Parents and politicians on Tuesday were infuriated when they found a government-sponsored educational Web site to promote national defense concepts showing a video of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on parade, along with about 40 World War II movies that were produced by the Chinese government.
The controversy also riled opposition legislators at the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee meeting yesterday, who accused top military officials of negligence for helping Chinese propaganda materials reach Taiwanese.
The Web site that broadcast the videos is among the programs managed by the National Defense Education Center, a collaboration between the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Education, and is based at Hsinchu Senior Girls’ High School in Hsinchu City.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taichung City councilors Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) and Hsieh Chih-chung (謝志忠) on Tuesday said it was egregious that the Ministry of Education is apparently unable to distinguish between our own military and enemy troops.
“If our students’ education on national defense has to depend on China to supply the materials, then our national security is in trouble,” Hsieh said.
Their sentiments were echoed by DPP Legislator Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財), who questioned Minister of National Defense Kao Kuang-chi (高廣圻) at the legislature over the matter.
“Our nation is facing a perilous situation with the threat of force from China. However, we are also facing real dangers of subversion from within, and cooperation with the enemy by Taiwanese who are bought off to work for China. This Web site is helping China to promote their military might and to destroy our national identity,” Hsu said.
He demanded that Kao and his military officials make a full investigation, since the Web site and the education center are part of a defense ministry program.
After the issue was raised on Tuesday, the Chinese video materials in question were removed, and officials at the education ministry promised to beef up the Web site’s internal monitoring and checks mechanism.
School principal Lu Shu-mei (呂淑美) said that the videos were uploaded by an assistant at the National Defense Education Center, which provides materials for teachers.
“Maybe the assistant believed those videos would help teachers to better understand China’s military threat against Taiwan, so she decided to put them online for viewing. We understand it could cause controversy, due to people’s different interpretations, so the videos have been taken off,” Lu said.
However, National Federation of Teachers Unions president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) suspected a hidden agenda by the Ministry of Education.
“China’s military parade with PLA troops on display to mark victory over Japan in World War II demonstrated only China’s viewpoint. It is totally different from the Taiwanese historical view,” he said.
“We see the adjustment of the high-school curriculum guidelines was led by pro-China academics. So I suspect this is also the case — that a few officials’ political concepts and ideology now have full influence over the education ministry,” he said.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS