Let's get some better Taiwan/China boilerplate

Years ago, reading Taiwan-focused journalism in most international news outlets was a kind of torture. Most were sludge, positioning China's take on Taiwan issues first, if a Taiwanese perspective was included at all. They interviewed China experts on issues affecting Taiwan, or Beijing-based sources. The writers themselves were often China-based or, at best, had been parachuted in. It was a dark time. 

Some pieces and writers were better than others, and stood out all the more for being well-researched and written, among a blasted heath of bad journalism. I won't name names; I probably don't have to. 

Even in those better articles, though, there was often some boilerplate, sometimes cooked up by the writer, sometimes inserted by an editor. It usually read along the lines of "Tensions remain high between Mainland China and the island, after the two sides separated in 1949. China now claims the territory as a renegade province to be reunited by any means necessary".

Everything was wrong with this, from the ‘tensions' which seemed to arise from nowhere, to aggressively refusing to even consider the sovereignty "the island" or "the territory", to centering China's claims and legitimizing them through a lack of interrogation. The "1949" nonsense led readers who had been unaware of Taiwan's pre-war status to think that it had always been a part of the Republic of China, and making the 'split' seem like a deeper crack in historical continuity for Taiwan than it really was. 

Things have, thankfully, improved. More journalists actually reside in Taiwan; in general they try harder to do a better job, or maybe they're just fundamentally more competent. Some stinkers still slip through, but they're more rare and they too stand out all the more when surrounded by better reporting.

The boilerplate has evolved as well. Tensions are still occasionally left unassigned to an aggressive agent (that is, China), and Taiwan is still regularly referred to as an "island" rather than a "country". The "split in 1949" trope is clearly declining in popularity.

Some articles, even those that are specifically about cross-strait issues, avoid the boilerplate altogether, which I take as a positive sign: it means these journalists and news outlets now trust their readers to have some background knowledge regarding it. Here's one example from NPR and another from The Guardian (at least, nothing in this strikes me as boilerplate).

That said, although this weird little paragraph has evolved or in some cases disappeared, it hasn't always improved. I wanted to take a look at some examples of today's good and bad Taiwan boilerplate to see where we are: in what ways has it improved, and what problems remain. 

I'm only looking at news that's free to read, because I haven't found a paywalled news source worth subscribing to. I've lost interest in the Bezos Post, and the TERF York Times has some of the worst columns out there, for example. I'm happy to pay for one subscription, but I can't figure out who deserves my money.

I do suspect today's background paragraphs are either journalist-written, or looked at by a greater variety of editors. In the past it all read kind of samey-samey, but as you'll see below, there are clear differences in the style and 'voice' of this language, indicating more agency on the part of journalists in crafting them rather than an editor non-consensually inserting them. 

Anyway, let's start with some of the better writing. Then we'll slide slowly down the grode pole to the mediocre and cowardly examples, all the way to the dregs. After that, I'll offer some thoughts on what differentiates good from bad boilerplate, and how news outlets might create better background paragraphs on Taiwan.


The Good (Relatively Speaking)

From Reuters: 

China views separately governed Taiwan as its own territory and has ramped up its military and political pressure in recent years. Taiwan says only its people can decide their future and vows to defend its freedom and democracy.

This starts out weak by centering China's position on Taiwan. Then, however, it notes Taiwan as "separately governed", documents Chinese aggression succinctly yet precisely, and ends with the Taiwanese position, with a reference to self-determination. It's a lot better than what we used to get. At least readers will have a clear idea of who the aggressor is and who just wants to govern themselves in peace. Bonus: it avoids calling Taiwan 'an island'! 

From CNN: 

At the center of that box of exercises is Taiwan, the democratically ruled island which China’s Communist Party claims, despite never having controlled it.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to “achieve reunification” with the island, using force if necessary.

This starts out better, with Taiwan in the forefront (in an article mostly focused on the Chinese navy, no less), and references to Taiwan's democracy and real history, namely, that the PRC has never governed Taiwan. "Reunification" is properly contextualized in quotes, and the aggressor is clearly marked as China. The only real problem here is the use of "island". Taiwan is a country. If news agencies want to specify that it's a country with the name Republic of China, fine, but it is a country.

Also from CNN: 

Taiwan’s democratically-elected government rejects China’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

Not bad and centers Taiwan. Though again, Taiwan is more than an island. 

Another one from CNN:

Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 24 million people that Beijing’s ruling Communist Party claims as its territory – despite never having controlled it. But it is not recognized as an independent country by most governments in the world and has lost a string of diplomatic allies to Beijing in recent years.

"Vibrant democracy" has become a bit of a trope, but it starts off centering Taiwan, so I'll take it. "...despite never having controlled it" is solid. The second half of the paragraph is a lot more questionable: factually true, but implies that China's claim might have some legitimacy. Still, it's not wrong, so it goes in the "good" pile. 

This is a solid example of how to center Taiwan in boilerplate inserted into articles about Taiwan -- it's easy. The first sentence should be about Taiwan, not China.

I'm on the fence about this example from Newsweek:

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own, although the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled there. Taipei is a key U.S. security partner in the center of the so-called first island chain in the Western Pacific.

It centers China, and I'm not a fan of "so-called first island chain". Is that not an actual phrase, albeit debatably outdated, that has been used to describe Taiwan's geostrategic position? Why the scare quotes? However, it correctly notes that the CCP has never governed Taiwan. It is true that Taiwan is a "key U.S. security partner", so overall I'd say this is more good than bad. 

This paragraph from AP also centers China, but is otherwise above-average: 

China considers Taiwan its own territory and uses such deployments to advertise its threat to encircle and possibly invade the self-governing island. China also hopes to intimidate Taiwan’s population of 23 million and wear down its equipment and the morale of its armed forces.

At least it clarifies that China is the aggressor and intimidator, whereas Taiwan is self-governed.

This example from The Guardian centers China, but is otherwise not as bad as some of the examples below:

China’s ruling Communist party (CCP) claims Taiwan is a province of China and has vowed to annex it under what it terms “reunification”, by force if necessary. Social media is a key battleground in China’s information warfare, as it seeks to convince or coerce Taiwan into accepting annexation without military conflict.

While it properly contextualizes "unification" and uses appropriate verbs such as "annex" and "coerce", I think it gives China a little too much credit for attempting non-military means of annexation. They're willing to start a war, let's be clear about that.

I approve of the verb choices, though, so we'll call it strong.

The Not-As-Bad-As-It-Could-Be

Let's look next at the "mediocre" boilerplate. Not the worst, but not the best. 

This example from DW includes a reference to the desires of Taiwanese people, rendering it less terrible than it would otherwise be: 

Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway territory, and has not ruled out using force to take control of it. A majority of Taiwanese are opposed to unification with the mainland, according to Taiwan's National Chengchi University.

I would not, however, go so far as to call it "good". Readers might see Beijing's centered perspective and think that China might have a point, or that such force might be justified. 

Let's all agree to call China "China", and not "the mainland" -- stop implying a territorial relationship that does not necessarily exist.

I'm not sure what to make of this paragraph from Reuters, or if it even counts as boilerplate: 

Beijing had angrily rebuked some of Lai's recent remarks as the two capitals clashed over their competing interpretations of history in an escalating war of words over what Beijing views as provocations from Taiwan's government.

On its own, it's terrible. "Competing interpretations of history"? You can take that both-sidesism and shove it up...eh. But it's in an article filled with quotes from Taiwan about the Chinese threat and Taiwan's determination. The context makes it more palatable. Ridiculous as it may be, China's perspective can be included somewhere, I guess.

This is an example of cowardly meh-ism from Al Jazeera:

China insists that democratic, self-ruled Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan has allied itself with the United States, angering Beijing.

Centers China? Check. Island rather than country? Check. "Angering Beijing"? That's a new one -- technically true, but thumbs-down in a background paragraph. If China's claim on Taiwan is illegitimate, which it is, its anger at Taiwan's actions, which are not an act of war, is irrelevant. It saves itself only with "democratic, self-ruled" and noting that [China] "has threatened to use force". 

I'd like to go on record, however, that I don't care much for "the threat of force" as a language choice. Let's not tiptoe around what that means: an invasion. A war. Massive casualties. Violence, death, upheaval. "Using force" can mean anything, from an aggressive arrest to riot police. These are bad, but they're not the same as a war.

The Economist is hard to parse on Taiwan. Sometimes it publishes absolute trash, sometimes it's better than I expect. I don't subscribe, but I use the free article allowance to read some of their Taiwan coverage. This isn't boilerplate exactly, but contains some of the same background:

For years, the island has had to live with a degree of doubt. When President Donald Trump declines to say whether he would risk war with China to save Taiwan, he is following the precedent set by most modern presidents, who used “strategic ambiguity” to deter rash moves by either side to change the status quo. Under the terms of that uneasy stand-off, China calls Taiwan a province that must one day return to the motherland. The island’s leaders deny being part of the People’s Republic of China, but stop short of declaring Taiwan a separate country. [Emphasis mine]. American ambiguity leaves China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, wrestling with uncertainties. If Mr Xi wants to avoid conflict with America, he needs to be sure of a quick victory, or must stay his hand. As for leading Taiwanese opposition politicians, they have long seized on that same ambiguity to portray America as an unreliable friend, and counselled accommodation of China to buy peace.

