There is an old saying in Chinese that essentially means that when an academic tries to reason with a warrior, they might as well be talking to a wall. Times have changed, and military men are far more reasonable now than when this saying emerged. Retired army general Yu Pei-chen (于北辰) is a good example of this.
Today, academics are now often the ones who cannot be reasoned with. Alice Ou (區桂芝), who teaches Chinese Literature at Taipei First Girls’ High School, and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲), who is also an associate professor at National Tsing Hua University, are examples of such academics.
CHINESE?
The Paris Olympics provided Weng with a chance to make a fool of herself, which she duly did.
Talking about the Taiwanese badminton duo winning a gold medal in the men’s doubles final, she said she is proud to be Chinese, drawing attacks from all sides on the Internet.
I also responded to her on Facebook, saying that her comment was as absurd as an American saying they were proud to be British. It is a sign of the times, and the strange reality is that in today’s Taiwan, such a person is a professor and a legislator.
Asked about how she felt about being besieged online, Weng said, “Are we not Chinese?”
However, when a student posted a sign that said “Chinese professor” on her office door, she called her student “narrow-minded.”
Why was she angered by students calling her “a Chinese professor” when she called herself Chinese? Her students were “broad-minded” enough to promote her to full professor despite her being an associate professor.
Weng is bad at logical thinking. She appears unaware of linguistic ambiguity and the precise meaning of words.
“China” refers to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the international community.
Therefore, by saying that she was proud to be Chinese when Taiwanese athletes won a gold medal, she was saying she was proud to be from the PRC. This is why she angered Internet users.
However, she contradicted herself by asking, “Is the Republic of China [ROC] not China?” when the KMT, the party she belongs to, emphasizes the “one China” principle. If the PRC and the ROC were both China, there would be “two Chinas.” Exactly how many Chinas are they advocating for?
Weng could make this clear, as clearly she does not grasp the concept of a modern country, mixing up culture, consanguinity and nationality.
FREEDOM?
Ou is not much better when it comes to critical thinking. In a short video, she said that the kind of freedom “we Chinese” promote is the same as what Westerners speak of.
Referring to the writings of ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Ou said it is spiritual freedom that matters.
“One would not be constrained by the outside world if one’s mind is free,” she added.
The definition of liberty and human rights is entirely different from the freedom mentioned in Zhuangzi’s work. How could she mix them up?
It is little wonder that she does not care that China scored 9 out of 100 in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report while Taiwan, a country unbearable to her, scored 94.
Her motherland is China, the one across the Taiwan Strait, which she referred to as “in my blood” and “a part of my life.”
Lee Hsiao-feng is an honorary professor at National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Fion Khan
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
RSS