The government must warn the public about China attempting to increase its influence by citing a shared culture and ethnicity as part of its “united front” rhetoric, a Taiwanese academic said on Monday.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) claims that Taiwan and China are “culturally one” are embodied by how Fuzhou City has reached out to Lienchiang County (Matsu) and Xiamen City has wooed Kinmen County, said Hung Chin-fu (洪敬富), a professor of political science at National Cheng Kung University.
Taipei must be alert to China’s use of culture and ethnicity to get more Taiwanese to sign up for a Chinese ID card, Hung said.
Photo: Screen grab from Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming’s Facebook page
A government official speaking on condition of anonymity said separately that they hoped the Republic of China still had a place in the hearts of Taiwanese officials attending Chinese-hosted Lunar New Year events.
The remarks came on the heels of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) leading a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in China’s Fujian Province over the weekend.
The unnamed official said that Wang attends the event every Lunar New Year and last year even helped promote a Fujian-Matsu card for travel between the Chinese city and the Taiwanese county, citing their proximity as a reason for the promotion.
The Fuzhou Daily reported that the festival’s central theme extolled unification and celebrated UNESCO in December last year adding China’s Spring Festival customs to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The Mawei festival is held in communities among those represented in the UNESCO listing, giving the event more significance, the newspaper reported.
Wang on Sunday wrote on Facebook that he, Lienchiang County Council Speaker Chang Yung-chiang (張永江), county councilors Tsao Er-chang (曹爾章) and Chen Yu-fa (陳玉發), and four other local officials attended the event.
“Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” with the joy stemming from both sides “being of one people,” Wang wrote.
Wang thanked CCP officials and urged both sides “not to cast aside our five millennia of history for five decades of politics.”
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
A Taiwanese man apologized on Friday after saying in a social media post that he worked with Australia to provide scouting reports on Taiwan’s team, enabling Australia’s victory in this year’s World Baseball Classic (WBC), saying it was a joke and that he did not hold any position with foreign teams or Taiwan’s sports training center. Chen Po-hao (陳柏豪) drew the rage of many Taiwan baseball fans when he posted online on Thursday night, claiming credit for Australia’s 3-0 win over Taiwan in the opening game for Pool C, saying he worked as a physical therapist with the national team and
RSS