Five great things to read after the election

I spend so much time critiquing the media that sometimes, I like to point out pieces that are worth reading. The well-written (or spoken), thoughtful stuff that either makes you think, teaches you something, or elevates Taiwanese voices above the general din of foreign commentators. 

Not all of these are about the election specifically. Some are, but some are more about critical points and interesting ideas being made more accessible to international audiences, simply because more Taiwanese voices are slowly starting to be heard. 


A survey of Taiwanese history

First up is one I've already linked: Kathrin Hille's survey of Taiwan's history in the Financial Times. This is the article to give someone who doesn't know much about Taiwanese history, but would like to learn more. It gets a lot of little, often-overlooked details right without being overly long. For example, it's one of the only historical surveys clarifying both that the Qing, for most of their colonial reign, did not control all of Taiwan, and explores in some detail how 'not Chinese' Taiwan really became under Japanese colonial rule -- including in the minds of most Chinese leaders.

These crucial details are often overlooked in historical summaries of Taiwan, which tend to make it seem more tied to China than it ever really has been. It's engaging, readable and accurate. I honestly can't think of anything I'd fix. 

Why Taiwan's election matters -- for Taiwan, and for the ideals of democracy

Next, Michelle Kuo's excellent piece in The Guardian is well worth a read. I love this one because it centers everything Taiwan has gotten right. Essentially, that Taiwan may have its issues but the fundamentals are good. It also correctly positions Taiwanese democracy as something that grew out of the resistance movement to KMT dictatorship. That is, it came from the Tangwai, the fighters, the Taiwanese insisting on something better. 

Certainly, KMT supporters want to believe that they are the party of democratization, because it's easier to take comfort in that than to think about all the ways their party attempted to stop it from happening, and the leaders they take as role models were objectively bad people. (The one KMT leader who is actually owed some respect, Lee Teng-hui, is the one they kicked out of the party.)

Moving back to Taiwan

Next up is a fascinating listen-and-read from NPR on Taiwanese Americans who have chosen to move back to Taiwan. It addresses all sorts of topics, from how their families might feel about their choices, to the relative feeling of safety in Taiwan despite the geopolitical threats.

There's a lot here that expats who do not have Taiwanese heritage, like me, might not necessarily realize when it comes to Taiwanese Americans who make the move, and topics we probably wouldn't think to investigate on our own. 


Emily Y. Wu on CNN

After the election, Christiane Amanpour interviewed Emily Y. Wu on the election results and what they mean for Taiwan. I want to see more of this -- getting Taiwanese voices in the international media rather than bringing on some rando white guy commentator. Wu's answers were articulate and thoughtful, providing perspective on the results and why China's threats have not deterred Taiwanese voters. She does especially well in describing why, exactly, Taiwan is already an independent nation. 

I get so tired of "should Taiwan be independent" or "will Taiwan get independence" or "can we support Taiwan independence" as though Taiwan is not currently independent. If it isn't, who governs it? Someone other than the people of Taiwan? 

I was a little taken aback by Amanpour's seeming lack of preparation. She says Lai referred to Taiwan as "Republic of Taiwan, China", and then double-confirmed it. Of course, he did no such thing. He calls it exactly what President Tsai has always called it -- either Republic of China, Taiwan or Taiwan, Republic of China. Could you even imagine what would happen if a president of Taiwan switched the two names?

Amanpour also seemed to brain fart on President Tsai's name, but hey, we all have bad days. Regardless, Emily was insightful and worth listening to.

An election scholar's take on the results

Finally, there's Frozen Garlic's take on the election results. There's little here that I didn't already know, but Batto lays out a clear narrative of what happened, and what it might mean for the parties, the government and the nation going forward. He spends a lot of time discussing who might be speaker, what it could mean, and how much power the TPP now wields in the legislature (as well as what would happen if there were a battle over Lai's premier pick, and how that would affect the various parties -- especially the TPP). 

The only thing I'd add is that it would be interesting to see the DPP back the TPP's Huang Shan-shan as speaker. I'm not sure they will, and it would be unusual for the speaker to come from a party that holds only eight seats, but it might be a way to get the TPP to consider the DPP's agenda more favorably, rather than simply trying to convince the TPP to support the DPP pick for speaker. 

As a bonus, if you're interested in how the tiny parties did, there's Donovan Smith's take to read, as well. He spends less time on the speaker and premiership and more on how various parties' fortunes have risen and fallen. 

Why stay in Taiwan?

It's the little things...or is it?

You probably don’t care about my life, but here’s the deal. I’ve had a somewhat tumultuous week professionally, although nothing that ended up being terribly deleterious. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I’ve been feeling frustrated about the limitations of teacher training opportunities in Taiwan for residents like me, despite how much we can help in the face of Taiwan’s push for internationalization. 

I have no desire to discuss the details behind this; it’s insider beef that you really don’t need, and might be wrong of me (or at least harmful to me) to divulge. 

I've also been feeling more frustrated than usual about Taiwan's naturalization laws. Nothing has changed since the 2007 reforms, opening up a pathway for magical stardusted special and senior foreign professionals, basically saying most foreigners who call Taiwan home -- whether they're white collar like me or blue collar like most immigrants here -- are garbage. Not worth caring about. 

Yes, the road to dual nationality may be narrow now, but there's room for it to expand. But I fear it will happen when I'm too old for it to matter. I'm not sure exactly how I will grow old in Taiwan as planned, because I can't get a mortgage and don't have local family, but landlords don't like to rent to the elderly. What am I supposed to do when I'm 80? If the law changes when I'm 60, that's a little too late to fix the problem. 

There's something to be said for fighting for something so that the next generation can enjoy fairer access. And yet, recently I've been wondering if this is enough. Wondering why I bother. 

With all this in the background, I’ve been trying to blog about politics to get my mind off it. Nothing comes out right, though. I have a few half-finished posts that I might wrap up and publish anyway, or perhaps not. We’ll see. Maybe I just need to not with the politics right now. 

Instead, I thought I'd examine something else. I know perfectly well that I'm not actually going to leave Taiwan (which, to be honest, is part of the problem. Maybe I should be more open to doing so). So rather than stewing in my own angry juices over this, perhaps I should talk a bit about why I stay. 

People love to ask why I moved to Taiwan. That story isn't very interesting. Studying in India made me want to learn more about Asia in general. I spent a year in China and didn't love it. And yet, I still felt there was a lot for me to learn, and I like the general feel and pace of life in large Asian cities. So, I came to Taipei mostly out of curiosity. I certainly didn't know much about it. 

Why I stay, though? Maybe that's worth discussing. I've been here for 18 years now. The pay isn't that good. Career opportunities are middling at best. I do have a fantastic local network, but most of my close family live on the other side of the world. Nobody loves Taipei's weather. My apartment is nice, but apartments in Taiwan generally aren't. There's the ever-looming China threat (though I imitate local residents in living my life as though that's not a thing). 

And yet here I am. Still. I've been thinking about this for awhile -- it's easy to rattle off reasons to leave. Any article about the "ghost island" can do that. The more fruitful area to examine is why I stay.

I've identified five very generalized reasons why, despite its faults, Taiwan is the country I chose to call home. These are five things that I think are important for any country I might live in long-term, and Taiwan happens to excel at them.

For my own reflection as much as yours, here they are: 

1.) Generally good infrastructure, including (most especially) public transit

Not all of Taiwan has good public transportation, but Taipei does, and it's fairly easy to get to any other town you might want to visit. Getting around that town might be a challenge, but you can always get there. I live in Taipei, though, and this city has some of the best public transit in the world. In general, I appreciate infrastructure that works. That includes buses that run on time, a clean metro system, convenient trains.

Compare that to the US, where the only city that has public transit that comes close to meeting my standards is New York. That also happens to be a city where I couldn't possibly afford to live. I tried living in Washington DC for seven years without a car. People say transit there is good. I say it's a nightmare. 

Still, assuming I'd never move back to the US, I could enjoy good public transit in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore. If we're talking inter-city, even Vietnam. Europe, too, but there aren't really good jobs for me there. China, generally, has reasonable public transit. What could knock some of those countries off the list?

2.) An open and democratic government

Well, there goes Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong. China is an obvious no-go. I once considered moving to IstanbuI, but I can't get past the importance of a reasonable system of government. I might not have the right to vote, but it's important to me that my local friends do; I would find it very hard to exist as an admittedly privileged American in a country where I could send my ballot back every few years, but locals I knew wouldn't have access to human rights that I consider fundamental. 

For myself, well, I like to opinionate. It's important to me to live in a country where I can do so without fear of government retribution.

Beyond that, there's just something depressing about living in an unfree society. You may or may not have access to good journalism. Random bullshit things may be banned. Your friends can't say what they really think; you may not even know what they really think, depending on how severe the repression is. 

Being in Taiwan for two -- soon to be three -- presidential handovers, countless protests, a legislative occupation, and all manner of public debates? That may seem unimportant or ineffable to some, but it matters to me. Taiwan's democratic society is a big draw. 

South Korea and Japan are democracies too, though. Why not move to one of those?

3.) An acceptable level of gender equality

I'm not saying Taiwan doesn't have sexism and misogyny. Of course it does. The gender pay gap is still above 15%. But, compared to the rest of Asia, I daresay it's doing fairly well. 

Brendan has told me stories about Korea, where he would see job ads that openly offered men and women disparate pay for the same work. 

I know someone in Japan who once detailed many little ways in which women face discrimination; she once saw a pregnant woman stand up on the train for a salaryman! Discussing why that would happen, locals told her that the pregnant woman has an easier, more restful life while the salaryman is tired from hard work, so of course he should get the seat. I don't know that this happens frequently in Japan, but that it happened at all tells me that it may be a fine country to visit, but it's not a place where I think I'd be very happy living. 

Everything from work culture to beauty standards feels so much harsher in those countries. The fact that women make up such a small percentage of the workforce in Japan and are deeply underrepresented in politics are other strikes against it. I'll take the country that elected a woman twice, thanks. 

Korea is similar; the gender wage gap there is astounding (Japan is almost as bad). I've enjoyed visiting both countries. As a woman, I want to live somewhere with more equality. 

That brings me to my next point. 

4.) A high level of public safety

It's not just pay, work, politics and beauty standards. All three countries have very high levels of public safety, including for women. As an American, this matters to me. It wasn't fun growing up in a country where it wasn't safe to be outside alone at night. But Taiwan manages the high public safety with a whole lot less of the ridiculous discrimination.

This matters not just for me, but for my LGBTQ+ friends. South Korea, for instance, is not a very safe place for many people dear to me. Public safety isn't just about whether or not you're likely to get mugged or pick-pocketed. It is also deeply related to who you are. I wouldn't want to live in a country where I might be targeted because I'm a woman, or where my friends might be targeted for being gay, nonbinary or trans. 

This, of course, knocks many countries off the list -- including the United States. 

I considered adding "a high level of overall development" to this list, because so many of my points are oriented around that. Advanced economies are more likely to have good public transit and safety, higher levels of gender equality and functional democratic governments. 

But not always -- the United States fails on most of these counts. Plenty of countries that aren't rich do have democratic governments. Besides, I don't think anyone wants a middle class white lady to prattle on about how she wants to live in an advanced economy. In fact, it's not actually one of the key criteria.

Instead, my fifth point is more specific but is still related to overall development markers. 

5.) National! Health! Insurance!

As an American, I cannot express how much this matters to me. I spent the first half of my twenties kinda miserable because I needed to see some doctors, but couldn't afford any of them. My lack of access to affordable health care in the US is directly responsible for the back surgery I needed during my first year in Taiwan. 

This really matters! Health insurance alone is enough to make me forsake the US forever. 

That said, this point has been bugging me recently, because I'm in the middle of a tooth implant that isn't covered by Taiwan's NHI. All told, it will cost me about NT$87,000. The dentist has been clear that for me, it's a necessity (another one of my crowns is in danger if I don't get a tooth put in next to it). And yet, it's entirely out of pocket. 

I think NHI should cover it. After all, it's an absolute necessity for me unless I want to literally be toothless in a few years. 

But, all of that aside, I'm grateful that the many times I've needed to see a doctor in this country, that I could actually afford to do so. 

I'm still not feeling entirely all right about the state of my life in Taiwan these days. It hurts to want to commit to a place, without seeing a clear future there, especially in old age.

There is another reason I stay, but it's intensely personal: I truly believe in what Taiwan stands for. To me, Taiwan means standing up to a dictatorship that landed on your soil and tried to force you to submit, turning the country instead into a functioning and peaceful democracy. It means refusing to shatter under the constant threats from yet another dictatorship that wants to annex you by any means necessary. It means building one of the more advanced and liberal societies in Asia -- if not the most liberal -- on the back of a tragic and bitter history of colonialism and oppression.

That, to me, is worth fighting for. It's worth staying for. It's not on the list because it's not a specific thing Taiwan has, it's more of a narrative that Taiwan embodies.

It does help, however, to think through the reasons why I've stayed, and run through the possibilities of other countries where I might relocate. None quite hit the five criteria -- gender equality, health insurance, democracy, public transit and public safety -- that Taiwan does. Most countries can be exciting, interesting, historically noteworthy, or absolutely lovely. 

But I can't think of another one that actually meets these five benchmarks, all of which are crucial to me. Can you?

Western values, or just values?

As Putin's war in Ukraine drags on, and friends and family ask me if I have an "exit strategy" if China invades Taiwan, old-school talk about "Western values" and the West "growing a backbone" to stand up for "what it believes in" has returned to mainstream discourse. I've engaged in values talk, but the "Western" aspect? I don't care for it one bit. 

This is not because I think growing a backbone to actually stand for what one believes in is a bad thing, or that those supposed "Western values" are in and of themselves self-serving and morally vacant. It's because I don't think the values at stake here -- things like self-determination, human rights, freedom of expression -- are Western. They're human, and the West often doesn't embody them, or claims to and then abdicates all responsibility for living by them. More often than people realize, they take root far from the West, and are better (albeit still imperfectly) implemented in their new homes.

How do I know this? I live in Taiwan. 

Before we get into that, however, let's look at where critics do make a good point. From Aditya Chakrabortty's column in The Guardian:

The Ukrainians are fighting for “our” freedom, it is declared, in that mode of grand solipsism that defines this era. History is back, chirrup intellectuals who otherwise happily stamp on attempts by black and brown people to factcheck the claims made for American and British history.

To hold these positions despite the facts of the very recent past requires vat loads of whitewash. Head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, claims Vladimir Putin has “brought war back to Europe”, as if Yugoslavia and Kosovo had been hallucinations. Condoleezza Rice pops up on Fox to be told by the anchor: “When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.” With a solemn nod, the former secretary of state to George Bush replies: “It is certainly against every principle of international law and international order.” She maintains a commendably straight face....

However corrupt and repressive his regime, Putin was tolerated by the west – until he became intolerable.

He's quite correct that a lot of the same people who spearheaded the invasion of a sovereign nation are now denouncing the idea of invading a sovereign nation. He's also correct in pointing out that this can't possibly have anything to do with "values", let alone "Western values". He doesn't defend Putin or what Russia is doing to Ukraine. I agree with all of this, including calling out the whitewashing, and the Bushes and Rices of the world.

What's more, "the West" remains tolerant -- wary, but tolerant -- of Xi Jinping. While I am reasonably sure Chakrabortty himself doesn't support that given his previous work, a lot of people saying that the West is wrong -- not for only standing against authoritarianism now, but for standing against it at all -- do. 

There's a logic fail, however, in going straight from "Western values" (whatever those are) to "the same countries who enthroned Putin" and now denounce him for doing exactly the sort of things they have done. To be clear, there is a line there; it's just not straight. 

I'm going to make it about me for a hot minute, but I promise to try and keep it short.

I was very young when the Soviet Union fell. I remember celebrations and expectations. I remember talk of "economic revitalization". I recall, through my teens, worry that the re-integration into the global community of countries once behind the Iron Curtain was not going as well as hoped. I remember concern over the rising oligarchy, and by my college years, as professors talked about "oligarchy" as a thing that existed in faraway Russia, I was joining protests against the same sort of crony capitalist one-percentism (before the "one percent" was a linguistic thing) in my own country.

I remember anger -- my friends felt it too -- at the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq, and musings about why that dictator absolutely had to be taken out while we tolerated all sorts of other ones. We were frustrated that the government clearly differentiated between "good" and "bad" dictators. To us, they were all bad.

We felt this way because of our values. What Chakrabortty is describing is lip service to ethics, which only thinly veils patriotic jingoism and, frankly, racism (we do seem to care a lot more when the victims are white and I still hear people talk about Muslim refugees as a "threat" or "concern" as they open their hearts to Ukrainians. I support Ukraine, but that sort of attitude is just gross). 

Values mean opposing it wherever it pops up, even if it's your own country. 

This isn't to say that growing up American, white and middle class didn't influence my beliefs, perceptions or how I'm treated in the world. Of course it did. It’s also not meant to highlight myself as some sort of awesome open-minded person; I have the same flaws and blind spots as most people. 

The point is that excusing the horrors of Western history is not a function of universal values, and Westerners aren't the only people who hold pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian values. It’s easier to see that when you proactively look for perspectives that de-center the West and see that those values still exist. 

It's unclear, even now, what the West could have done to mitigate the rise of Putin. Should we not have supported the fall of the USSR? It didn't look like a system functional enough to survive regardless. Done nothing at all? If we had sat on our hands, would the post-collapse turmoil have produced an autocrat worse than Putin? Helped create a system in which crony capitalism and oligarchy could not have taken root and enthroned a Putin? Sounds great! When you figure out how do reliably do that -- how to make the West be better than itself -- I would dearly like to know.

During those years, I was curious about the rest of the world, so I signed up to study abroad in India. Yes, this included a course in Indian political history, but I also got to see what democracy looked like in a non-Western country. It was illuminating, but being young, I didn't absorb as much as I should have.

After college, I wanted to learn more about other parts of Asia, so I went to China for a year as one of those annoying early-twenties idealists. This was a lesson in what life is like under a non-democratic government rights aren't just not guaranteed, they don't exist and can't be meaningfully fought for. It didn't affect me much directly -- after all, I'm a middle-class white woman -- but I witnessed it. 

Then, still curious but realizing China wasn't a good fit, I wanted to know more about Taiwan, that elusive "rebel province" everyone in China would rant about if the topic went in that direction. 

Here, my adult life unfurled around people -- Taiwanese, and a small group of committed long-term residents -- who were committed to those same values. They inherited a dictatorship from their grandparents, and after decades of oppression and mass murder stood up and told it to get bent -- and won. Every day Taiwan wakes up and decides it won't surrender to China's subjugationist demands. Local activists continue to push for improvements to the country itself and how it approaches human rights. Sometimes these coalesce into large-scale movements. Sometimes, these movements make such good points and push society in such an obviously better direction that they are absorbed by a mainstream party who, in allowing the new generation to take charge to a great extent, normalizes what once was radical. 

While far from perfect -- from the treatment of migrant workers to the hard red turn of the KMT, the party best known for brutal dictatorship -- Taiwan is more or less a country committed to these same values. It's not a Western country, so it's very hard to say from my home in Taipei that such values are inherently Western. Sure seems from this perspective that people around the world want the ability to live freely without harming others, participate in their own governance, and not get shot if they disagree with the people in charge. 

In China, despite the CCP's truly horrifying repression, I met people with these same values. A disgruntled man who watched his best friend die at Tiananmen Square. A mother who fought for custody of her son in a deeply patriarchal and misogynist court system. An older woman who found peace in maintaining a shrine at the only major temple in town (which existed because it had been intentionally hidden by piles of trash and overgrowth during the Cultural Revolution). A young woman who expressed the desire to protest but knew she'd probably pay for it with her life. A peer who asked about all the things she tried to learn about Taiwan through a VPN -- same sex marriage in Taiwan? The Sunflowers? -- but couldn't, because the connection proved so bad that she could hardly read a thing. An Uyghur bookseller in Kashgar who refused to speak Mandarin and opened his shop at a time that made local sense, not the time the government in Beijing mandated. Two young Uyghurs who were very clear about what it meant to be who they are, under CCP rule.

With that in mind, what exactly does it mean to have "Western values"? I honestly don't know. We should fight for some things because they are right, not because they are Western; we should have a backbone because it is right, certainly not because it is Western (it isn't). Those values also demand we examine ourselves, our homes, and our own countries of origin.

I can't even say that these values necessarily originated in the West. I'm not going to sit here and explain Asian political and ethical philosophy at you because that feels orientalist, and I probably don't have to. Obviously, systems of thought originating in Asia which espouse free thought, critical thinking and self-determination exist. 

Calling out "the West" for its hypocrisy in claiming to champion these same values while committing their own atrocities and historical whitewashing is important. Truly. In that, there is value in geographical labels.

Yet slapping those geographical labels on ideas that sprouted from universal desires can lead down another path: if everything "Western" is bad, and these values which many take to be universal are inherently "Western", then the values themselves are bad. It's possible to come to all sorts of conclusions from this. For example, if the West is standing together against Russia, then Russia must be somehow in the right (there are all sorts of ways to justify this -- NATO started the war, "denazification", "US-backed color revolution" -- each one of them more horseshit than the last). 

Or that Western sanctions are hurting everyday Russians -- which is true, and I feel for them -- and therefore we should not only stop "provoking" Russia through NATO expansion, aiding Ukraine or sanctions, but merely wag our fingers at them sternly. Why? Because even though they're wrong, we're still the ultimate bad guys and you know, both sides are bad. Oh no, Ukraine is lost, too bad so sad, thoughts and prayers.

Or that because China may aid Russia and the West are the "bad guys", maybe China isn't so bad either. After all, their government talks about "the West" and how they don't want to be yoked by "Western values", and that sounds a hell of a lot like we've been saying about Western hypocrisy, maybe the CCP has a point!

If that's true (according to this logic), and this is about the hypocrisy and non-universality of "Western values", then all those countries which stand against China are in the wrong too. They're all democracies but it sounds wrong to say democracy is bad, so let's call it capitalism. Yes, that's it, they're decadent capitalists! 

This, of course, makes Taiwan one of the bad guys -- after all, Taiwan is a liberal democracy that has shown support for Ukraine and is far friendlier with countries like Japan and the US than China -- and that's where it gets personal. I may not be Taiwanese, but those Chinese missiles are pointed at my house too and they shriek irredentist and revanchist garbage as hard as Russia, if not harder.

To commit to this path, of course, you either have to be a hard right-winger who has bought into the Trump worship of Putin the Strongman (most of whom only hate China because it threatens American dominance and calls itself "communist", rather than hating the CCP for all the logical reasons to do so). Or you have to be a certain kind of leftist who's decided that if both sides are bad, then both sides must be equally bad at all times -- or one side must always be worse and that side is always "the West". 

In this bow to pro-imperialist, anti-democratic sentiment, the tankie left and the right wing are more or less the same. Yes, that's right, it's horseshoe time.

Neither one of them can seem to figure out who the actual bad guy is in this situation (spoiler alert: it's Putin). That one side is more concerned with power at the expense of democracy, and the other would rather debate the evils of NATO while letting Ukrainians and their democracy die doesn't matter. That one makes populist appeals to the middle America working class and the other calls them "the proletariat" doesn't matter. That one is anti-immigrant because of racism and the other claims the same anti-immigrant stance for "the workers" doesn't matter. That one insists Christian Capitalism is the Only True and Correct Path, and the other insists Communism Through Violence If Necessary (forced on people if they don't vote for it) is the Only True and Correct Path doesn't matter. 

One is hearing their same rhetoric -- the Evil West -- echoed by genocidal autocrats. The other perhaps thinks we're engineering our own downfall through the evils of liberalism. One blames capitalism, the other progressive values.

It's all the same horseshit, though, leading to the same logical endpoint: Western democracy should fall (for whatever reason) in favor of their preferred method of control, fuck your values and your votes. To that end, Putin and Xi either are wrong but shouldn't be stopped because we're just as bad, or Putin and Xi are right, and we're the bad guys in this particular war.

Of course, to do this, both sides have to engage in whitewashing. The far right has to pretend the history of Western civilization is different than what it was. This is where Chakrabortty is right. 

The far left have to engage in a tougher balancing act: standing for, say, LGBTQ+ allyship, while supporting Russia. This usually means lying about the treatment of LGBTQ+ people in Russia. Standing against genocide while standing with China, a country whose government engages in genocide. This is done through genocide denial: apparently only genocides committed by the West count. For this logic to work, China and Russia (!) have to be stronger on these issues as the West, or at least not markedly worse in the present day.

That's not the world as it is, but I suppose anything is possible when you fabricate the reality you want.

Here’s what’s terrifying: this same ability logick-magick their “only the West is terrible, therefore anyone opposing them is good” positions enables them to logick-magick their way into believing that their support of dictators invading and subjugating democracies is somehow a pro-freedom, pro-equality, anti-imperialist stance. It’s not surprising from the right: they lie all the time about how much they love democracy while actively undermining it. From the left, it’s stupefying. 

I suppose when everything is about freeing Humble Christian Everyman Joe America the working class from the evils of capitalism toward a Marxist utopia, democracy doesn’t matter, or at least all other perspectives are equally evil at all times. That makes violently overthrowing a democracy palatable. And if that’s palatable, then Russia invading Ukraine or China invading Taiwan become acceptable, regardless of whether the people in those countries actually want to be colonized by their authoritarian neighbor.  

