the universities with their finances, it has also meant that they have had to sacrifice academic freedom and have missed out on the opportunity to teach Chinese students about the value of democracy while they are studying in Taiwan.
Chinese coming to Taiwan to study are given a perfect opportunity to immerse themselves in an environment in which they can experience freedom of expression, enjoy a free and open democratic society with human rights guarantees, and have instilled in themselves a subjective awareness free of the brainwashing they were subjected to at the hands of state-controlled education at home.
When their studies are over, they can then take the seeds of this experience back to China, where hopefully it will have a positive reception.
Unfortunately, this objective has never really been a part of the policy since its initial implementation during the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
When Taiwanese go to study in China, they are exposed to inculcation of the state’s political orthodoxy. In a similar way, cadres from Beijing visit Taiwan and talk about opposing Taiwanese independence and promoting unification, but when Taiwanese politicians go to China they are not allowed to utter a word about “one nation on either side of the Taiwan Strait.”
When Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members visit China, they do not dare wave the Republic of China flag, but there are no laws against displaying a People’s Republic of China flag on the streets of Taipei and there was even a temple in Changhua County converted into a shrine for the Chinese communists.
Beijing is also quite prepared to suppress religion as part of its “united front” tactics, dragging Taiwan’s temples into the fight and using direct flights for religious pilgrimages as a tool to subvert Taiwan’s cross-strait policy. There have been many examples of this. The imbalance, and lack of fairness, in cross-strait exchanges has existed for a long time, and it has always been Taiwan that has been at the disadvantage.
Even when cross-strait exchanges were first initiated during the presidencies of Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), despite the lofty goals of promoting democracy, freedom and wealth, the policy has never really been driven by an attempt to democratize China and has always left China to its own devices, hoping it will reform and open up of its own accord.
While Taiwan has been waiting for this to happen, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) and former Chinese presidents Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) amply demonstrated that the wait was in vain, and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has moved in very much the opposite direction of what Taiwanese had anticipated, elevating the one-party totalitarian state to a digital totalitarianism.
Today, the blade of this digital totalitarianism is not only being held at Taiwan’s throat, it is hovering over the necks of the 1.4 billion people in China, and is even threatening universal values held by the international community.
This lack of any movement seeking to expedite China’s democratization has led to Taiwan continuously being put on the back foot in its dealings with China.
There are advantages and disadvantages to welcoming Chinese to study in Taiwan.
Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭) in 2012 came to Taiwan to join the master’s in business administration program at National Chengchi University, graduating four years later. On behalf of a certain network, he exploited his opportunities while studying and conducting business in Taiwan to establish contact with individuals in the military, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the civil service.
However, when he attempted to recruit an official in the ministry, the official reported him to authorities and he was caught.
At the time, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) warned against throwing the baby out with the bathwater and overturning the entire policy just because of one student. The problem is, the likelihood is that it is not just one student, and Ko probably does not have the stomach to delve deeper into that particular black hole.
During the Martial Law era, the KMT used its own network of student spies to surveil and report on the words and deeds of Taiwanese, many of whom can most likely still recall this happening.
Due to the ongoing protests, Hong Kong students at universities in democratic nations have responded with one voice, and yet there are also many Chinese students stirring up trouble. From this it can be inferred that, even if it is undeniable that many Chinese students in Taiwan are serious about their studies, it is also likely that there is a proportion of them who are actually spies posing as students who should not be underestimated.
The question is, are the Chinese students using Taiwan as a testing ground in which to provoke the Hong Kong students? If university authorities are content to merely bumble along while siding with the Chinese students, what will the students feel emboldened to do next time?
The government needs to be more proactive, too: It is entirely inadequate for the Ministry of Education to merely ask university authorities to intervene and do more to educate the respective groups to foster mutual understanding and respect. What happens when the Chinese students take their disruptive behavior beyond the confines of the campus and violence ensues?
It is naive to believe that Chinese who can engage in this provocative behavior so openly on campus are simply innocent students.
Taiwan is a nation governed by the rule of law: if someone breaks the law, then they should be dealt with accordingly. The distinction between freedom of expression and criminal behavior is quite clear. If Chinese students break the law or cause disorder in Taiwan, then it is of paramount importance that they be made to understand what it is to respect democracy and the obey the rule of law.
Being educated about this in such a way is a good opportunity to learn how to persuade others in a civilized manner: it is not acceptable to act like a red guard in a democratic society.
To be clear, it is possible that the Chinese students acting in this provocative way have been inculcated by the party-centric education back home; it is not necessarily the case, in other words, that they are political thugs acting on the direct orders of some network.
Given that they have now come to an open society, the hope is that they can open their minds more and realize that the uniform mindset in China is detrimental to the spirit of education, and something that needs to be deconstructed. This generation of Chinese must begin the process of serious reflection and of discovering a way to rid themselves of the top-down culture of violence.
In this way it will be possible for China to become a great nation that people can truly respect and admire.
However, it seems that the administrators of several Taiwanese universities need to be shown the way, too, as they appear to be content to run their institutions in such a way so as to not anger Beijing. If nothing is done to change this and Chinese students are allowed to provoke Hong Kong students in Taiwan, then it is to be the thin end of the wedge.
This has the capacity of eventually affecting students’ ability to have pluralistic thought, and to curtail teachers’ academic freedom and ability to teach what they feel they should teach, as well as their freedom of expression.
The logical end to this would be that Taiwanese universities will become subject to the same Chinese Communist Party ideological rigidity to which Chinese students have been subjected.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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