Taiwanese Internet celebrity Holger Chen (陳之漢), who often uses chauvinistic and vulgar expressions, has changed. After years of portraying himself as being highly critical of politics, he has started siding with certain politicians over others.
Chen is well within his rights to argue that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should be “discontinued,” while singing the praises of Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), as Taiwan is a democratic and free country.
However, many would say that Chen and Ko are simply using each other to increase their own popularity, and not to further their respective political visions.
On July 16, Chen and former New Power Party legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) collaborated to host a rally. Those in the know understood that the event was meant to elevate the status of the opportunist Ko. As things turned out, when Ko and Chen joined hands, Taiwanese saw how truly misogynistic they were.
Earlier this month, a group for female supporters of Ko’s presidential campaign arranged a performance in which dancers wore sexualized flight attendant outfits. The event was meant to repair Ko’s misogynist image, but it had the opposite effect.
In a livestream, Chen defended the event, saying that DPP Legislator Lai Pin-yu’s (賴品妤) cosplaying also “objectified women.”
It seems that Chen does not know what cosplay is. For years, Lai has been a renowned cosplayer. If Chen has no idea what a cosplayer does, he should have learned some basic information about it before making a comment.
It is almost certain that the number of cosplay fans is larger than that of Chen’s livestream audience. Once Chen’s viewers can no longer stand him, the vocal ones would criticize him directly, and the quiet ones would simply forget him. In any case, Chen’s fan base will decrease day by day, because he has been turning more people away from him.
Hung Yu-jui is a Japanese-language teacher and translator.
Translated by Emma Liu
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
The Hong Kong government on Monday gazetted sweeping amendments to the implementation rules of Article 43 of its National Security Law. There was no legislative debate, no public consultation and no transition period. By the time the ink dried on the gazette, the new powers were already in force. This move effectively bypassed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The rules were enacted by the Hong Kong chief executive, in conjunction with the Committee for Safeguarding National Security — a body shielded from judicial review and accountable only to Beijing. What is presented as “procedural refinement” is, in substance, a shift away from
Taiwan no longer wants to merely manufacture the chips that power artificial intelligence (AI). It aims to build the software, platforms and services that run on them. Ten major AI infrastructure projects, a national cloud computing center in Tainan, the sovereign language model Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine, five targeted industry verticals — from precision medicine to smart agriculture — and the goal of ranking among the world’s top five in computing power by 2040: The roadmap from “Silicon Island” to “Smart Island” is drawn. The question is whether the western plains, where population, industry and farmland are concentrated, have the water and
The shifting geopolitical tectonic plates of this year have placed Beijing in a profound strategic dilemma. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) prepares for a high-stakes summit with US President Donald Trump, the traditional power dynamics of the China-Japan-US triangle have been destabilized by the diplomatic success of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington. For the Chinese leadership, the anxiety is two-fold: There is a visceral fear of being encircled by a hardened security alliance, and a secondary risk of being left in a vulnerable position by a transactional deal between Washington and Tokyo that might inadvertently empower Japan
RSS