Many local news media over the past week have reported on Internet personality Holger Chen’s (陳之漢) first visit to China between Tuesday last week and yesterday, as remarks he made during a live stream have sparked wide discussions and strong criticism across the Taiwan Strait.
Chen, better known as Kuan Chang (館長), is a former gang member turned fitness celebrity and businessman. He is known for his live streams, which are full of foul-mouthed and hypermasculine commentary. He had previously spoken out against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and criticized Taiwanese who “enjoy the freedom in Taiwan, but want China’s money” and cohosted a rally to “protect Taiwan’s democracy” in 2022. However, over the past two years, he began praising China and denouncing Taiwan.
As a self-proclaimed “peace ambassador” to China, Chen traveled to Shanghai and live-streamed, but people quickly noticed that from the moment he landed at the airport, he began a journey of “admiration and awe” — praising the customs clearance, the public restroom, roadside trees, public trash cans, vending machines, food delivery robots, buildings and infrastructure — and often added criticism about Taiwan.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) welcomed his visit and assured him that he could relax and feel like he is returning home. During his visit, China’s state-run China Central Television reported that Chen’s live stream in Shanghai was a huge hit. However, his exaggerated remarks praising everything in the city and denigrating Taiwan drew strong criticism and speculation from Chinese and Taiwanese.
Many Taiwanese questioned whether Chen was invited by the TAO as a “model” for its “united front” work, and if he was granted the privilege of smoothly passing customs despite his controversial past, his public display of his tattoos and his use of a virtual private network to “leap over” China’s “Great Firewall” to access YouTube.
Many Chinese speculated he was a “fence-sitter” who switches stances for profit, while others criticized him for his vulgar language. Hardly anyone believed his inflated statements about China’s advances over Taiwan, but instead saw him as ignorant for being in awe of technology that can be found in both countries.
However, when asked by a Chinese pedestrian which country he came from, he did not answer, and reacted with a string of foul words on camera after he returned to his tour bus. When Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) suggested he stay in China longer to see more and really understand their living situation, Chen again lashed out with foul language.
It echoed the reactions of people in a few recent cases, such as a man named Chang Li-chi (張立齊), who pledged to file a lawsuit against the government after the MAC revoked his Taiwanese citizenship. He was found to have a Chinese residence permit, which is against the law. Chinese social media influencer Liu Zhenya (劉振亞) — whose spouse-based residence permit was revoked by the National Immigration Agency for advocating that China annex Taiwan through military force — called her deportation to China: “shoving her into the abyss of eternal suffering.”
Their strong reactions to returning, moving to or staying longer in China — which they constantly praise — raise the question whether they know their “united front” value to the CCP largely depends on their identity as a Taiwanese or a Taiwanese spouse, and they fear losing that leverage.
Chang said that “China is freer and more democratic than Taiwan,” but their actions do not seem to back their words. They enjoy freedom of expression in Taiwan to criticize the government and travel freely, while profiting from the CCP’s cognitive warfare on Taiwan — a “united front” model promoting pro-China narratives to sway Taiwanese to believe unification is a better future — because it is their only choice in authoritarian China.
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