From all sides, the treatment of Kao Chia-yu has been deplorable

I don't have an appropriate cover photo so here's a picture.

"I was married before," she told me once. 

What followed was one of the most horrible stories to cross anyone's lips. I try not to tell too much of anyone else's story here, but this past week an old account hit the memory stratosphere, burning on re-entry.

Her boyfriend had been abusive while they were still dating, and threatened to kill her if she wouldn't agree to marry him. She didn't want to, and went to her father for advice. 

"Then you should marry him," he said, "because that must mean he really loves you."

She did. 

Of course it escalated. One day she simply had to leave. They divorced, and the whole town gave her the cold shoulder. She couldn't get a job or rent an apartment because she was a divorcée. Her family barely helped -- they didn't like the stigma, either. Even people who didn't know her would find out soon enough, she said, and it was usually the same:

"A man doesn't beat a good woman. What did you do to make him so violent?"

She didn't have the connections to legally change her household registration and set up a new life in a new town, and didn't want to try her luck as a domestic migrant worker without many legal rights.

Looking for any way out of her situation, she married my coworker, a foreigner who didn't care about her past. Or much of anything at all, it turns out: he'd crow proudly that she'd never leave him no matter how often he cheated on her (which was often -- he was well-known at the teahouses and barbershops). He'd announce his intentions to do just that and wander off while we (the only other foreigners in town, and we barely filled a four-top) stayed put at the riverside bar like respectable drunks. 

I told his wife what was up. She sighed and said she knew.

This happened in China -- a different country -- twenty years ago. I shouldn't have expected similar details to pop up in a story from the past week: Taiwan is a more progressive country than the one where this took place, and it is 2021. We know better. 

Why did I remember this story from so long ago?

Last week, legislator and former city councilor Kao Chia-yu 高嘉瑜 told the public her (presumably ex) boyfriend, public figure Raphael Lin 林秉樞, had subjected her to unconscionable abuse.

I won't recap Kao's account in this post. You can read about it here and here. There are a few things the English-language media mostly missed, however -- only the Taipei Times seems to have picked up some of it. First, that Lin made a concerted effort to silence Kao, saying "you know, I know and God knows, so...it doesn't exist" and threatening to derail her political career, using his network of business and political giants willing to "vouch for him". 

When it became clear she would not be silenced, he called up one of the political talk show hosts who frequently had him on the air, saying that people will forgive a person who apologizes and shows contrition, but won't forgive a "scumbag". Kao is not the first woman Lin has threatened.

That's not the only reason I remember this story, however. Another public figure in Taiwan had the audacity to say this:

A KMT Central Committee member said Legislator Kao Chia-yu deserved to be hit by her abusive boyfriend. I'm totally and completely speechless. pic.twitter.com/a9CnDoKYk2

— Leslie Liao (@AngryTaiwanman) November 30, 2021

The person saying it? KMT Central Committee member Huang Jinwei 黃覲偉. His more complete remarks can be found here (in Mandarin). Here's a screenshot from FTV:

My translation: "a woman who makes a man so angry he physically beats her really is such an ignorant person [this is also slang for a deliberate troll, troublemaker or drama-stirrer, especially online]. Especially her cheeks [slang for an irritating person]. But a woman named Tsai [that's President Tsai] who has never been hit by a man, isn't qualified to support her. A woman that no man wants is disgusting enough."

Of course, Huang was roundly criticized for his remarks. No emotionally healthy person could think they were anything other than deeply unacceptable as well as a sign that Huang is, bluntly, a misogynist.

How did he respond? By saying that she "deserved to be beaten".

This all happened about a week ago. Lin has been taken into custody. The KMT has come out to denounce Huang's remarks and insist that disciplinary action will take place. Huang himself has "apologized", saying his remarks were inappropriate and fully his responsibility and not in keeping with "the current state of gender relations" in Taiwan. He neither mentioned his misogynist treatment of Kao or Tsai specifically nor clarify what was unacceptable in his remarks. Nor did he express any sort of deeper understanding of why he was wrong. Essentially, it was an apology only in the most literal sense of the term (in which he issued a statement that contained vague language of regret and took personal responsibility, likely because he'd been ordered to do so). 

I couldn't help but think back to that time in the early 2000s when I met another woman who was told by an entire town that women get beaten only if they "deserve it". It was inappropriate then as now, and in the decades before. People knew that. 

This isn't a recent social revolution or some great change. It's not a culture difference either. In the mid-20th century, domestic abuse wasn't considered a crime so much as a "family matter" or even "therapeutic" (not joking) in the US, and presumably in Taiwan and China as well. The women it happened to generally knew it was wrong. 

Most people know it is wrong, and they have for awhile. There's nothing "current' about these fundamental social evolutions, in all countries. (I also note that Huang mentioned that "the two genders" should get along, but I don't exactly expect this sort of person to have a more enlightened view of gender identity). 

If the person I knew who suffered similar backlash from a less progressive society twenty years ago knew it was wrong then, then Huang should have known before he opened his big jerk mouth that it's wrong in Taiwan now. And it always was.

There is no apology that can erase that. There's nothing that makes it okay. It shows a fundamental problem with how he sees the world and specifically his attitudes towards women.

The only possible outcome is that Huang be dismissed. There's no forgiveness here: his remarks reveal a belief system totally out of sync with Taiwanese society and certainly not in tune with what his party needs to even begin to rehabilitate their image. I've been keeping my eye on the local news, and so far I've seen no evidence that any disciplinary actions have taken place. Promises, yes. Sent to the disciplinary committee? Sure. Action? Nothing yet. That man should not be on the central committee of any political party. I know one must be patient, but that man should already be gone.

What's worse, it seems the KMT's promise that such remarks do not reflect the party's own stance and are wholly Huang's responsibility don't mean much to other members of the KMT. 

As reported by FTV, KMT Youth League director and member of the Central Standing Committee of the KMT Tian Fang-lun 田方倫 asked "whether the case could be considered domestic violence if the couple is not married" and implied that a cohabiting intimate relationship was somehow different in terms of what and was not abuse.

Tian Fang-lun brands himself on Facebook as a "different kind of youth", which I guess is true in a sense.

City Councilor and all-around superwoman Miao Po-ya 苗博雅 shot back with something to the effect of "if you don't know what you're talking about maybe just shut up" (she said it a bit more diplomatically), and that these sort of "sloppy" comments actually target the victim even more, which perpetrates verbal abuse. 

I am extremely happy that Miao is one of the councilors from my district.

What I want to know, however, is why both Huang and Tian still appear to have jobs. It's unlikely that Huang will face any serious repercussions, as the KMT central committee is sending the case to the party's examination committee.

It's heartening that their comments have been met with near-universal condemnation. Taiwan is not a country where the social consensus is that domestic abuse is acceptable or a mere 'family matter' (although it does happen, at a rate higher than you'd likely expect from a country that seems so otherwise safe). 

But the fact that they could make those comments and -- despite promised disciplinary action -- drop out of the news cycle while perhaps getting a finger-wag from some buddy in their own party, shows there's a lot more progress to be made. 

I'm also somewhat pleased -- and a little surprised -- to see that most of the local media I've read on Kao's ordeal has reported it fairly straight, by local media standards. Including commentary that points out the way people like Huang and Tian engaged in victim-blaming and further harm to Kao is frankly kinder than I've seen the media be to her in some time, although I certainly won't be calling for any journalism awards.

The Internet commentariat, on the other hand, has been an entirely different beast. Yes, the worst offenders such as Huang were slapped down, but there's an entire board on PTT dedicated to treating Kao like garbage. I don't know whether that falls under 'free speech' or not, but despite most Taiwanese believing domestic violence is a problem in their country, that such ideas still fester in its underbelly (much as they do in the US) is its own problem.

In the past, they spent a lot of time dallying on really unimportant aspects of her political career, which Donovan Smith of Taiwan Report covers in more detail here (it starts after the pig innard extravaganza, about 2/3 of the way through) and here. She's also been one of the people targeted with deepfake porn. I'd like to say more about media and personal representation of Taiwanese women in politics here, but I think that's fodder for another post.

This past week has been perhaps a little better in terms of responsible media coverage, but that's quite a low bar to hop over. Nobody is vaulting.

Kao deserves better, the voters deserve better, the media can do better, and Taiwan knows better. 

A long ramble, from Harvard's decision to the earnest roots of bad opinions

I usually choose photos for metaphorical reasons -- I don't have a clear reason why I selected this one but I think it works. Draw your own conclusions.

Anyone reading this has surely heard by now that a popular summer language program that Harvard University held in China until recently is now being moved to Taiwan. The program director cited a chilly attitude from the Beijing host university as well as logistical factors -- for instance, separating the students into two dorms of quite different quality -- for the decision. 

The program offered not just language study but chances to travel around the country and learn about Chinese culture and history. Now, all of that will be happening in Taiwan, which means traveling around this country and learning about its own unique culture and history.

From the New York Times:

The program’s director, Jennifer L. Liu, told The Harvard Crimson that the move had been driven by a perceived lack of friendliness on the part of the Chinese host institution, the Beijing Language and Culture University. Harry J. Pierre, a Harvard spokesman, said, “The planned move of this program from Beijing to Taiwan has been considered for some time and reflects a wide array of operational factors.”

Other people contacted for comment said it was a purely logistical move and that Harvard was not looking to cut its ties in China. That could just be the opinion of one professor, or it could be a band-aid statement. But if it was truly just a logistical move, why say this?

“It is hoped that in the free academic atmosphere of National Taiwan University, we can lay a solid Mandarin foundation for the excellent students of Harvard,” the university said in a statement.

Frankly, however, I don't care what the actual reasons are for the switch. It doesn't really matter. This is going to be a fantastic chance for students interested in the 'Sinophone' world and studying Mandarin to be exposed to Taiwan. Perhaps this is one of the few times that having Mandarin as a main language in Taiwan is actually helpful for the country, rather than just more evidence of KMT-imported cultural and linguistic imperialism. 

This is a no-brainer, but I feel like it's worth spelling out: these sorts of positive experiences and interactions are the backbone of connections to the international community for Taiwan, and they also foster general goodwill among people who might go on to careers or positions of influence where being well-disposed towards Taiwan will be to Taiwan's benefit.

When one encounters something in a positive way and have good experiences with it, whatever values are transmitted or embedded in that experience (intentionally or not) are going to be more likely to influence that person. These can be toward a greater good, or they can be detrimental.

I'm going to go off-topic here to try and make a larger point: a good friend of mine described the negative end of this perfectly once, when discussing the more unfortunate side of how this works. 

Imagine you're this Western guy, you come to Taiwan and you meet a really wonderful woman. She's smart, beautiful, fun, cool -- and you even like her family. They're so welcoming and friendly. You date and maybe marry this woman. And she, along with her whole family, are these deep-blue KMT supporters. You don't speak much Mandarin (maybe you learn it, maybe not, most likely not all that well) so as far as you can tell, whatever they're saying about society must be right, because they're so great, and they're from here. They must know, they're Taiwanese! And they can be trusted because you know they're good people, right? And you don't really understand what TVBS is blathering on about in the background, or if you do you're so used to it that you don't register that they're about as reliable as Fox News. 

So then you go online, or to a social event, and you come across people discussing Taiwanese politics in English. Some are Westerners, some not. And they seem to just really hate all the people your wonderful wife and friendly in-laws like. Perhaps they're even saying KMT voters are terrible -- but they're literally your family! In fact, they don't seem to understand Taiwan at all, because what they're saying sounds so different from the pro-KMT narrative you've picked up from this really positive experience. 

Of course, you defend your wife's and in-laws' views, which you've come to see as reasonable and correct, and you're surprised that all that anger gets spewed at you now. And you're confused about why. Your pan-blue local fam is so nice, and these online haters are so mean, of course you're just going to dig in. 

And poof, you have the odd pro-KMT Westerner who doesn't get why their views on Taiwan are not cool at all, and actually deeply misrepresent Taiwanese history. 

(I use a heterosexual male example here but it's certainly not limited to them. It just seems to be mostly them.)

Now, think of that in terms of China.

You're a college student. You got into Harvard so you're either very smart or very rich (perhaps both, but probably not). You take an interest in Chinese, and sign up for this awesome study abroad program in China. You're aware that China is authoritarian, but you either don't care (if you're rich), or you earnestly don't want to judge people based on their government (if you're smart). 

You go, and you have this amazing time. The Great Wall is stunning! Your Chinese classmates are so friendly! Beijing is so historic! You're learning so much and seeing the world. You take various culture-related classes and fall in love with Chinese culture. You're impressed by the sheer history of it. And all your new friends in China -- who are welcoming and friendly -- also seem to think their government is fine, or at least they don't say it's not. And they're Chinese so they must be right! So your interest in China only deepens based on this amazing experience you've had.  

Then you return to the US and hear all this criticism of China, sometimes by people who've never been to China. You've never been to Taiwan, so you don't have any emotional attachment to it, and anyway in China it was just treated as part of China so you passively absorb that. You think this is ridiculous -- you've been there, it was such an amazing experience, and the portrayal of this "genocidal" and "totalitarian" "surveillance" state doesn't at all match your experience. After all, the government never seemed to be watching you stumble back to your dorm drunk at 4am.

(They probably were, but that's beside the point.)

Of course you feel angry, even speak up. No, we should be deepening our connections with this beautiful country I was so fortunate to visit. We should be engaging them! It's really not so bad! All those critics are so awful, and my Chinese friends are great. So if the critics say there's a genocide but in China I saw no evidence of that, those critics must be wrong or at least it's debatable, right? And Tiananmen was a long time ago, the square looks peaceful now, it's really not a big deal. And look how many people they lifted out of poverty! Does it really matter if it's not a democracy?

And since it's really not so bad, why are people so opposed to Taiwan being governed by China? It's a great country! And Taiwanese speak Mandarin and have the same culture and history, I mean for most of history it was China, right? We really don't need to move to the brink of war over this, do we? And I heard a lot of those "pro-democracy" protesters liked Trump!

I can't say this happens to everyone who studies Mandarin in China, but it's certainly a contributing factor. They go there, have a good experience, and then come back and wonder why everyone's so critical of this "evil" government in a place where they've just had a great time. 

Some might go on to be influential people. Others might go into "Sinology" (hate that word), continue to study Mandarin, or at least retain their connection to China. 

And boom, you get a whole bunch of China experts who are weirdly accommodating and defensive of the absolutely horrific, genocidal Chinese government.

Not all, to be sure. There are those who love the language, cultures and history but not the government, but I've come across enough 'China experts' who will go to bat for the CCP (or at least favor engaging with genocidal dictators) to know it's a thing. 

I'm willing to bet most of them think that their overall pro-China view is part of a larger pro-Asia view, or an integral part of advocacy for Asia. They probably don't realize that China isn't very well-liked in Asia, and standing with other Asian countries is better for the region than being friendly with the CCP.

I also know this because of how close I came to being like that. I didn't formally study Mandarin in China, I just taught English there for a year (whoopty-doo, I know). But I was interested in the country and might've come away feeling more accommodative toward the government if my time there had gone differently. I did have an interesting time, but I wouldn't say it was great. 

I did notice, for example, that I was indeed being monitored to some degree and that made me uneasy.  I got sick a lot, and the pollution was a factor. I made local friends, but I had foreign ones too, and we weren't being shepherded around on a study program. So if one of us felt something was a bit dodgy -- like, oh, realizing that our employer seemed to have far too much knowledge about where we were when not working -- we could touch base and see that we were not imagining things. 

Though I don't talk about it much, I also had a particular experience there that will never leave me. At my going-away party, the younger brother of the school owner got way too drunk and told all the foreigners about how he'd watched his best friend get shot in the head at Tiananmen Square. He'd been there. I'll never know why he told us exactly, but very drunk and these foreigners aren't going to blab and I am subconsciously looking for a way to express this trauma were probably factors.

And I came with an inoculation that so few Americans get from their education system: a Social Studies teacher who actually talked about Taiwan, even though it hadn't been in the curriculum. He'd fought in the Korean War and apparently spent some time here, and kept up with what was going on in the country. So by the time I went to China, I already knew that Taiwan was democratic, that a lot of Taiwanese did not want "unification", that both Chiang and Mao were horrible men who did horrible things, but Mao was worse (or at least, he did horrible things on a grander scale).

So when friendly Chinese people I met would speak of how great their government is, or just treat Taiwan as though it were obviously and irreversibly Chinese, I already knew to smile while inwardly rolling my eyes.

But I could have very easily cultivated a totally different attitude, and be preaching "engaging with China" and "deepening ties" as a Shanghai-based blogger if those cards had not fallen as they did. 

And you'd all hate me. You'd be really mean on social media -- I know I'm mean to the tankies -- and I'd obviously fall back on my amazing experience in China and dismiss you all as haters. My politics lean left and I've worked through a lot of frustration with the slowness of the democratic process, so I might have truly ended up a communist or even a tankie. I hope good sense and a moral compass would've prevented that, but most of us think we have good sense and a moral compass, even those of us who don't. 

Anyway, point is, all that goodwill toward China that program likely fostered among eager Harvarders Harvodians Harvardites Harveoles Harvardi Crimsonosi Cantibrigians (I looked it up) is now going to be fostered toward free, democratic, amazing Taiwan.

And because we can talk about things like Tiananmen Square, Taiwanese identity, Tibet, the Uyghur genocide and more, they'll not only learn the (better, prettier) Traditional characters but also get a more accurate picture of what the rest of Asia really thinks of Chinese aggression.

At the very least, they'll be exposed to a world where the pro-China view is not the default pro-Asia view.

Yay! 

Taiwanese education is not particularly "Confucian"

It sure looks traditional but they've also got bags on their heads.

Happy Teachers' Day! I happen to be off today for reasons completely unrelated to the holiday. So I wanted to circle back to a topic I've hit on before, but bears repeating for emphasis: 

There's a cliche popular in Taiwan that Taiwanese education is "Confucian" or based on the philosophy of Confucianism.

This is used as praise where it succeeds: high standards, high societal respect for education, universal secondary school and near-universal tertiary education, educating some of the world's best engineers, inventors and medical researchers. It's also used as a criticism for the system's failures: an over-emphasis on testing and lack of critical thinking or creativity, uninspiring lecture-style teaching, slavish devotion to scores, sticking students in classrooms for hours longer each day than their Western counterparts, sometimes seven days a week, a dearth of chances to simply ask questions. 

It is, however, false. It's straight-up historically inaccurate. In addition to having little historical basis, "Confucianism" as the fundamental belief behind Taiwanese education doesn't even accurately describe the system that exists.

So why does this myth persist? Partly because it's been around so long, and educators themselves like to trot it out. It's made its way into writing about Taiwanese education, which then gets cited as historical and sociological fact, and repeated yet again. For years it was an easy way for the old KMT dictatorship to obscure what they were really doing with education in Taiwan: turning it into a system to churn out competent workers who didn't ask too many questions, and as a locus of Sinocentric indoctrination. Even they knew that sounded bad, but "Confucian" sounds good -- wholesome, traditional, local, back-to-basics. 

By repeating it, you're only helping that myth persist. 

What are the roots of Taiwanese education, then? Mostly, they're Japanese. 

Under the Qing, there was no centralized or universal education system in Taiwan. The wealthy sent their sons to Confucian academies; some of the buildings these were housed in still exist, but the schools themselves have been gone for over a century. Girls were either educated at home, if the family was wealthy and inclined to think it was "worth" educating them, or not at all. These young, rich men formed a base of Taiwanese literati, but there weren't very many of them. The Qing themselves did nothing at all to develop education (or much of anything) in Taiwan. 

How do we know this? Because at its worst, "Confucian education" is reduced to memorization and regurgitation in order to pass imperial civil service exams. And how many Taiwanese actually took these exams in the Qing era? According to Manthorpe (Forbidden Nation), in all those centuries the total was 251. Of those, only 11 made it to the third-level examination in Beijing. Of those, only one or two -- I'm not exactly sure, but fewer than 5 -- ever qualified to become a Qing official. No Taiwanese ever served as Qing officials in Taiwan.

In Chou and Ching's Taiwan Education at the Crossroad, a historical overview of education in Taiwan completely skips the Qing era. It simply was not emphasized at that time.

That's not to say that Confucian education has to be bad. At its best, it does in fact prioritize questioning, the teacher-student learning relationship, and application. As I've said before, while I won't defend Koxinga as a person, he was a very good military tactician: this was not because he'd memorized and regurgitated the classics. It was because he was able to apply the teachings of the classics to real-world military situations. 

If you're thinking hmm, okay, but that doesn't sound like Taiwanese education, you're correct. Because Taiwanese education is not particularly Confucian.

To what extent Confucian education existed in Taiwan a century or two ago, it was only for a very few wealthy boys.  Of course, that changed -- what did Japan do differently?

Taiwanese education under the Japanese was based on Meiji-era education in Japan itself. Meiji education in Japan was conceived as bell-shaped: basic literacy and numeracy for the masses, perhaps some secondary education or further vocational training for emerging middle classes, and high-level education for the elites. This was based both on Western and Japanese notions of universal education: roughly put, some level of universality from the former, study of classics and moral codes from the latter.

This isn't a perfect way of putting it, of course: in the 19th century not all Western societies had embarked on projects of universal education -- it might be said that Japan beat them to it. Now, the West tends to look at universal education as a foundation of liberal democracy, but it seems more likely that leaders in these societies felt that a better-educated population would increase the supply of competent labor, leading to greater economic prosperity (and thus more money for the elites who employed them). The connection to Western thought in Meiji education, however, is quite direct, and well-documented.

This was the system that the Japanese colonial authorities slowly imported to Taiwan.

It is true that traditional Japanese notions of education, including the more scholarly pursuits of the samurai class, did influence the system as well. The moral codes embedded within these do have connections to Confucian thought. But to take that connection and say that Taiwanese education is therefore Confucian is like saying the Taiwanese language is influenced by English because the word for truck is turaku -- which came from the Japanese adoption of the English word "truck". Technically correct, but a rather long chain of connections to base a belief on.

This isn't what most people mean when they say "Taiwanese education is Confucian", though. What they're usually trying to imply is that Taiwanese society is inherently culturally and historically Chinese, and therefore the foundational orientation of education is, too. They're (often unintentionally) trying to push the historical narrative away from Japanese influence and toward Chinese. This is also exactly what the KMT sought to do when Taiwan was in its jaws.

Japanese education in Taiwan started out by enrolling elites, with very few schools opening in the early years. Then it rolled out to universal elementary education. Junior high school followed. By the early 20th century, girls' schools had opened, and some young Taiwanese women from wealthy families were going to Japan to study, or at least aspiring to it. Higher education gradually became available to a few elites, although it was difficult to gain entry as Taiwanese. In fact, many would-be teachers and doctors opted to study in Japan instead, as admission requirements were easier and such study would certainly lead to good jobs back in Taiwan.

The goal of this system was, again, to give everyone a nominal education in order to produce good workers for the empire. It most certainly was not to teach them to inquire, think critically, question their place or consider themselves equal to their Japanese leaders, though some members of the elite did indeed gain a more critical political consciousness. 

Because Taiwanese were not Japanese and most had no emotional attachment to Japan, another goal was included: a civic education intended to acculturate Taiwanese into Japanese norms and instill (blind) patriotism for the Japanese empire. In other words, political and cultural indoctrination.

It did employ some of the morality of Confucianism, however, this was intentionally divorced from any sort of Chinese cultural context, and only encouraged where it served the Japanese rulers. That is, it was implemented for political reasons only. From Tsurumi's Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan: 

But because Chinese classical studies had been associated with Taiwan's past under Chinese rule, many Japanese regarded them with suspicion. Great care was taken to lift Confucian morality from its historical context. Where the classical tradition urged loyalty and obedience to one's superiors it was to be strengthened; where it encouraged identification with China it was to be forbidden. Confucian principles, colonial educators thought, could be taught through all-important Japanese language studies, which would emphasize loyalty to Japan as they improved communication between ruled and ruler....(p. 12)

Loyalty, filial piety, obedience to legitimate authority -- all found within the Chinese Confucian tradition -- were emphasized with this end [keeping rural Taiwanese in the same occupations as their parents] in view. At the same time, great efforts were made to instill a very non-Confucian idea in Taiwanese schoolchildren. This was that manual labor was a dignified and honorable pastime for a scholar as well as for anyone else. Again and again, educational authorities urged teachers to show that the man who worked with his head also worked with his hands. Children were taught to clean and tidy their schoolrooms and work in their school vegetable patches. (p. 214)

This did not change meaningfully when the KMT took over Taiwan. 

In fact, where Japanese rule had improved Taiwan, the new government simply kept what was working. In some cases, they retained the Japanese -- often engineers -- who had worked on these projects for some time, until they had the expertise to run these systems themselves. All they really did was re-brand and take over. 

With education, this worked by keeping the fundamental system in place, but re-orienting the national education/taught patriotism towards Chinese culture rather than Japanese. The language switched to Mandarin, and lectures on the importance of loving one's country now focused on the Republic of China's vision of China, complete with Sun Yat-sen's philosophies and chanting slogans while raising the new national flag. 

As far as I can tell, no re-introduction of Confucianism took place, and certainly Confucian styles of education did not replace the system that was already there. Why would it? What they had already suited their purposes, just as it had the Japanese: just enough education to create good workers who wouldn't ask questions, with a hefty dose of authoritarian indoctrination. All they really needed to do was teach obedience to legitimate authority, and then lecture endlessly about how and why their own authority was legitimate.

The only thing that had changed was the colonizer doing it.

There were some relevant shifts. One might charitably say that the old Confucian morality that the Japanese used to their own ends was re-attached to its cultural context. I take a more critical view, however: the KMT simply took the Confucian morals that the Japanese had worked so hard to engineer for their own purposes, and simply applied them to KMT dogma instead. Because the KMT came from China, they could claim that this morality was in fact Chinese culture, and such a claim would have a very surface-level plausibility. Even the punitive and traumatizing bevy of exams, both national exams and those given at the individual school level, could be said to be "Confucian", but as discussed above, this is Confucian thought only in its worst, most dogmatic, most base form. 

As an example of how thin this veneer is: in Chou and Ching's Taiwan Education at the Crossroads, they mention Confucianism in Taiwanese education five times. Each time, they tie it back to "the mainland", although to their credit, they don't pretend the first several decades of the Republic of China on Taiwan wasn't authoritarian. However, at no point do they dive into exactly what is so "Confucian" about this system, or how the Japanese structure was tied in with "Confucianism" in the 20th century. They state it was the case, but provide little or no evidence.

It suits the government to continue to cite Confucianism in relation to Taiwanese education, and so there hasn't been much effort to change these stale narratives. It makes it easier for the bureaucrats currently in charge to either not enact change, or do it so achingly slowly that it seems to have little effect. It makes it easier to leave the traumatizing, soul-destroying testing system in place because of "culture" rather than actually do something about it -- which would be harder.

Some people in the Ministry of Education do have more progressive views. However, they face a deeply entrenched bureaucracy as well as critics who think an orientation towards education appropriate for a democracy (that is, one that teaches you to actually think) and learning about Taiwan is the same as the old KMT authoritarian indoctrination, even though they are not at all equivalent.

For the pan-blue camp, it makes it easier to put a soft-focus lens on history. "A system designed to quash independent thought, create good workers and legitimize authoritarian leadership" isn't a good look. "Confucian!" is much better branding. It plays into their bottom line: that Taiwanese culture is Chinese, and diverts attention away from their 20th century dictatorial brutality in Taiwan.

For teachers, it makes it easier to square the cognitive dissonance of how they were trained -- through fairly modern methods that do help them understand the ideals of education -- with how they must teach in a system that badly needs reform. "We know this doesn't work but it's very difficult to change, and we have little power to do so" is depressing. "Well, Taiwanese education is Confucian and therefore it's traditional" is a little easier to live with.

That does not, however, mean it is accurate.

The EU semiconductor plan: a case study in ignorance about Asia

Years ago, I came across an anecdote on a popular forum for foreigners in Taiwan, about how someone's family members in their home countries would ask the oddest things about life here -- think "do you have peanuts in Taiwan? If you don't have any peanuts there, we can send you some!" My own dearly departed grandmother once asked why I livd there at all, because "it's not a democracy!" This was in late 2006 -- she'd apparently not heard the news that Taiwan had democratized a decade previously.

These little stories illustrating Western ignorance about Asia don't mean much individually. After all, they're just anecdotes. I make no assumptions about any larger trends they might illustrate. But such anecdotes pop up often enough that perhaps it's worth exploring. I'd like to do that with a short case study -- truly, just something I came across and want to talk about.

Today, I woke up to this: 

 

Digital is the make-or-break issue. There is no digital without chips.

Yet today we depend on chips from Asia.

We will present a European Chips Act, to create a 🇪🇺 chip ecosystem from design to production.

This is about our competitiveness and tech sovereignty. #SOTEU pic.twitter.com/8vkjlvlad4

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) September 18, 2021

There's a lot to be said here, especially about the hinky economics of this tweet. That's not exactly breaking news, however, so I'll leave it until the end. First, take a look at some of the replies:

(You can read all these under the original link -- I didn't feel like embedding it all, as too much code makes Blogger weird. This is because Blogger is garbage). 

It's just astounding though: there are one or two replies, including my own, which point out that Taiwan, not China, is the semiconductor dominator. 

But for the most part, people who are against "globalization" and "dependence on other countries" seem to think this dependence is entirely in China, because Ms. von der Leyen said "Asia" and apparently Asia is only China, and maybe Japan. And maybe South Korea if you like K-pop. This assumption also conveniently forgets that the biggest competitors for dominance in that industry are the USA, South Korea and Japan...not China. 

Another writer might take this opportunity to say that fearmongering about China is misplaced, and the result is unfair Sinophobia like this. Obviously, I am against Asian hate and would never advocate for discrimination against Chinese people. That shouldn't even need to be said. But highlighting the threat from the Chinese government? That's pretty much right on target. The CCP is actually evil, they are indeed a real threat to the world, and yes, they do genocide. Any country dependent on a highly necessary export from China, or something like tuition from Chinese students should indeed be worried -- and looking for ways to reduce such dependencies.

This, however, is mostly the result of ignorance. Asia is far away, and China is of course massive and does produce a huge amount of the world's products. So, people will assume when someone like van der Leyen says "Asia", they mean "China". And since China is "bad" (which its government truly is), international economic cooperation is therefore "bad" and that lends credence to the belief that globalization is always "bad". 

This sort of ignorance also means that Taiwan gets ignored. Would these replies, and others who would agree with them, be so angry about international trade if they knew that the largest producers of the best semiconductors were Asian democracies? Why would someone even need to write about "smashing the free world" if you are in fact trading with the free world, and your trade with that free world helps keep much of Asia free?

The liberal democracies of Asia do need international links if they're to withstand the direct threat from China. Taiwan is at the front line of this, as China threatens literal invasion, but South Korea and Japan are well aware of the threat, too, even if it's more figurative for them: China isn't looking to take over those countries directly, they want the modern version of economic tribute from vassal states. 

If you want to support the values of human rights and self-determination, and countries which at least attempt to implement these ideals make the best of the cutting-edge technology that you need, wouldn't the wiser course be to support them?

Is it not simply smarter to buy from countries whose governments are friendly to you, which embody values you also embody, as a way of supporting those countries? 

In fact, it actually helps China to try and undercut its neighbors in Asia. You make subpar chips (sorry Europe, but mostly you do) so you lose a tech advantage. These neighbor countries -- again, friendly democratic states which share your values and stand against China's increasingly aggressive attempts at Asian and global hegemony -- lose your business, which hurts them, and their ability to help you stand against the Communist Party of China. 

How is this in any way a smart strategy?

Engaging in trade with countries like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan is economically more efficient. Militarily, the possibility that you might have to engage with China is reduced because you're supporting all these friendly countries which help contain it. You get the best chips, Xi Jinping gets mad, democratic Asia has a better chance at continued economic prosperity. 

Why the everloving hell would you want to undercut this?

And how can we educate Europeans who assume all of this is about fighting China for dominance, when China does not dominate in semiconductors? How can it be made clearer that Europe's trading partners in Asia, in this particular industry, are not the bad guys? How can awareness of Taiwan be raised -- not only regarding the admirable way it's managed to blast the competition despite being a smaller country, ignored politically by much of the world, but also for its fight for recognition, and the ways in which this fight actually align with Europe's values and interests?

I don't know, but that entire reply section sure was disheartening. Please wake up, drink a nice cup of coffee, and read a damn book.

So, now let's talk janky economics.

Is this the best use of European resources -- to try to build up a 'home industry' in a sector where they lag so far behind? Do they stand any chance of catching up to, let alone surpassing, Asia's semiconductor dominance in a way that makes any economic sense at all? Or would this be a huge resource dump with very little result except perhaps some subpar, behind-the-times chips? Because honestly, when it comes to this sort of tech, countries like Taiwan are 2022 and I'm sorry but Europe is twenty-twenty who?

(That was a bad joke, but forgive me, for I am old.)

And sure, some people would scream that I'm a filthy neoliberal for even saying that. I don't really care, because I don't consider it a libertarian position so much as one that just makes sense. I'm not against building up domestic industry in any given country per se, but this is not exactly like saying "we import all our zippers from China and we should make zippers here so China can't cut off our zipper supply, also they do genocide". One can also make an argument that making zippers domestically isn't efficient, but I'd rather tolerate some inefficiency than support a genocide, so okay.

But these chips we're talking about -- look, I've actually spent time around the people who run these businesses, and I am literally not allowed to say much about that (and won't), so all I'll say is these chips ain't zippers. You need the absolute best on the market to be competitive, and the definition of "the best" is always changing. The chances of Europe actually producing cutting-edge chips fast enough to make all that money worth it is...honestly, I hate to be mean, but it's like Turkmenistan announcing they're going to spend their whole GDP on becoming the industry leader in augmented reality. 

Perhaps that's a bit unfair -- this isn't exactly breaking news, and Europe isn't Turkmenistan. But the overall point remains. From the Financial Times back in July:
 

The question facing the EU as it prepares to embark on this undertaking, however, is whether it ends up squandering large amounts of public money chasing geopolitical ambitions that may not be supported by industrial and market logic. While Europe has world-beating strengths in corners of the semiconductor supply chain, it lags far behind Asia in particular when it comes to making the highest-end chips.

Changing that picture, executives warn, will take years of effort and vast quantities of public money — at a time when governments in Asia and the US are also pouring tens of billions of dollars of subsidies into the sector.

One could argue that the fear here is that China will take over Taiwan, but it still makes more sense to simply support Taiwan, rather than make it easier for China by insisting on building your own mediocre crap, when Taiwan is capable of producing the best of the best. You could help support Taiwan by buying the best from them and recognizing all of the good that comes from doing so. 

Then your constituents, or reply guys, or whomever, might not have such preposterous ideas about how this is all a big fight with China, when it simply isn't.

China's Drug War: Coming Soon to a Taiwanese Hospital Near You

                    

Hey look it's an accurate cover photo and you know it. 

If you're wondering where I've been these past few weeks, it's still the same old thing: moving all of my work online means I'm in front of a computer all day, and I just get tired of it. I want to read a paper book or look at something that's not a screen.

I've also been working on that longer project with Brendan comparing every general history book about Taiwan available in English. It took some time, but look for it to be coming out soon.

But, as usual, something got stuck in my head that won't get out. So here we are. 

About two weeks ago, the Taipei Times published this piece on China snapping up the Taiwan distribution rights to almost a third of all new pharmaceuticals. It was a good article, and important warning -- and seems to have been largely overlooked: 

In a report dated Monday, the Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Bureau decried the arrangement as unreasonable.

“Requiring South Korea to purchase vaccines through a North Korean distributor or Israel to go through a Palestinian firm would be preposterous,” the report said.

Granting exclusive distribution rights in a nation to its political and military adversary is ethically problematic, it said.

Due to the antagonism and mutual distrust between the two nations, it is highly unlikely that they would complete a contract and instead use it as a tool for political manipulation, it added.

This would further hinder transactions and jeopardize the right to healthcare of the “represented country,” the report added.

I would switch Israel and Palestine in that analogy, personally, but the point holds. This is terrifying, and you should be terrified. It is not crisis-mongering. It's an actual crisis in the making. 

Imagine a future in Taiwan where about a third of new drugs on the market are difficult to get or simply not available because China holds the distribution rights, but it would be political suicide to buy from China (not to mention playing directly into CCP hands).

Now, expand that thought: not just you at the doctor's office unable to get the drugs you need. Imagine millions in that same position, and how angry they'd be. Imagine the political crisis that would create: we already saw it with the BNT vaccines. Visualize that, but with a huge percentage of all new drugs on the market. 

Consider as well the opportunities for malicious actors and disinformation purveyors, populists riling up the people who are rightfully mad because they can't get medicine, sharpening that public anger into a poison spear and throwing it at exactly the wrong target. Not China, whose fault this is, or even those in Taiwan who insist China can be dealt with reasonably and warmer relations are possible without undermining one's own position. Rather, the protests would be directed at those trying to protect Taiwan from Chinese interference and annexationism -- the people who best understand that Taiwan needs to stand up for itself. 

Think of the destabilization: a KMT that wins, and caves in to buying medicine through Chinese channels, whose own supporters voted them in so that they could do this, and a furious opposition. Or DPP in power, but furious KMT voters who blame the DPP, not China, for the existence of the problem. Imagine a DPP who cannot cave (it would be political suicide with their own base) but has trouble withstanding that kind of pressure. It's not hard to imagine, because that's already what they do! 

With a segment of the population -- albeit a shrinking one -- who still does not understand that it is impossible for Taiwan to deal with China without China trying to undermine the country, it would be...well, a crisis. It would be difficult to have a functioning democracy in a country who can't access a huge portion of the latest medicines.

Let me make it worse. Consider as well that there are always two players in these games. China's gonna China, that's how the CCP rolls. Subjugation-happy assholes to the last. But those pharmaceutical companies agreed to those terms. They didn't see anything wrong with selling the rights to the Taiwan market to Taiwan's biggest existential threat. 

Taiwan watchers have been talking a lot recently about the good press and stronger support Taiwan has been getting. I admit, I've been glad to see it too. But while we've been celebrating, entire vital sectors of the economy have been quietly turned against Taiwan by the CCP. And those international entities let it happen. 

You might not be mad about the airlines caving to China. Perhaps you're not mad about the major language proficiency tests doing it (still, fuck IELTS). Maybe you couldn't work up sufficient anger over exclusion from international organizations, "Chinese Taipei", the end of actual Taiwanese representation in the Taiwanese representative office in Hong Kong or the BNT fiasco. In a lot of cases, it's a name change, purely aesthetic, or it's one medication. Those international organizations are pretty useless sometimes, it seems.

But all of those slights, all of those insults, all of those successful attempts to undermine Taiwan: they were always leading up to bigger, bolder plans for forced subjugation. 

That's what this is. 

I hope you were mad before. If not, I hope you're furious now. 

This proves without a doubt that the Shanghai Fosun deal with BNT (Shanghai Fosun, as a large company in China, is ultimately beholden to the CCP) was not an unfortunate accident, an oversight, a one-off. It was a direct attempt to harm Taiwan, and BNT let it happen. They agreed to it. Everyone who said it wasn't a big deal, that the DPP were wrong for declining to consider working with Shanghai Fosun, that the distribution rights were above board and negotiated in good faith, not an attack on Taiwan...you were wrong. Your opinion was bad and you should feel bad. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the weird workaround of letting Terry Guo, TSMC and Tzu Chi buy the doses was not some odd accidental outcome. I have thoughts about TSMC's role that I won't share, and not much of an opinion on Tzu Chi (though I dislike religious organizations generally), but I stand firm on this: Terry Gou is a gamepiece. Perhaps he knows it to some degree, but I'm not sure if he realizes the extent to which is is a CCP pawn.

It also proves that the only way to deal with China is to refuse to play. If Taiwan bends over and accepts drugs through Chinese distribution channels -- as the torch-and-pitchfork types are likely to scream that the country should do -- then it'll be more drugs next time. Then something else. And another thing. And soon the CCP plan to get its claws inextricably into Taiwan will actually have worked. 

There is no way to talk to China, no way to negotiate, no way to warm up relations. They will always try this. They will never come honestly to the table. They will always try to undermine you. It's like trying to have an honest relationship with a narcissist, abuser or compulsive liar. It's not possible. If you take this punch, if you let that comment slide, if you try to placate them, they only escalate. It never works. 

The only way to win is not to play. 

Finally, this proves that a basic understanding of Taiwan among the general international community actually does matter. I've heard people say that only policymakers matter, only politicians, only officials. There's no point in trying to reach a wider audience of people who are not in a position to effect change, because, well, they can't do anything. 

That attitude is wrong. 

You know who's sitting in that "general audience" section? Businesspeople. Talent that Taiwan might recruit. Several million people who might intentionally choose a Taiwan-made product over a Chinese one. Writers and newscasters who don't focus on Taiwan normally but at the Olympics, might take a stand and just call Taiwan by its name, rather than Chinese Taipei. Creators who might re-think what peddling their products in China will ultimately cost them, and ask if it's worth the market access. 

And, of course, another important segment of that audience: pharmaceutical executives. 

Not the people who are considered particularly important in Taiwan discourse. And yet, looking at those numbers, I sure do wish more international pharma execs were more knowledgeable about Taiwan. I wish we'd tried harder to reach people like that: not just in the drug industry, but all industries. Because today it's medicine, tomorrow it'll be something else. It always is.

Perhaps it wouldn't make a difference. Perhaps they'd have signed away Taiwan's distribution rights to its biggest enemy regardless. Perhaps there is nothing one can do to make them care. 

But perhaps not. Perhaps actually knowing what one is doing might cause one to choose a different option.

You honestly never know.

This is a great reason to sign my petition for Last Week Tonight to do a show about Taiwan, by the way. The whole point is to reach a general audience. Now available in Mandarin!

ONE WEIRD TRICK to stop INFLAMMATION OF CHINA TENSIONS that doctors don't want you to know!

 

If you need this explained to you like Richard Dawkins needs explanations of literature, China is the shark.

Two articles appeared recently over Taiwan's vaccine struggles amid a global shortage, one in Nikkei Asia and one in The Guardian. Both articles are fine, though they both get the same thing wrong (which I'll address later). They both cover how Taiwan's attempts to secure enough vaccines to beat the outbreak have turned into a political imbroglio.

However, the media narrative from both can be examined through the titles that editors chose for them, and that's what I'd like to look at. How does an article about Taiwan where the media outlet wishes to center Taiwan craft a headline, compared to an article about Taiwan where editors are stuck in the past and feel they must stick to tired cliches about the Taiwan-China relationship?

Both do the right thing by questioning China's narrative, or by putting it in parentheses, like this: 

China’s altruistic statements have been somewhat contradicted by its objections to the US and Japan donations, and by Taiwanese allegations (which China denies) that it actively blocked a deal Taiwan was working on with the German vaccine producer BioNTech.

This is great: it shows increased interest in and reporting on Taiwan by major international media, and it shows more willingness to look at the Taiwanese perspective or at least consider it through an international or local, rather than Chinese, lens. While international reporting on Taiwan is still tied to China, it's no longer guaranteed to follow the script that China puts forward. That's an improvement. 

However, I will come out and say that the Asia Nikkei piece is superior to the Guardian one. This is not a slight against Helen Davidson, and I'm not trying to pit her against Erin Hale. Rather, the issue is with the titles. 

Asia Nikkei:

Vaccines become political as Taiwan wakes up to COVID reality

President Tsai's approval rating drops as island struggles to procure doses

This isn't great news for Taiwan, but it is a good headline. It's neutral, and it centers Taiwan. China enters the narrative in the actual article, as it must (because it's the one doing the politicizing, with the help of the KMT and their various compradores) but the reader of this article is brought in through a focus on Taiwan.

Skimmers who just read the headlines will come away with that with a reasonably accurate view that something dodgy is going on with vaccine procurement in Taiwan, and might click to find out what those struggles are. Then they learn that the struggles are caused in part by a global shortage, but also Chinese interference.

Compare that to The Guardian: 

How Taiwan’s struggle for Covid vaccines is inflaming tensions with China

As island faces new outbreak and mistrust of Chinese jabs, Beijing objects to donations from US and Japan 

This headline sucks. 

I want to make it clear that headlines are almost always written by editors; writers rarely get a say in them. This is not a jab at Helen Davidson (it is a jab at her editor, but I don't know who that person is.)

It sucks because it totally bungles who is doing the inflaming of what. "Taiwan's struggle for coronavirus vaccines" is not inflaming tensions with China. China is inflaming tensions over Taiwan's vaccine struggle. This is an active choice on the part of the Chinese government, which does indeed have free will. 

All Taiwan is trying to do is get some damn vaccines. They don't want to play political games or "inflame" anything. And tensions aren't gout. They don't inflame on their own. Someone has to inflame them. That someone is China.

The subtitle isn't great either. It's not wrong per se, but the reader is invited to wonder "why would Taiwan distrust Chinese vaccines?" If they don't really know a lot about Taiwan/China issues, and the headline has not clarified that China is the inflamer (not the inflamee) they might preemptively conclude that Taiwan is being unreasonable, when it is not.

It also centers Beijing's reaction to the US and Japanese donations, rather than how these have affected the Taiwanese situation, even though the article is ostensibly about Taiwan. China starts out being centered, and the reader is then invited to keep centering China. 

The actual article is a lot better -- again, this isn't about Davidson's work -- but someone really ought to inflame tensions with the Guardian editors.

You may be curious what the two articles get wrong. It's relatively minor, but worth pointing out one last time. Both include some version of this narrative:

China said Fosun – the Shanghai-based manufacturer with exclusive regional production rights for Pfizer/BioNTech – had offered to supply Taiwan, but Taiwan had refused.

[Drew] Thompson said there were scientific and transparency concerns about China’s vaccines, which made it unsurprising and potentially sensible for Taiwan to reject an offer of Chinese-developed vaccines. But if the Fosun offer is legitimate, refusing it is “entirely political”.

Clearly, Thompson doesn't actually know that Fosun never made a legitimate offer. To distribute your drug in Taiwan, you need to apply through the Taiwan FDA. It is possible to do this, though as Terry Gou is finding out, you can't just leave out important documents. 

Fosun never applied. So it never offered those vaccines to Taiwan in any capacity that Taiwan could officially accept. How can Taiwan reject an offer it never actually received? 

I explore this process in more detail here, by the way.

Hale's article also commits this error, and includes discussion of vaccines actually manufactured in China, not Germany. I can't quote it because I've hit the paywall on Asia Nikkei (I read the article days ago), but it leaves out the fact that Chinese-made drugs are banned in Taiwan, by law. To accept drugs made in China would require changing the law. That's not going to happen. The German-made doses are a gray area, but Fosun would still need to apply. To date, it has not done so. 

A minor point, but one I wish the international media would get this point right.

I'm also really starting to wonder about this Thompson fellow in the Guardian article, however. He says:  

 

“Pfizer and BioNTech have a huge incentive to ensure that the Fosun product is equivalent, so I would think there is no concern,” he said. “There’s no reason not to take it.”

 

But he himself provides a very good reason just a few paragraphs up:

 

If Taiwan accepted Chinese vaccines it would be the political “kiss of death for the DPP [Taiwan’s ruling party]”, Thompson said. “It’s quite likely China would take some sort of gratuitous swipe … see it as a capitulation or recognition of Beijing’s superiority.”

Right -- how is that not a good reason not to take this "offer"? Why is Thompson spinning this as somehow Taiwan's fault?

This is not entirely political: it's also about public health and safety.

China does indeed have every reason to try to harm Taiwan, including tampering with vaccines. And of course, the main reason Fosun never applied is probably because it would require a level of submission that national governments require, not regional ones. Fosun can't just treat Taiwan like Hong Kong and Macau, but to apply, it would essentially have to admit that Taiwan is a place not controlled by China. 

So instead it uses its doses as media fodder, because it knows they're never going to make it to Taiwan. The China-proffered solution to a problem China created is (perhaps literally) a poison chalice.

Why Thompson is implying that this is mostly political on the Taiwanese side despite laying out exactly why it's actually a political move on the Chinese side is beyond me. How is China deliberately inflaming tensions somehow politicking on the part of Taiwan?

There is one more thing both articles fail to clarify. Both are correct that Tsai's popularity has fallen, however, both fail to contextualize this: the general reader might be left with the impression that Tsai's drop in approval is especially concerning. In fact, at about the same time in their administrations (mid-2nd term) both Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-jeou had lower popularity ratings than Tsai. Chen dropped to about 18% I believe, and Ma hit an astounding 9%: the latter was so awful that students occupied the legislature. And they managed to be that unpopular without a pandemic (and with Ma not being constantly attacked by the CCP). 

Taiwanese voters have high expectations and tend to be critical. Properly contextualized, Tsai's 40% is actually pretty impressive. I won't say it's great, but frankly, it's better than one might expect, and surprisingly so. The typical international reader, however, won't realize that from reading these pieces.

A lot of people who think they are knowledgeable about Taiwan and China don't seem to want you to know how to stop this kind of inflammation. A lot of them have PhDs, so it's fair to say that there is indeed one weird trick to stop inflammation of China tensions that doctors don't want you to know. 

It's simple to pinpoint, but difficult to execute. If you want to stop inflammation, the best thing you can do is look for the source. If your feet swell up because you're not wearing supportive shoes, the answer isn't to elevate your feet with an icepack. That will help, but the shoes will just cause inflammation again tomorrow.

The trick is to do something about your shoes.

Ahem. China is the shoes. 

Taiwan's problem isn't vaccines -- it's China (or: Reuters Sucks Again)

Lizards try to hide, but you can see them if you look closely

There's a big stink right now about Taiwan refusing BioNTech doses from Fosun, a Chinese company. To show you what's going on, allow me to deconstruct a half-assed Reuters article which is basically just copied from Xinhua (a propaganda arm of the CCP, not an actual news organization). 

This propaganda garbage from Beijing with no Taiwanese perspective whatsoever starts here:

Fosun signed a deal with BioNTech to exclusively develop and commercialise COVID-19 vaccine products developed using BioNTech's mRNA technology in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

BioNTech's development and distribution partner for the rest of the world is U.S. firm Pfizer Inc.  

What they don't say: why on Earth would anyone believe a Chinese company had the right to ink a deal with a foreign company over distribution rights in Taiwan?

Imagine if an American company signed a deal with a Swiss company to be the sole distributor of a product in Canada, without ever actually asking the Canadian government. 

Of course, we know why they did this: to try and force Taiwan to accept a Chinese-made deal, as though Taiwan were a part of China and had to abide by whatever contracts China signed. 

Is it any surprise that Taiwan is resisting this?

This isn't clarified in the Reuters piece because the quotes are lifted from Xinhua, the CCP's main propaganda outlet. The Reuters copy barely reads as original work. 

As a Facebook friend noted, Fosun doesn't produce this vaccine. They were provided with a huge number of doses -- or the option to buy them, it isn't clear -- and have said they intend to produce it locally in the future, but as of now they have access to millions of doses they cannot sell in China, because they're not licensed to. This is because China is sore that the rest of the world doesn't want its crappy domestically-produced vaccine -- it's a pride issue, they don't want to admit that the European vaccines are far better. 

Notably, the original deal appears to include doses for Hong Kong and Macau, not Taiwan (I've also asked around my local network as I know a lot of pharma people, and I'm not the only one who's noticed this).

Why was that deal later changed to include Taiwan (which I am quite certain happened)? Nobody seems willing to say, and Reuters doesn't seem particularly interested in finding out.

They do seem to be rather interested in what Fosun chairman Wu Yi-fang told Xinhua, however: 

 

Wu said certain groups in Taiwan he did not name had been in touch for an emergency purchase of vaccines and the company was willing to "provide vaccine services to Taiwan compatriots".

"Taiwan compatriots" are not a real thing, but I digress.

Who are those "certain groups"? There is another name for them: compradores. Basically, rich Taiwanese business assholes who are willing to sell out their country so they can get richer. They probably stand to make a lot of money off of this Fosun deal. I've had personal run-ins with such people, and simply calling them "business assholes" is about as nice as I am able to be. Taiwan would be better off without them; I wish they'd just go live in their ugly mansions in China and leave this country alone.

In other words, "certain groups" is a phrase doing a lot of heavy lifting here and I'm not sure Ben Blanchard, Lincoln Feast and the Beijing newsroom are aware of it. 

It doesn't take a huge leap of logic to figure out which "certain groups" pressured which officials to include Taiwan in this big Fosun/BioNTech deal. I know "follow the money" is a cliche, but come on. Follow the damn money.

Did Reuters call a single soul in the Taiwanese government to ask what Taiwan's view of this was? 

I bet you an ugly mansion in China that they did not. 

Since last year, Fosun has been promoting vaccines for Taiwan, Wu said, adding they hope shots can arrive on the island soon to help prevent a resurgent spread of the virus.

If China really cared about getting vaccines to Taiwanese they would not have blocked the deal Taiwan was trying to make with BioNTech to begin with, you business asshole. 

Fosun did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

So, Xinreuters, when Fosun didn't call you back (and you knew they wouldn't), why didn't you call up any of the myriad people in Taiwan who would have talked to you about this country's perspective? 

Taiwan's government has said it is talking with BioNTech rather than Fosun, and that the two sides were on the verge of announcing a deal in December when BioNTech pulled the plug.

Taiwan has implied China was to blame for the failed deal, while China has blamed Taiwan for trying to circumvent Fosun.

Taiwan never agreed to be serviced by Fosun, and China has no right to force them to be. That's not "circumventing", just as I am not "circumventing" FamilyMart by going to 7-11 because I think their fantuan are better.  

The other thing this article doesn't mention: according to Chen Shih-chung, the Taiwanese government hasn't received any official application to sell these vaccines in Taiwan. How can the government agree to offer a product if the company that wants to provide it hasn't even asked the Ministry of Health and Welfare if they can do so?

It's almost as though Fosun, like the CCP, is pretending the Taiwanese government simply does not exist, while at the same time painting it as the entity creating obstacles.

In essence, it's a way of trying to force the Taiwanese government to accept, through backdoor maneuvers, that China has the right to negotiate for it.

There's another piece of information that doesn't quite fit neatly anywhere but I believe should be included: a Taiwanese company (Dongyang) was at one point looking into becoming the Taiwan distributor of this vaccine. There were questions about the cost, which the company would bear, compared to the quantity they'd acquire, and Dongyang pulled out. Was the markup too high, and if so, why (the article mentions that Chinese companies have a lot of power and this might have had something to do with it)? Should the Taiwanese government, knowing vaccines were needed, have stepped in and borne the costs? Was pulling out of the deal a mistake and if so, whose? 

I don't have answers to any of those questions, but it's worth noting that Fosun was not always considered by anyone to be the only possible distributor for BioNTech in Taiwan.

Finally, while all of this has been going on, Zuellig Pharma -- a company with offices across Asia, including Taiwan -- announced a deal in late April to supply much of Asia including Taiwan with the Moderna vaccine. The idea that Fosun is the only pathway to mRNA vaccines for Taiwanese is simply false, but Reuters doesn't seem particularly interested in that, either.

Of course, this has made its way into the Taiwanese Fake News for Aunties and Uncles network. Various critics -- including former KMT legislator and unificationist trashbag Tsai Cheng-yuan (Alex Tsai) called Chen "too passive", saying he has a "bad mentality", that he buys "inferior vaccines" (the truth is that Taiwan purchased the vaccines that were actually available to them). 

They cry out, "do Taiwanese only deserve inferior vaccines?" and point to the fact that currently, the Fosun vaccines are in fact made in Europe, not China (for now). Of course, critics neglect to mention that that might not always be the case.  

Apple Daily added that DPP legislator Wang Ting-yu is saying these doses are mostly set to expire in June or July and that Hong Kongers don't want them. There are rumors that they're defective reported by both Apply Daily and UpMedia, I can't verify the veracity of that accusation. Let's be clear: this could be fake news. Others have said the expiration is September -- the different dates are probably related to different batches.

That Hong Kongers don't want vaccines has been true for awhile, by the way. It's not vaccine hesitancy, as BioNTech is available. One does not need to get Sinovac (though about half the doses available are Sinovac, so someone has to get them and I wouldn't want it to be me). The trust issue is not with vaccines, but with the government. I don't blame them. If the Chinese government told me I needed to do something, I would endeavor to the best of my ability to do the exact opposite. And I love vaccines: I got AZ voluntarily! 

This has trickled down into my local community. I don't go out much due to the recent outbreak, but I do get electro-therapy on my back. While there, various aunties and uncles at my rehabilitation clinic have been complaining that Taiwan should just buy these vaccines. From the media, they seem to have the impression that it would be an easy negotiation for safe vaccines and Chen and "the DPP" are just being obstinate.

Chinese media seems happy to perpetuate this and make it seem like Taiwan simply doesn't want to buy from a Chinese company. And there are media consumers in Taiwan who are lapping it up. People are worried about this outbreak and looking for reasons to criticize, and to be fair, the CECC has not come back with a strong campaign to clarify the issue.

Of course neither the KMT (though they are not the only critics) and the CCP are ignoring the fact that 'taking' these doses -- and how would the government even so that if Fosun hasn't applied to offer them here? -- would be a de facto abrogation of Taiwan's sovereignty. It would, in effect, be admitting that the Chinese government has the ability to preside over a deal made with a Chinese company to distribute vaccines in Taiwan, and at no point do any Taiwanese officials need to be involved. 

You do see how that is an impossible path for Taiwan, yes?

It's not a surprise that Alex Tsai is a sort of compradore, or at least compradore-adjacent, and the KMT and CCP are essentially in cahoots -- at this point I consider to be the KMT a puppet or wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP -- so of course this is how it would play out.

Let me summarize for you what I think is really going on here: 

China is looking for ways to maximize vaccine diplomacy but is aware that it's domestically developed vaccine isn't very effective, and isn't wanted by the rest of the world. They know perfectly well that Taiwan won't accept it either. Some business assholes stand to make a lot of money if a company like Fosun can acquire and sell millions of vaccine doses, or produce it locally. 

So they inked the deal with BioNTech, but pride kept China from actually allowing these doses to be offered. So they played a long game of acquiring them "for Hong Kong and Macau" while quietly pushing to end Taiwan's own deal with BioNTech. After that succeeded, they quietly added Taiwan to the list, without actually talking to Taiwan. In fact, Taiwan might have always been the goal: not only does "refusing" these doses they were never officially offered make Taiwan (and the DPP) look "passive", but if Taiwan did accept them, they'd be basically abrogating their own sovereignty. 

Or, perhaps, faced with an oversupply of vaccines Hong Kongers don't trust for a variety of reasons, they decided to use them in a campaign to attack the DPP's image. Or maybe they haven't actually acquired the vaccines (there's no confirmation the doses are in Shanghai) but are using this as a way of stirring up an anti-government media frenzy in Taiwan, with their KMT friends helping out. But this is a weak and slimy argument if the doses aren't even in China, and we don't know that they are.

Either way, China wins.

So now, China can try to claim the "high ground" by saying they have good vaccines from Europe and want to help, but obstinate, difficult, troublemaker Taiwan doesn't want them. They make it sound humanitarian, but of course, they're the ones who blocked the initial deal.

And this isn't even getting into the question of whether anything sent over by China is trustworthy. I wouldn't take an injection offered by the CCP, even if they say it came from Europe. Would you?

They ensure this makes it into the Taiwanese news by getting some of their KMT muppets to make emotional arguments at a time when Taiwanese citizens are feeling ignored by the world, distrustful of the AZ vaccines available, worried about the current outbreak, and wanting someone to blame. What worried news watcher wouldn't be moved by an outcry that Taiwanese deserve the best vaccines available at such a stressful time?

(I will not go so far as to imply that the CCP engineered the outbreak in Taiwan. Not that they wouldn't try; they absolutely are that evil. I'm just not convinced they're quite that competent and the Novotel/Wanhua teahouse sources of the outbreak are plausible and likely.)

These same news reports elide the fact that a lot of people are looking to get very rich, a lot of the sovereignty issues are not being reported on accurately, and neither the Taiwanese nor the international media seem interested in reporting the whole story. 

In fairness, the government has made some mistakes with Taiwan's pandemic response. Frontline workers should have been encouraged more strongly to get the vaccines available. Pilots should not have been given shortened quarantines. We had a year to figure out how to do mass rapid testing should the need arise. But I would give Taiwan an A (not an A+) on its overall response, while the rest of the world gets a C, D or F. And although mistakes have been made, this is not one of them.

In other words: shame on you, Reuters, and your "writers" in the Beijing "newsroom".