In an opinion piece (“Surrendering cannot bring peace,” April 9, page 8), Chang Kuo-tsai (張國財) argued that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) video promotion of “lying flat” (躺平) as a vision for peace is, in essence, a call to surrender. It is a compelling argument, and it should go further.
The KMT’s video attempts a clumsy bit of political alchemy. It shows young people stretched out on lush grass and floating on the serene waters of a pool, ostensibly “lying flat” in total security. The message is unmistakable: Only peace can allow you the luxury of doing nothing.
However, in its attempt to be trendy, the KMT committed a fatal linguistic error. It adopted “lying flat” — a term that, across the Chinese-speaking world, has come to symbolize the hollowed-out despair of a generation that has given up on the future. In doing so, it inadvertently told the truth. The “peace” it is selling is not the relaxation of a free person; it is the resignation of the hopeless.
Peace, in this formulation, becomes a lifestyle commodity — something to be enjoyed once the “correct” political concessions are made. It is an illusion, not an endgame. The belief that power will stop pursuing you once you stop resisting is a dangerous fallacy.
Taiwanese must recognize the trajectory embedded in this “lying flat peace.” It begins with a voluntary act — the seductive promise that by yielding, pressure disappears, that one can finally drift in that tranquil pool because one is no longer a target.
Once autonomy is surrendered, “lying flat” ceases to be a luxury and becomes a refuge. It is the posture of the defeated — the silence of a generation that has learned effort no longer brings reward, and that it is powerless before a system that degrades, demands everything and delivers nothing.
In Hong Kong, the authorities introduced a chilling phrase: “soft resistance” (軟對抗). Under this logic, action is no longer required to offend.
Attitude is enough. A failure to applaud becomes suspect. A reluctance to participate becomes deviance.
If you do not consume enthusiastically enough, you are resisting. If you do not marry and produce children to serve demographic goals, you are resisting. If your children are deemed not passionate enough singing the national anthem, they are singled out for reprimand.
Even lying alone in a room, staring at the ceiling in quiet exhaustion, can be reinterpreted as defiance.
You might not be charged — yet, but you will be warned, castigated and pressured, and inevitably, the line will move.
In such a system, there is no safe posture. To stand is to provoke. To sit is to refuse. To lie flat is to resist.
The choice before Taiwanese is never between war and peace — but between two fundamentally different definitions of peace, one grounded in autonomy and one defined by the absence of conflict.
The play has already been performed in Hong Kong. It began with the promise of a quiet life and ended with the criminalization of a quiet sigh.
Taiwanese should read that script carefully. This play does not end with a peaceful nap; it ends with a cage.
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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