A high-profile Taiwanese TV host found herself the latest to draw fire from Chinese Internet users after referring to Taiwan’s Olympians as “national competitors.”
Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) — better known as “Little S” — made the comment in an Instagram post on Sunday during the women’s singles badminton final between Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎) of Taiwan and Chen Yufei (陳雨菲) of China.
The post drew an angry reaction in China, where nationalist Internet users often police the comments of celebrities and companies for views that clash with the Chinese Communist Party’s official narrative that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are part of “one China.”
Photo copied by Chen Hui-ling, Taipei Times
“Hsu’s Ins” — short for Hsu’s Instagram — quickly became one of the most-searched topics on Sina Weibo on Monday, garnering more than 480 million views as of yesterday.
“Just stay in Taiwan. That way you don’t need to work so hard at being two-faced,” one online commentator said.
A representative for Hsu, who started out as a singer in the 1990s before becoming one of Taiwan’s most high-profile talk show hosts, could not immediately be reached for comment. The Instagram comment that drew outrage has since been deleted.
Most Taiwanese celebrities are careful never to reveal their stance on Taiwan’s political status for fear of being locked out of the lucrative Chinese market or angering fans at home who identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.
Hsu was unusual in celebrity circles for being outspoken in her support for former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Last year, she was highly critical of the government’s decision to ban exports of medical masks in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying they were more urgently needed “in China.”
In the past few years, Hsu has spent an increasing amount of time across the Strait building her brand.
Several companies that sponsor Hsu, including Unilever and sex-toy maker Osuga, have sought to distance themselves from Hsu, saying they would not extend contracts with her, according to the United Daily News and other local media.
Oriental House, a Ningbo, China-based maker of traditional medicinal teas, said it had canceled its contract with Hsu after her Instagram post.
“The nation’s interests are more important than anything else,” it said in a Sina Weibo post. “Resolutely support the one China principle.”
Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) was also targeted on Monday after congratulating several of Taiwan’s athletes at the Olympics, with angry Chinese Internet users asking why she had failed to celebrate any Chinese competitors.
Those outside China have found themselves targeted by Chinese state media and Internet users as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) encourages the country to challenge those seen as trying to split or weaken it.
The threat of losing market share in the world’s most populous country has prompted sports leagues, airlines and other multinationals to edit perceived political slights.
Japanese actor Yuki Furukawa was similarly assailed online last week after asking his 4.5 million Sina Weibo users whether they were watching the Olympics as Japan broke China’s 17-year gold-medal streak in mixed doubles table tennis.
“I asked at the wrong time. Should have been more careful of my words,” Furukawa said, after deleting the original post.
Taiwanese athletes have so far won 10 medals in Tokyo — two gold, four silver and four bronze — their best-ever haul.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching