Recently, a senior Chinese official called on Taiwanese to make “the right choice” in Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections. How ironic is it that a man who has never experienced free and fair elections in his life, whether as a high-ranking official or as an ordinary citizen, could lecture people who have been free for half a century about elections.
As a member of a people, the Uighurs, who have felt and seen the effects of such dark irony for 70 years, I feel it is a historical duty to interpret this absurdity in real time.
Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), president of China’s semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, made this dark joke in his New Year’s message, saying that the vote in the elections was an important choice between “peace and war” and “prosperity and recession.”
The translation of this play on words, which means “Taiwanese brothers, return to our arms” in the same style, is as follows:
First, we want you to give up your so-called freedom of expression, which is boring, sometimes confusing and troublesome. Our party schools and party leaders will teach you the truth in a simple way and even drill them into your heads. You will be free from boring mental labor. You have the opportunity to feed yourself using only your arms and legs.
Second, leave aside those chaotic and dangerous actions called demonstrations, so that you could enjoy working from sunrise to sunset. Your sleep will be early and sweet. No need to tire yourself by changing TV channels throughout the night; just watch China Central Television on one channel until morning comes. Your time would not be wasted.
Next, why go to polls every four years, spending all that money and tearing into people who hold opinions different to your own. Come back into our arms. We will appoint some of you to represent you all, and they will bring your voice to us in our biannual meetings. They know exactly what sounds we want to hear, so your requests would never go unnoticed.
Next, whatever you do, do not trust the US’ modern weaponry for security. Not only do we possess similar weapons, we also have a large population that they lack. The moment you return to us, our population will flock to you, live side-by-side with you and protect you. You will become a Taiwan with a population of 100 million, not just 23 million.
Of course, where there is a carrot, there has to be a stick. If there are anarchists among you, we will silence them just like we did in Hong Kong. If there are separatists, we will corral them in camps like we did in Xinjiang. If there are superstitious people among you, we will destroy their temples as we did in Tibet, so they will see and taste heaven and hell in this world, not in the next. Taiwan is not a large place like Xinjiang, but it is perfect for concentration camps.
Then there is the question of peace. We are its champions and protectors. We are not stupid like Russia: We will not shed the blood of separatists as they are doing in Ukraine — we will make their bodies rot in prisons instead, like we did in Xinjiang. We are not naive like Israel: We do not spread what is happening to the whole world like it foolishly did in Gaza — we only show dancing minorities. We are the judge, jury and executioner, and with this record, we could also be the mediator of world peace.
There is no need to concern yourselves with justice: the Chinese Communist Party is justice. How could it be that there would be injustice under its rule? Could there be darkness under the sun or thirst in the sea?
I could go on, but I do not want to belabor the point. This was the dark humor in Zhang’s New Year’s joke for Taiwanese. The darkness of this humor became more evident in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) annual New Year’s Eve address, in his claim that Taiwan would “surely be reunified” with China.
I hope that everyone, anywhere in the world, would only hear such dark humor and that God would protect us from it ever happening. Just like Zhang’s advice to Taiwanese to choose the right path, these officials’ ancestors said they would help the Uighurs in East Turkestan in 1949 when they established socialism.
As historian Dr Nabijan Tursun wrote in his book General History of the Uyghurs, the Chinese general, Wang Zhen (王震), promised to withdraw from East Turkestan after three years — that is, after establishing socialism. However, it has been 72 years since that promised deadline and there is still no withdrawal. The Uighur genocide continues today.
Kok Bayraq is a Uighur-American observer.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS