Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine indicates the emergence of a new Russia-China alliance — an “authoritarian bloc” that seeks to challenge the US-led democratic world order.
The invasion has sparked intense local debate, with many concerned that China might follow suit and invade Taiwan.
Chinese nationalists and pro-Beijing Taiwanese have been hammering away at their keyboards in an attempt to shape the narrative around the Russian invasion.
Many posts and comments repeat similar themes, such as: “I would not go to war for any politician,” and reveal their origins. The warped logic of such posts could only have come from inside an authoritarian regime.
There have been numerous “hot takes” on the war in Ukraine circulating on Taiwanese discussion forums, including Professional Technology Temple, the nation’s most popular online bulletin board, and Dcard, an online forum popular among young people.
Typical examples include: “High ranking [Ukrainian] officials will certainly flee like rats from a sinking ship — I wouldn’t fight on their behalf” and: “If China invades [Taiwan], I would definitely run up the white flag.”
In the short term, such posts trend online, but they are not only highly suspicious — most Taiwanese Internet users would suspect that they have been fabricated by Chinese bot farms — but comments such as: “I wouldn’t go to war for any politician” also clearly betray a Chinese, rather than a Taiwanese, thought process.
Chinese society is still structured around an authoritarian, imperial model. Everyone and everything is subservient to the “emperor.” For example, a video circulated online during China’s Himalayan border conflict with India last year showed Chinese recruits crying because they think they are being sent to the front line as “cannon fodder.”
Under China’s imperial system of government — rather than the nation belonging to the people — its people are the property of the emperor, which in today’s China means the Chinese Communist Party. Under this model, the sentiment: “I wouldn’t go to war for any politician,” or being reduced to tears at the prospect of possibly dying for one’s country, is to be expected.
In democratic societies, the inverse is true. The nation belongs to the people, who give their political representatives a temporary mandate to rule by means of an electoral vote. This is a far cry from China, where everything belongs to the one-party state.
The whole world is aware that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected safe passage out of Ukraine offered to him by Washington, remained in the capital and, if necessary, would fight alongside his compatriots in Kyiv’s volunteer battalions. The same is true of former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian lawmakers and many ordinary Ukrainians.
From the top down, Ukrainians are bravely resisting the enemy. They are fighting to protect their democratic freedoms, for it is like oxygen to them. It is the most basic of human instincts to want to protect family, friends and native soil.
This sense of attachment to community, to one’s compatriots, is something that most Chinese, trapped inside an unreformed imperial system, will never understand.
Pan Kuan was a participant in the 2014 Sunflower movement.
Translated by Edward Jones
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