The only way out of this logic quagmire is through. How to find one's way through? Values -- universal ones. Which ones are universal? Hard to say, and sometimes inchoate, but look for whatever it is people are fighting for in different parts of the world. Of those movements, look for the ones that seek freedom rather than control. Self-determination rather than subjugation. Civic participation rather than the absolute power of one group. Nobody has all the answers, but it's a good place to start. Add to that critical thought: who is making this claim, and can it be credibly substantiated? Am I applying this standard to everyone, or only the sources I want to believe? You might still be wrong, but you're more likely to be closer to right doing this than by picking an ideology that sounds good and running with it.

The West is absolutely two-faced, and a lot of people supporting Ukraine right now are talking like they aren't the culprits. But that's not a 'values' problem, it's a hypocrisy one. You figure that out -- and who's talking out their ass and which side is worse in any given conflict -- by starting with critical thought. your own values, applied regardless of country, party or ideology. That's not a Western thing. That's a global thing.

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! 

The Glue on a Post-It

Yesterday evening, a few hundred people gathered at Freedom Square in a vigil to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In previous years, these events had been more formally organized, with red plastic stools, a stage and a sound system (which was often terrible, but nobody minded). Some were sparsely attended, such as in 2018. Others were packed - commemorations in 2014 following the Sunflower Movement and 2019 for the 30th anniversary were both packed, the latter likely also due to the recent outbreak of the Hong Kong protests.

This year's meeting felt more deconstructed, like a spontaneous sit-in than a formally-planned event. There was no stage, no sound system to speak of - there was a speaker of some sort but it didn't really work. 2019 saw a host of high-profile hosts and speakers, including the then-vice president; this year I had no idea who was speaking. It could have been anyone. Instead, people sat on the ground and lit candles, in some cases simple tea lights. Hastily strung-up tape kept the central crowd from getting too big - probably as a coronavirus safety measure - but onlookers were welcome.

The feel of the gathering was a good reminder that these events aren't "official"; the government here supports them (even in the age of coronavirus, the permit to gather was clearly not rejected), but they're put together by regular people. Anybody can do it. Regular people keep the memory of Tiananmen alive and support Hong Kong from Taiwan. Regular people light the tea lights and play music from their laptops that almost nobody can hear, but everyone sings along with anyway. Governments don't light candles - people do. 



 
To be honest, in 2019 the gathering felt full of anger and enthusiasm. Vigor, but also fear. It was like the rebel station on Yavin-4 just before the big mission to deal the Empire a hopefully fatal blow.

This year felt more grim and determined - like the rebel station on Hoth. Like all fear had been burnt away over the course of the past year, and all that was left was an embattled will to fight on. I don't need to tell you why.



There is a right and a wrong in this war. Imagine you are right, and knowing not only that you are right, but that most of the world realizes it too, yet still feeling like you're losing. Imagine feeling like all reasonable people - including many in the establishment - understand the justness of your cause, but that doesn't stop the establishment from telling you that this is just how things are. Hong Kong is a part of China, Taiwan isn't, but cannot be recognized as such. Sorry. Shrug.



This year was not just about Tiananmen. Many attendees were clearly Hong Kongers residing in Taiwan, and many of the chants were in Cantonese. Hong Kong protest flags and signs outnumbered remembrances of Tiananmen. One speaker said in Cantonese, "don't think that the Tiananmen Square Massacre has nothing to do with the Hong Kong protests", which I can assure you nobody was thinking. (I don't speak Cantonese but a friend I attended with does.) 



Artwork commemorating yesterday's anniversary explicitly made this connection, and it's doubtful that any Hong Kong protester is unaware of how Tiananmen ended. They fight anyway.

Earlier in the day I dropped by Causeway Bay Books, the recently-opened Taipei bookstore run by Lam Wing-kee, the bookseller whose store of the same name in Hong Kong was closed due to "legal troubles", and who was driven into de facto political exile in Taiwan. Causeway Bay Books is small, and has no street-level entrance - it's on the 10th floor of an unremarkable building near MRT Zhongshan. It's not a swish department-store sized establishment like Eslite, or even as fancy as some of the higher-end bookshops near National Taiwan University (though I hope someday it will be).

Causeway Bay Books doesn't exist in Taiwan only because this is a country that is willing to look China in the face and tell it to take a hike. Nor because this is a country where everyday people were willing to look the KMT dictatorship in the face and tell it to stand down - and won. Causeway Bay Books is also here because regular people helped make it happen through local assistance.



Of course, Taiwanese nationhood is also related, philosophically and ethically, to both the Hong Kong protests and Tiananmen Square. All of these issues cross-pollinate: that's why there were Tibetan flags at the Tiananmen Square memorial in Taipei last night, and pro-Hong Kong, Taiwan independence and Tibetan flags at Pride in late 2019. (I hope to see more East Turkestan flags in coming years; that issue is just as worthy). All of these issues center freedom, human rights and equality, and stand against the CCP's desire to control as many people it can, deny them basic rights and freedoms, and massacre them with impunity.

If you don't see that there is a clear right and wrong in this fight, you are deluded. There's a reason why the international media so often writes about China's authoritarianism in the passive voice: pointing fingers at an easily-angered member of the establishment feels scary, and the CCP's actions are so objectively wrong that simply to list them becomes a litany of (deserved) blame.

The truth is that Uighurs are imprisoned because China imprisons them. Hong Kongers and Tibetans are oppressed because China oppresses them. Tensions with Taiwan are raised because China raises them. Dissidents are murdered because China murders them. Bookstores are closed because China closes them. Protesters are run over with tanks because China runs over them.

These things aren't just done. A government actively does them, and they are not morally neutral. Murder in the passive voice is still murder.




At Causeway Bay Books, there is a Post-It note written by President Tsai which says 自由的台灣撐住香港的自由: free Taiwan supports freedom in Hong Kong. Next to it, there are two more Post-Its, written by children - one saying "don't forget Tiananmen" with a child's drawing of a tank and the numbers "64" (the "4" is backwards). The other has a stick figure and says "Go Hong Kong"! 





President Tsai's Post-It is held to the shelf by the thinnest strip of glue. A sharp gust of wind or a pair of fingers could dislodge it. Yet nobody would dare: it would probably make the news if they tried. It stays affixed to that shelf because people want it there. The seed of Causeway Bay Books has been planted and grows despite China's efforts to tear it out by the roots because people want it there.

The Tiananmen Square memorial in Hong Kong was banned this year, but lived on because people wanted it there.

The one in Taiwan lives on, in different forms, because people want it there. 

The past year or so has shown us how easy it is for these things to be peeled away. Post-Its aren't very securely attached. Bookstores open and close, and open again. A microscopic virus brings most of the world to its knees. An act of violence - similar to so many that came before - exposes the way in which even robust-seeming democracies were built on slavery and oppression, and are weaker for it. Protesters in Hong Kong take to the streets for months, and have a National Security Law shoved down their throats regardless. Western tankies still say that "Hong Kong was able to do what it wanted" and have the gall to praise Xi Jinping. Tom Cotton - a so-called supporter of Hong Kong and Taiwan - publishes an editorial calling for the US government to "send in the troops" against the protesters angry at the death of George Floyd, systemic racism and inequality in general...on June 3rd.

For Taiwan and Hong Kong, even one's allies are not really friends.

For those of us who still stand for what's right, it all feels about as sturdy as the shell of a weather-beaten conch. Or the glue on a Post-It.

But there's strength in it too. Because events like the Tiananmen Square memorial are organized by everyday people, they live on. Governments may try to tear away collective memory, or offend it by calling for history to repeat itself, but the memory clings. We teach our children about it, no matter what country we come from. 




People I know have said they felt the Sunflowers ultimately were "unsuccessful" or didn't have the impact that had been hoped for. However, towards the end of the vigil, after singing Glory to Hong Kong, people sang along with a tremulous laptop speaker to slowly pick their way through Island Sunrise, the Sunflower Movement anthem by Fire EX. These are both songs of hope. 

The candles are still lit because we light them. Our countries may be in ruins, but the mountains and rivers remain. 

Of #nnevvy, Subaltern Linguistics and Global Divides (social justice language and authoritarian agendas: Part 2 of Zillions)

Strap in, folks, because this post goes to a few different places.

Anyone who cares about regional politics in Asia and hangs out on Twitter was treated to an absolute delight recently, when the hashtag #nnevvy went stratospheric. The details don't exactly matter - some movie star's girlfriend, named Nevvy, said she was dressing like a "Taiwanese girl", some Chinese Twitter users (and by "users" I mean a combination of real users, paid trolls, and bots) got mad and...honestly, who cares. The trolls look for reasons to get angry, so the actual reasons generally don't matter.

This caused huge numbers of young, progressive, socially-networked Thais to start roasting the Chinese trolls, whose insults about their king, government, level of economic development etc. didn't work. The big joke among Thais, of course, was that they actually love dunking on their government and new king, and basically pulled the century's greatest "Yes, And" on the trolls, trolling them back with Tiananmen Square and insisting Taiwan and Hong Kong were independent. Young people across Asia started getting in on the fun, including scores of Taiwanese. Among them you could find people from India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines and more all coming together to roast Chinese Internet users (yes, there were several "Avengers, Assemble!" memes, because of course there were).



I noticed two things about this, before I get into what I really want to say. First, I adore the sarcastic nihilism, the absolute existential absurdity, of the expert use of "Yes, And". It's an interesting contrast to the deadpan ironic humor of Taiwan, which often veers either into mildly dirty jokes (e.g. intentionally labeling a hair dryer "Blowing With Love") or wordplay.

So if you're ever tempted to go off on some Chad rant about how this or that group of Asians "has no sense of humor", I kindly suggest that you follow the advice of the hair dryer. 

Second, I am loving on the subaltern linguistics of it all. One will still meet English teachers and students who think of "learning English" language as a foreign system to be acquired (Pennycook and others call this langue).

What we saw with #nnevvy, however, was not langue - it was people from across Asia either translanguaging (using their own language and translation tools as necessary to be understood in a second language), or using often-imperfect English in order to negotiate and express meaning - not to 'inner circle' White native speakers, but other non-native speakers, for their own purposes. White-People-English had nothing to do with it. This is parole - language in performance.

The choice of English for these international exchanges occurred naturally in the moment, in the minds of users, but the fact that English was there to be used - enough of them had studied it and younger generations across Asia grow increasingly more adept at it - was neither a natural occurrence nor a neutral one. It was, of course, the role of imperialism both overtly (colonial) and implicitly (economic).

But the spread of English on the back of colonialism (both neo- and the regular kind) doesn't mean that it cannot be appropriated, or that its use cannot be empowering. If anything, these days in Asia the linguistic imperialism mantle has switched to Mandarin - again, a change that is neither natural nor neutral, and of dubious benefit. Of course, this is in line with China's attempts to step up to the plate as both regional and global hegemon. With this comes a healthy dose of Han supremacy, and tied to that, linguistic imperialism.

So when a bunch of people from various nations across Asia - some of whom speak Mandarin but many of whom don't - needed to take a collective dump on the regional supremacist jerk and their drone army of bots and trolls, they chose not the language of those bots and trolls (Mandarin), but the choice that has, by circumstance, become more neutral and therefore ripe for appropriation.

Honestly, I'm kind of waiting for the West to figure this out, because so many people seem to think the only flavor available at Ye Olde Supremacy Shoppe is vanilla White. 






The main reason I found #nnevvy interesting, however, is how neatly it tears down a construct that the CCP is absolutely desperate to promote: the East-West divide. So many of their arguments - this is how we do things here, you can never understand our 5,000 years of culture, Asian-style democracy (thankfully no longer a buzzword), you're using Western thinking to try to understand Eastern ways but you can't push that imperialism on us! - are predicated on this.

Why? Because Westerners often buy it and then all their Orientalist fantasy "worldliness". Because if a person from "the East" insists it's true, it's difficult for a person from "the West" to contradict them without sounding like an ethnocentrist (this is actually a massive issue in intercultural communication, with no clear answers). Or worst, a "colonizer". Because it gives them a handy platform from which to say "you can't tell us what to do", which they then promptly use to tell the rest of Asia what to do. Because it gives them a region - a bloc of people supposedly "like them" - which they can then dominate without "the West" complaining too much, because to them, it looks like Asians working with Asians which sure seems a lot more PC than Westerners doing the same thing.

This is all cloaked in the language of pan-Asian cooperation - after all, why shouldn't the dominant voices from Asia be Asian? I'd certainly agree with that, when it's meant sincerely.

But, of course, the CCP's actual goal is to become the dominant voice from Asia, not to participate in (or even benignly lead) a cooperative effort. They squash rather than uplift the marginalized voices that are inconvenient to this narrative.

Cultural differences between regions do exist, on a broad scale. But there is no "East" and "West", but rather a variety of communities within each, with their own power and privilege differentials. There are people who believe in freedom, and those who believe in authoritarianism with many shades in between. There are people on an entire spectrum of liberal to conservative, and young people across Asia increasingly differ in values from their elders. They may express it differently, so you might not have noticed, but it's there. 

These ideas straddle "East" and "West", to the point that a little cultural adaptation goes a long way when befriending locals my age or slightly younger, whereas I suspect my Grandma L., were she still alive, would get along quite well with a typical KMT Taiwanese Christian Auntie.

To the extent the idea is useful, it's to demarcate an extremely fuzzy boundary for the purpose of examination, with the hope of deepening knowledge, exploring intersectionality and building inclusivity, not creating new fiefdoms for new pantsless bear-kings.

Basically, you can tell they're full of shit not because they voiced the idea of an "East"-"West" cleavage, but by what they want to accomplish by advancing it.

It also serves the CCP's purpose to convince you this divide means that "democracy" and "human rights" are inherently "Western" and therefore not suitable for "Eastern" people. And boom, you've just been talked out of believing that democracy may not be perfect but it's sure better than dictatorship, that human rights are universal for a reason, or even believing that these are false constructs of "Western" imperialists - imperialism is only "Western" in this worldview, see - there's no Han or Chinese imperialism possible. That's pretty convenient, eh? You've conveniently forgotten how many Asian nations are successful democracies and want to stay that way, including Taiwan! You definitely don't remember that human rights have been defined by an organization - the UN - which has Asian members.

In fact, you may even become convinced that Asian countries, like Taiwan, who ascribe to certain so-called "Western" values and try to build sincere, friendly relations with Western nations are filthy dens of evil capitalist brainwashed colonizer sympathizers. You might start thinking of them as one of the "bad" guys, because they've teamed up with the Evil West and don't want to cooperate with their friendly local hegemon.

If you go down this path, you've talked yourself into believing that you support people across Asia by opposing "Western imperialism", when all you've really done is become a useful idiot for the power that seeks to rule them.

Take one look at #nnevvy, however, and you'll see it's all a ruse. So many people across Asia can't stand the CCP, and can't stand their cyber-armies of rabid nationalists (both the real ones and the bots). I mean, it felt like almost all of Asia just teamed up to take them down, so the idea that they're all on some sort of "same side" and China is simply the munificent and benevolent leader of that "side" is a joke.

Honestly, if you're a long-time reader, you know all this. Even a casual visitor has probably got a clue.

But you'd be shocked how many tankie so-called leftist Westerners there are who still haven't figured this stuff out. They tend to substitute viciousness for evidence, and as such I find them hard to talk to, so I'm not really sure how to help them see the toxicity, authoritarianism, anti-Asian racism and straight-up Orientalism of their views, all cloaked in the 'social justice' language of supporting people of color. All while making excuses to deny those people of color the same rights and freedoms they themselves enjoy.

I have more to say about global divides and suddenly believing ideas like human rights are "relative", but will save those for future posts.

In the meantime: