At LSE, Taiwan is still Taiwan...for now.

The World Turned Upside Down as of April 6th
(photo from a friend)

I'd actually prefer not to do these sorts of media analyses, because I'd rather that the media got stories right. Sadly, that doesn't seem as though it will be the norm anytime soon.

This time, the dodgy reporting is centered on the new LSE (London School of Economics) sculpture entitled The World Turned Upside Down by artist Mark Wallinger, which is basically a globe turned upside down, at an angle not typically considered by most.

I don't really need to outline the Chinese-student-manufactured "controversy" around the sculpture, you can read about it in a number of places, including The News Lens, the Taipei Times and The Telegraph (which, in my opinion, has the best journalism on the issue).

But what I do want to highlight is how confusing so many other news reports have been, some of which are putting out facts that are simply not correct. I don't mean "up for debate", I mean demonstrably false. So let me state right here: I have a friend in London (more than one actually) who works near the LSE campus. On April 6th, he put up a photo pointing out that Taiwan had not yet been altered to be depicted as a part of China, and the dot representing Taipei had not been downgraded from a red dot representing a capital city.

And yet...

From New Bloom a few days ago: 

In the original version of the sculpture, Taiwan was depicted in a different color from China, as was Tibet. Taipei and Lhasa were also marked as the political capitals of Taiwan and Tibet respectively. However, following protests from Chinese students, Taiwan was repainted to be the same color as China and the red dot that originally marked Taipei was changed to a black dot, downgrading Taipei to the status of a Chinese city rather than a political capital.

From Taiwan News on April 4th (so before the date of my friend's photo), with a headline beginning "LSE forced to change color of Taiwan...": 

Huang Lee-an (黃立安), a Taiwanese student at the university, told CNA that after the school convened a meeting with student representatives to discuss the matter, it decided to change Taiwan's color from pink to yellow, to match that of China. The student said they also had the red dot labeled Taipei, changed to black, demoting it from a capital city of a country, to a mere city in a province of China. 

The student said that "REP. of CHINA" was also unceremoniously removed from the artist's work.

I also find this headline odd because nobody "forced" LSE to do anything. LSE made a bad decision on its own, then walked it back.

Thinking, "huh, that's weird! After the Taiwan News report, my friend posted that picture and Taiwan's color and name had not been changed", and then reading New Bloom and reacting with "wait, so, the university said it has not come to a decision yet, but it was changed between when they said that and now?", I rang up my friend again and asked him to pop by the sculpture whenever he was able. He's not in the UK now but reported back the results of someone else's walk past the globe, and...

...it was never changed. 

I have no reason to disbelieve my friend, who provided photographic evidence, so I find it highly unlikely that he is wrong and these news pieces are right.

So why did New Bloom say it was changed, and why did Taiwan News strongly imply it?

Beats me.

But it doesn't help the case for a robust free press in Taiwan when the free press - in English or any language - can't get these things right.

I mean, come on. Beijing and its army of angry Internet commenters and international students already screws Taiwan over so hard. When we've had something like a small victory (very small - who knows whether the sculpture will continue to depict Taiwan accurately?), why are we rushing to pretend as though we've been screwed? It lowers our credibility, makes it harder to report on even these small wins, and makes it harder still to update stories accurately, if the facts in question weren't correctly stated in the first place. 

From Taiwan News (link below).
The caption is misleading, if not outright wrong: the sculpture still looks like that, and was never changed. 

One more thing before I let this go. (If you don't care about my opinion on LSE's decision, you can stop here.)

I've been wondering for awhile how it is that all those Chinese universities get ranked so highly on global university ranking lists, when one cannot even realistically study History, Political Science or pretty much any of the humanities with any hope of getting an education that reflects international consensus or plain old evidence in whichever non-STEM field you're specializing in.

In a similar vein, I've also been wondering - LSE's a great school, yeah? Ranked something like 26th in the world. So how is it that with all its talk of discussing the world "from a different angle" with this sculpture, and educating the next generation of the world's brightest leaders-to-be with frank discussions of political realities and the history of imperialism and oppression that turned our world upside-down, that they can't even get this right? That they talk big about great minds taking critical approaches to real issues - perhaps critically evaluating Israel's treatment of Palestine, Georgia's claim on Abkhazia (where some of the anti-Abkhazia arguments will sound familiar to Taiwanese used to Chinese distortions of history), frank discussions on Tibet...

...and yet when it comes to Taiwan they suddenly go all stupid?

Seriously, LSE - a bunch of Chinese students told you "Taiwan has been Chinese since antiquity" and you just bought that? Are you joking? Would you like a crash course in Chinese and Taiwanese histories, where even the most neutral reading of the facts of history call these Chinese students' claims into deep question? Because I can give you one, and you seem to need it.

A case was made that these are the UN borders and you didn't even question whether China being on the UN Security Council has anything to do with that, and how that might render UN borders non-neutral?

Really?

You couldn't look at the words that were meant to inspire the entire point of the sculpture in the first place and made your decision appropriately: 

The World Turned Upside Down is a famous ballad from the English Revolution. It was used as the title for Christopher Hill’s classic account of radical underground movements from that time, and Leon Rosselson’s song in tribute to Gerrard Winstanley and the ideals of the Digger Community: 

‘When once the earth becomes a common treasury again, as it must ... then this enmity of all lands will cease, and none shall dare to seek dominion over others, neither shall any dare to kill another, nor desire more of the earth than another.’ [Emphasis mine.] 

- Gerrard Winstanley 1649, The True Levellers Standard Advanced.

And if this is about Chinese student tuition fees - but they'll be so mad if we don't change it! - then how can you say you are one of the best institutions of higher learning in the world, when at the end of the day the most important thing is getting your hands grubby for those sweet, sweet international fees? To be one of the best, shouldn't you aspire to something higher?

There's still time, LSE. Nothing's been changed.

Do better.