Chinese band crossed a line
The Pingtung County Government’s independent music festival, the Taiwan Music Festival, began on Thursday and ended yesterday. One of the bands set to perform was Chinese indie band Young Dan (回春丹), but the band stepped on a cross-strait landmine when they published a promotional post on social media using the words “Taiwan, China.” The post outraged numerous fans who support Taiwanese sovereignty and led the director of the festival to immediately cancel the band’s scheduled performance.
On Tuesday, when Taiwanese fans’ rage had not yet subsided, a group of fans and spontaneous demonstrators arrived during Young Dan’s performance at Legacy Taipei, holding flags that read “Taiwan independence,” “liberate Hong Kong,” and even “Tibet independence” to peacefully express their position.
Many Chinese bands have performed in Taiwan in recent years, so why has this not happened before?
Chinese bands have always understood to only use the word Taiwan or the name of the city in their posts, such as “Taipei” for example.
They would never stick “China” in it. Young Dan crossed a line, trampling on Taiwanese sovereignty in a situation filled to the brim with a sense of national consciousness.
It is only natural that they would be cast aside by fans and other Taiwanese who possess a fundamental belief of sovereignty.
For people to only use flags to express their demands is the most gentle method of protest possible.
While the situation festered on the Internet, a portion of people only flirting with the concept of sovereignty made irresponsible comments such as: “Politics is politics, music is music,” or: “Saying that Taiwan is a part of China won’t hurt anybody.”
Some people even went so far as to compare the concert protestors to China’s “little pink” Internet nationalists, turning up their noses in contempt. These people are accomplices to unification and are holding back national sovereignty.
We should first focus on supporting Taiwan’s right to sovereignty.
If China was not constantly hoping to forcefully annex and culturally unify with Taiwan, would unification and independence even be a topic of discussion today?
Regardless of which political party you support, no Taiwanese should want Taiwan to be taken advantage of.
Tseng Kuan-ya
Chiayi County
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