Beijing’s passage of legislation to promote patriotism, and including Taiwanese in the law, is an exercise in futility and runs counter to common sense, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday.
China’s national legislature on Tuesday passed the Patriotic Education Law to strengthen patriotism among children and families so as to counter challenges such as “historical nihilism” and to safeguard “national unity,” state media reported.
The legislation provides a legal guarantee for carrying out patriotic education, Xinhua news agency said, adding that it would take effect on Jan. 1 next year.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“Historical nihilism” is a term Beijing uses to describe views that are critical of the Chinese Communist Party’s version of historical events.
The legislation states that it applies to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Speaking from the sidelines of a legislative session, Chen said that it is common sense that the rights and duties of Taiwanese can only be defined by laws and regulations passed by the Taiwanese legislature through democratic due process.
“A state that demands patriotism from its people has to earn that love by governing well and being worthy of public trust,” he said.
“Trying to legislate patriotism is like ‘climbing a tree to catch fish (緣木求魚),” he added, using a Chinese idiom describing a futile act.
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Jan Jyh-horng (詹志宏) said the council is assessing the potential impact of the law on the safety of Taiwanese in China, although the legislation does not stipulate any penalties for noncompliance.
“The experience of countries around the world, especially democratic ones, shows that patriotism can only flow naturally from the heart of the people and cannot be compelled,” he said.
“Compulsory patriotism has a checkered history of success,” he added.
“If China is bent on promoting [patriotism], we would advise it to focus on encouraging Chinese to voluntarily care about their nation,” he said.
Beijing’s passage of a flurry of laws on national security, espionage and patriotic education is a concentrated attack on freedom of speech, said Yeh Yao-yuan (葉耀元), associate professor of international relations at the University of St Thomas.
The vagueness of the legal language in these pieces of legislation is a built-in feature to empower the authorities to more effectively suppress personal freedoms, he said.
The Patriotic Education Law is the latest push in China’s efforts to strengthen state control over speech and provide a basis for imposing penalties and consequences for defiance, said Chen Kuide (陳奎德), executive director of the US-based nonprofit Princeton China Initiative.
Additional reporting by Reuters and CNA
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