The Jerusalem Post has refused to withdraw a published interview with Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) after China on Tuesday demanded that the newspaper retract it.
The paper’s editor-in-chief, Yaakov Katz, said a Chinese embassy official threatened that China would “downgrade relations with the state of Israel” if the article was not removed.
The threat demonstrates China’s fundamental inability, or refusal, to acknowledge the existence of media freedom in democracies it has relations with.
During a June 2016 news conference in Ottawa with then-Canadian minister of foreign affairs Stephane Dion, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) berated a Canadian reporter for asking about human rights in China and its jailing of a Canadian on dubious espionage charges.
“Your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance... I don’t know where that comes from,” Wang replied through a translator. “This is totally unacceptable.”
Typically, officials deal with troublesome media queries by ignoring questions, denying accusations or obfuscation. Wang’s irate reaction revealed China’s disdain for media freedoms, its antagonism toward the West and its lack of concern over how the country is perceived outside its borders — a point that is especially evident given the involvement of its foreign minister.
The greatest hypocrisy is China telling other countries not to “interfere with its internal affairs” when they criticize its human rights abuses, or express support for Taiwan or Hong Kong.
China is continually directing international companies on how to refer to Taiwan on their Web sites, telling Western celebrities and athletes what they can say about Taiwan and Hong Kong, berating reporters in their own countries, censoring content in foreign films that have Chinese investors and attempting to censor discourse on university campuses in democratic nations.
The US and other countries have had China’s Confucius Institutes removed from their campuses after it was found that they were endangering academic freedom. In Australia, China critic Drew Pavlou has been physically attacked by pro-China thugs on campus and ridiculed in Chinese state-run media for shining a light on Beijing’s influence over his country’s universities, including his alma mater, the University of Queensland, with which he was engaged in a legal battle.
Fortunately, Katz’s response on Twitter was that the “story ain’t going anywhere.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has grown emboldened in the past few decades and is working to change the narrative in other countries. A Sept. 6, 2019, report in Canada’s National Post cited the training manual of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, in which CCP members operating in Canada were told to approach politicians of Chinese descent and “work with those individuals and groups that are at a relatively high level, operate within the mainstream of society and have prospects for advancement.”
People who notice the CCP’s incursions and speak out often find themselves and their families threatened.
After he grew vocal in his criticism of the CCP, Pavlou began receiving threats on social media such as: “I will hire a killer through deep web and then kill your family,” and “Your mother will be raped till dead.”
Hong Kong democracy advocates visiting or relocating to Taiwan have also been assaulted.
Taiwan must work with other democracies to stand up to threats and bullying from China, and governments must stand by individuals and companies who find themselves threatened.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
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