A film about an Australian-Chinese war hero in which the lead role is played by a white actor has provoked anger in Australia at the “whitewashing” of the nation’s history.
Billy Sing, whose father was Chinese and mother British, was a decorated soldier from the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of World War I at which he earned the name “the assassin” for his success as a sniper.
But in the yet-to-be released TV film The Legend of Billy Sing, his character is played by a young Caucasian actor.
“I’m very sorry to learn that somebody is trying to whitewash a Chinese-Australian face with a white face. It’s a disgrace,” said Tony Pang, president of the Chinese Australian Forum.
“To see this distortion of historical fact — it’s sad,” he said.
Pang said Australia’s Chinese community had been subjected to such treatment in decades gone by, but that times had changed.
“The question I ask myself is: What if [former prime minister] John Howard is being played by a Pakistani? It’s ridiculous. It’s just not appropriate,” he said.
Director Geoff Davis, who cast his son in the lead role, defended his decision to the Australian newspaper last week, saying he had been unable to find an actor to play Sing’s Shanghai-born father.
The filmmaker said his aim was to “create a fictional story validated by having people perform true deeds, in the tradition of the historical novel.”
Former National Party senator Bill O’Chee, whose father was Chinese and mother Irish-Australian, said he was “deeply disappointed.”
“We’ll now have people growing up thinking Billy Sing was white,” he said.
Henry Makeham of the Australia-China Youth Association said the film was a lost opportunity to showcase the contribution of ethnic minorities to Australia’s wartime history.
There was no dearth of Australian-Chinese actors who could have fit the role, he said.
“It was essentially a whiting out of a Chinese-Australian hero,” he said.
Queensland-born Sing was the most successful sniper in the Gallipoli campaign, killing more than 200 enemy soldiers. He died in 1943.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS