Chinese state media blasted television host John Oliver’s comedy segment on Taiwan, saying that he “dodged facts” and misled the public about the nation.
“As a comedian show that sometimes covers politics, it is not surprising that it didn’t take the issue seriously,” the Global Times said in an opinion piece on Tuesday.
“Yet it reflected that most Westerners don’t know why the Taiwan question matters and they don’t care about it,” the op-ed added.
Photo: AP
The English-language newspaper is the Chinese government’s main vehicle for communicating unofficial government messages to Western audiences.
During the segment, Oliver sought to untangle the complicated relationship between Taiwan and China for a US audience.
Mixing historical narratives, pop culture references and salty language, Oliver concluded that Taiwan’s fate should be left up solely to its residents.
US-China tensions have climbed over Taiwan, with Beijing sending scores of aircraft into the nation’s air defense identification zone over the past few months.
US President Joe Biden has said that the US would defend Taiwan from attack, a statement that appeared to shift US policy away from one of “strategic ambiguity” in the case of a Chinese invasion.
White House officials have since said that US policy on Taiwan remains unchanged.
On Tuesday, a senior Taiwanese government official took to Twitter to playfully chide Oliver over the segment.
“I firmly support our soldiers’ dancing and demand a apology from John Oliver,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka wrote in the post, adding a grinning, squinting emoji face.
Oliver had on Sunday poked fun at a recruitment video for Taiwan’s military during the almost 20-minute segment of the HBO series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not