Just when you thought that former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and his Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) could not be any more tone deaf, they leave everyone dumbstruck with another inexplicable exploit.
Any English speaker could have seen the latest controversy coming a mile away. The story broke on Sunday with a Facebook post by the podcast Bailingguo News (百靈果News) exposing the slogan “Vote White, Vote Right” prominently featured on the English version of the TPP’s Web site. As the commenters pointed out, the phrase would immediately be understood as supportive of far-right white supremacist politics, which is not what the party intended.
To make matters even more embarrassing, TPP Legislator Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) tagged former US president Donald Trump in the post to get his feedback. As some commenters said, not even Trump would dare mouth such a blatantly white supremacist slogan.
It was clearly an honest mistake, as the TPP has adopted the color white to symbolize its political ideology as an alternative to the blue and green camps. Using color as ideological shorthand is par for the course in Taiwanese politics, and something Ko has fully embraced — even his 2014 book was titled Power of White (白色的力量) (or White Power if the translator is feeling less generous). Pairing that with Ko’s former tagline “Do the right thing, do things right,” immortalized for better or worse in a 2018 rap with Chunyan (春艷), and you get an admittedly catchy rhyming slogan. Too bad it does not mean what they thought.
The debacle also came just one day after Ko hosted his controversial “KP Show,” which was dogged by accusations of illegal solicitation of overseas donations. It also engendered a weeks-long tit-for-tat with the Taipei Music Center, which turned down his application to hold the “concert,” citing rules against holding political events at the venue that were put in place during Ko’s administration.
The TPP took down the Web site banner yesterday morning following the blowup, saying it was also overhauling its English site. In its defense, it said Taiwan does not have the concept of white supremacy, and that the implication was unintended.
Putting aside that the tendrils of white supremacy reach everywhere, manifesting most commonly in Taiwan as white privilege, this incident reflects extremely poorly on the TPP for multiple reasons. Not everyone has to be familiar with the intricacies of English — indeed, assuming everyone should be is a white supremacist idea — but for a party that wants to take the Presidential Office come January, one would hope that it would be more sensitive to diplomatic phrasing.
Taiwan has a precarious international standing and must be careful with its words, in Chinese and in English. Countless hours have been spent by diplomats worldwide carefully crafting language that supports Taiwan without provoking its angry neighbor. Any Taiwanese leader and their team must be intimately aware of these intricacies. This incident shows that the TPP is not aware, or at best did not solicit feedback from people within the party who might be.
The unfortunate slogan is also the exact kind of thing that would draw the international media spotlight, casting not only the TPP, but the whole of Taiwan in a bad light. No one will accuse the party of intentionally supporting white supremacy, but such a mistake is embarrassing and implies a wider cultural gap between Taiwan and its Western allies than really exists. The TPP should feel chastised, and hopefully stick to its vow to improve oversight of its English content.
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
In an article published by the Harvard Kennedy School, renowned historian of modern China Rana Mitter used a structured question-and-answer format to deepen the understanding of the relationship between Taiwan and China. Mitter highlights the differences between the repressive and authoritarian People’s Republic of China and the vibrant democracy that exists in Taiwan, saying that Taiwan and China “have had an interconnected relationship that has been both close and contentious at times.” However, his description of the history — before and after 1945 — contains significant flaws. First, he writes that “Taiwan was always broadly regarded by the imperial dynasties of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will stop at nothing to weaken Taiwan’s sovereignty, going as far as to create complete falsehoods. That the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never ruled Taiwan is an objective fact. To refute this, Beijing has tried to assert “jurisdiction” over Taiwan, pointing to its military exercises around the nation as “proof.” That is an outright lie: If the PRC had jurisdiction over Taiwan, it could simply have issued decrees. Instead, it needs to perform a show of force around the nation to demonstrate its fantasy. Its actions prove the exact opposite of its assertions. A
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
RSS