This is fairly nuanced, with quite a bit of interesting detail, and more than one Taiwanese perspective. That inclusion sufficiently interrogates China's claims, and it fits nicely within the article, which is better than average for The Economist on Taiwan. They're not wrong that Taiwan needs to reconsider its defense strategy as the US grows increasingly unreliable and erratic in its rhetoric.

The line in bold sinks it, though. Taiwan's leaders have stopped short of calling it a country? What?

Here's Lai Ching-te calling Taiwan "of course a country". Oh look, here he is doing it again. And again. Those are just the quick-google results; there are more examples. Did The Economist not fact-check this?

This split-paragraph example from Reuters should be terrible, but it comes at the end of a long article on President Lai calling Taiwan a country, so we'll call it a draw:

China says democratically-governed Taiwan is "sacred" Chinese territory that has belonged to the country since ancient times, and that the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.

Lai and his government strongly reject that view, and have offered talks with China multiple times but have been rejected. China calls Lai a "separatist".... 

The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong's communists, and that remains the island's formal name.

As with the old "split in 1949" paragraphs, this gives just enough factual information to help readers draw the wrong conclusion about what Taiwan was before 1949, if they didn't already know. It quite possibly hints that the reader shouldn't take Lai Ching-te too seriously. If Taiwan is a self-governed democracy, why does it matter what China says it has the right to do, or not?

It does reference Taiwanese democracy, puts Chinese rhetoric in scare quotes, and notes Taiwanese overtures for dialogue, so I can't dismiss it entirely, though.


The Downright Ugly

Now let's look at the scrapings at the bottom of an expired jar of cheap peanut butter, the musty and outdated, the deplorables.

I'm not sure whether to label this one from The Guardian as mediocre or hot trash juice:

Beijing intends to annex Taiwan under a claim that it is a Chinese province currently run by separatists, and vociferously objects to other governments acting in any way which lends legitimacy to Taiwan’s democratically elected government.

This isn't the worst compared to what used to somehow make it to publication, but neither is it good. It centers China -- what Beijing intends (which is a bit of an assumption of an event that hasn't yet happened, but isn't exactly wrong), China's objections, China's denial of legitimacy. The only thing good about it is the very end, where it notes that Taiwan's government is democratically elected. It must be inferred by the reader that this renders Taiwan sovereign. 

I'll give it one point, actually: "annex" is the correct word for what China intends to do. Not "unify" or "reunify", but "annex". That, if nothing else, saves it from the garbage heap.

I generally like NPR, but I'd say this is even worse: 

Beijing considers the self-governed island a part of China, and hopes to "reunify" it with the mainland eventually....

With Lai's win, tensions seem poised to rise. But analysts don't think Beijing wants to provoke a war at this point, and will carefully process early signals from the newly elected Lai.

Whoever wrote this split-paragraph nonsense should be ashamed of themselves. I appreciate that "reunify" is in scare quotes where it belongs, but "the mainland" and "island" imply a territorial relationship between Taiwan and China that doesn't necessarily exist, it centers Beijing's claims, and mentions "tensions" with no agent.

In the paragraph between these two statements, Lai's stance is described as fairly moderate, but book-ending it with Chinese viewpoints hints that the tensions might just be Taiwan's fault, or Lai's (they're not). 

The use of "eventually" downplays the seriousness of China's threats, and the analysts' take that China doesn't want to "provoke a war" again makes Beijing seem more moderate than it is. The implication here is that any war would therefore be "provoked" by those "signals" from Lai. 

Terrible. Shame. Shame! 

This short paragraph from DW is like the tiny lil' turd your eco-friendly toilet just won't flush:

Beijing sees Taiwan, a self-ruled island, as a breakaway province, and is actively discouraging diplomatic and trade ties between Taipei and other nations.

Points for "self-ruled" I suppose, but readers who don't know the background might see this and think that Beijing's claim is legitimate. I suppose the writer is more focused on the drone market than geopolitics, but still.

This one from Al Jazeera is so close to some of the others that I've considered in a more positive light, but sinks itself with the unqualified "reunification": 

China considers Taiwan, a separately governed island, to be a part of its territory and has vowed reunification by force if necessary. Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

I appreciate the nod to the Taiwanese perspective at the end, but "reunification" of the "island" with no contextualization whatsoever? As though it's the bare truth? Come on.

We'll finish off with two steaming turds from the BBC:

Cross-strait tensions between China and Taiwan have heightened over the past year since Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, who champions a firm anti-Beijing stance, took office.

He has characterised Beijing as a "foreign hostile force" and introduced policies targeting Chinese influence operations in Taiwan.

Meanwhile, China continues to conduct frequent military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, including a live-fire exercise in April that it claimed simulated strikes on key ports and energy facilities.

Nice job blaming Lai for China's aggression by timing the heightening of ill-defined tensions with the start of his administration. I suppose the BBC still thinks tensions magically arise out of nowhere. Readers who don't know better might easily come away with the notion that Taiwan is the more hostile actor.

I didn't think one could do worse than this, but somehow the BBC persevered and won its place as some of the worst journalism on Taiwan:

Tensions have ratcheted between Taiwan and China over the past year. Taiwanese President William Lai has adopted a tough stance against Beijing, calling it a "foreign hostile force". Meanwhile, China has held regular drills around Taiwan to simulate a blockade of the island.

Tensions have an agent. Someone ratchets them. They do not ratchet themselves. There is no need for passive voice, BBC. The creator of those tensions is China, but by not saying that, the BBC once again implies that President Lai and his "tough stance" are more to blame than the actual aggressor. 


What can we learn from this?

There is no clear winner or loser among these examples. Like public transit in US cities, no one paragraph is quite good enough to win a gold medal, and the bad don't deserve to be ranked. However, among the better-crafted writing, there are some clear trends: 

1.) They lead with Taiwan

Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 24 million people... 

At the center of that box of exercises is Taiwan, the democratically ruled island... 

Taiwan’s democratically-elected government rejects China’s sovereignty claims...

 I'll even give one to The Economist: 

For years, the island has had to live with a degree of doubt.

These are good. My writing advice is to do this. See how easy that was? 

2.)  They don't call Taiwan 'an island'

I understand that it's hard to make a pivot from "island" to "country". I don't exactly understand why it's so hard, but I comprehend that it is. Instead, try not doing that:

China views separately governed Taiwan as its own territory and has ramped up its military and political pressure in recent years. Taiwan says only its people can decide their future and vows to defend its freedom and democracy.

China’s ruling Communist party (CCP) claims Taiwan is a province of China and has vowed to annex it under what it terms “reunification”, by force if necessary. Social media is a key battleground in China’s information warfare, as it seeks to convince or coerce Taiwan into accepting annexation without military conflict.

Some of the worst examples do manage this, proving that even if you aren't allowed to call it a "country" because someone above you in the hierarchy got dropped on the head as a child, you don't have to call it an island. So don't.

If for whatever reason you are forced to call Taiwan "an island", at least start your paragraph with a nod to its sovereignty and democracy. You can even use a "vibrant democracy" cliché. It's fine.

3.) They assign an agent to 'tensions' or interrogate Chinese claims in some way

Lai and his government strongly reject that view, and have offered talks with China multiple times but have been rejected. China calls Lai a "separatist".... 

A majority of Taiwanese are opposed to unification with the mainland, according to Taiwan's National Chengchi University.

...although the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled there. 

...despite never having controlled it.

Taiwan says only its people can decide their future and vows to defend its freedom and democracy. 

Social media is a key battleground in China’s information warfare, as it seeks to convince or coerce Taiwan into accepting annexation without military conflict.

China also hopes to intimidate Taiwan’s population of 23 million and wear down its equipment and the morale of its armed forces.

If you want your reporting on Taiwan affairs to be good, interrogate claims and be clear about what China is doing, exactly. None of this "tensions have ratcheted since Lai took office" nonsense. You can do better, so do better. 

 4.) They avoid or properly contextualize terms such as "reunification", "the motherland" and "province"

I don't think more examples are needed; you've seen enough. If you're going to use these words -- but really, try not to -- scare quotes and context are your friend. These are things China claims. They are not objectively true. Don't present them as such. Even "mainland" should be avoided if necessary, as a 'mainland' is the greater land-bound part of a single territory, implying that Taiwan has a mainland. It doesn't. Ever since the constitutional amendments of the 1990s and early 2000s, neither does the Republic of China. In fact, it arguably hasn't since 1949 because it never did stipulate exact borders, if you care about how the constitutional court interprets the constitution. Which, um, you should.

5.) They don't give half-baked information

Good boilerplate doesn't provide just enough background to hint at the wrong conclusion. That was the problem with the old "1949" language, and we've thankfully seen only one example of it in the paragraphs above. If you want to talk about the civil war and the ROC, of course you can, but be careful. If your readers won't necessarily know what the status of Taiwan was before 1945, or will assume that the ROC still claims all of China, you're potentially citing too little historical fact.

If you can't add more, e.g. that Taiwan had been a Japanese colony until 1945, not part of the ROC, or that the constitution was found to never have been an authority on ROC borders regardless of what the old dictatorship said, consider making a different choice.

As for what not to do, well, ignore all my advice and write about how "Tensions have ratcheted between the island and the mainland since Taiwan's new Beijing-hostile president took office, angering China with his rhetoric as well as allyship with the United States. China views the island as sacred territory and a province to be reunited with the motherland." 

Do that, and I'll fart in your general direction.

How much danger is Taiwan truly in?

I don't know why this photo resonates vis-à-vis this post, but it did.

It doesn't matter if they're locals or immigrants -- more than ever, just about everyone I know in Taiwan is worried about a Chinese invasion. It's always been a question pushed to the far back of our minds: might it happen? If so, when and how? What will I do? Do I need an emergency plan?

The United States has a spotty record in global leadership, and that's putting it kindly. As an American, I'd argue that we've done more harm than good on the whole. However, abdicating that role in favor of screaming matches with world leaders, annexation threats against our closest allies, Nazi salutes, gutting our own government, conspiracy theory screaming, rape, felony convictions, arbitrary detention and deportation, other assorted screaming and low-budget car commercials has handed some of the other worst people in the world an unobstructed path to their own form of global domination.

In Taiwan, that's terrifying. Like it or not (and I mostly do not), the US is one of Taiwan's closest strategic partners despite the lack of formal recognition of Taiwan's statehood. The guy many people thought would be good for Taiwan in 2016 based on one phone call, some anti-China rhetoric and a few appointments of terrible people who happen to support Taiwan is now looking like...well, not a great bet. 

It's got a lot of us wondering what's in store for Taiwan, when our major strategic partner has not only become unreliable, but seems to have brain-hemorrhaged itself out of any sort of international stewardship. Since the 1990s if not earlier, and especially since escalating its annexationist rhetoric, the Chinese government can be reasonably assumed to operate under three assumptions:

1.) The ultimate goal vis-a-vis Taiwan is annexation.

2.) It is preferable for this to happen without war, i.e. convincing the people of Taiwan to accept unification by any means necessary, including political and media interference.

3.) If annexation without war is not possible, war is on the agenda once China believes it can win fairly easily. 

When Ukraine made a strong showing against Russia, China was very obviously watching both the Ukrainian resistance and global support amid the crumbling of Russian assumptions that this would be an 'easy' war and quick victory. Many of us felt a mixed sense of hope and foreboding: the buoy was Russia getting bogged down in Ukraine, showing that China might not have an easy time in Taiwan. The ballast was a global focus on not provoking China, rather than ensuring the CCP would not even be able to start such a war, along with general ignorance regarding how deep China's influence operations in Taiwan really go: 

Taiwan’s rugged terrain makes the country a defender’s paradise. If the Taiwanese people fight like Ukrainians, even a mighty PLA landing force would likely flail and be unable to kill its way into Taipei. With this in mind, CCP agents are working overtime to weaken resolve and soften up the “human terrain” of the future battlefield.

To enfeeble their victims, the CCP’s spy services, the shadowy Ministry of State Security (MSS) and PLA Liaison Bureau, are carrying out a sweeping campaign of covert operations. Their goal is to eat away at the Taiwanese government, military, and society from within. If their strategy achieved total success, they could subvert and overturn Taiwan’s democracy, leaving the occupation force to confront a short guerrilla war and American trade sanctions.

But even if the CCP’s dream scenario is unreachable, Beijing’s undercover operatives have already seduced, entrapped, and corrupted a sufficient number of opinion leaders to minimize a sense of crisis and pour cold water on public demands for action. Needed political and military reforms in both Taipei and Washington continue to be delayed.

“Let’s not forget the importance of one of the main targets of MSS influence operations: scholars, commentators, and non-governmental observers of China,” said Alex Joske, author of Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. “The degree of obliviousness and recklessness with which some of these people have treated the CCP is astounding.”

The distressing reality is that the CCP has an army of secret agents dripping poison into hearts and minds, and they have already been effective at making some seemingly common-sense policy changes appear unthinkable.

It's not just the media, and it's not just the KMT: that whole Ko Wen-je wave? A lot of that was China-backed. It runs deep, and Taiwan might be in big trouble if it doesn't counter these operations more effectively.

Even in 2023 when there was still hope that the world wouldn't be mostly run by fascist dictatorships, this was distressing. The writer of these chilling paragraphs? Ian Easton, a well-respected analyst, had been talking for years about how difficult it would be for China to actually pull off an invasion of Taiwan. But since 2020, even he's been saying a crisis might be on the horizon.

That war hasn't come quite yet, but the situation has gotten noticeably worse. The KMT/TPP-led legislature is full of traitors and bought-and-paid-for CCP agents, including the speaker (old DUI hand Han Kuo-yu) and caucus whip (convicted criminal Fu Kun-chi). Pro-China influencers retain audiences, although one of the worst offenders is losing her spousal residence permit over it. This problematic case, of course, has given the KMT the ammunition it needs to continue its attacks on the DPP as being 'fascist' and 'anti-democracy' -- which is quite the projection, considering which party oppressed democracy in Taiwan for generations.

The KMT even feels emboldened enough to propose a referendum that would seek public consent for bringing back Martial Law. Of course, if anyone would know how to conduct Martial Law in Taiwan, it would be the party that did so for the better part of the last century, but even I, a long-time KMT-hater, was shocked at their lack of remorse over their own history by proposing a sequel. There may be no constitutional court to stop it as the KMT is trying to gut that too. Cutting budgets that directly impact defense, especially the submarine budget, is another terrifying move. China seems very interested in Taiwan's indigenous submarine program, which means it's crucial.

On the China side, if anyone thought they were all talk and no game on invading Taiwan, the building of specialized barges for amphibious attack, presumably against Taiwan, they might want to sit down. This development should not be downplayed: if China will attack when it thinks it can win, it's obviously playing to win. Taiwan no longer seems to be a rhetorical device to them, something to be shouted about in speeches for effect and not much more. This is not a response to US threats or warmongering because the US is too wrapped up in its own self-destruction to warmonger much -- it's as simple as it looks on its face: we don't know when, but China is intending to invade Taiwan.

On the US side, all I can do is sigh. President Rapist and his tiny creeper screaming at President Zelenskyy was worrisome, yes. Blaming Zelenskyy for "starting the war" (fact check: Russia started the war, not Ukraine) should be chilling to anyone in Taiwan: if these jokers can DARVO the victim in Russia's invasion and say they started it, why wouldn't they do the same after a Chinese invasion? Honestly, they'd probably snark about how Taiwan shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt if she didn't want it. 

What scares me even more is President Rapist's own remarks on Canada. 

"The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished fifty-first state" sounds a lot like the CCP's "Reunification with the motherland is inevitable", that it's the inevitable course of history and the only reasonable outcome for Taiwan.

Threatening Canada with further tariffs, which of course don't work as President Rapist seems to think they do, and shaking his ugly little fist in the general direction of the Canadian economy absolutely echo the ongoing CCP attempts to tank the Taiwanese economy and thus demoralize the people into accepting China's "inevitable" plans. 

Calling Prime Minister Trudeau "Governor" is basically the same play as China insisting on calling the Taiwanese president anything but "president", and saying it's a "nasty country" to deal with (may I remind you, he's talking about Canada. Again, Canada) are echoes of China screeching that the Taiwanese government and the DPP in particular are the troublemakers and not open to dialogue, which some people believe despite it being a lie without even a kernel of truth to ground it.

I'm not even going to get into his remarks on Palestine and kicking everyone out of Gaza. That's just too depressing. It does show, though, that the current administration doesn't care at all about human populations, homes or lives.

If Taiwan's closest strategic partner is talking about Canada in more or less the same way China talks about Taiwan, blames Ukraine for Russia's war the way China blames Taiwan for what China wants to do, and is absolutely gutting the US government both domestically and in terms of international diplomacy and outreach, what kind of strategic partner do we even really have? President Rapist and Chancellor Musk lead a gang of idiot thugs for sure, but are they even a gang of thugs who'll beat up their allies' enemies? Doubtful. 

Do they even understand the strategic importance of Taiwan? Also doubtful, as they appear to have a child's understanding of international affairs, geostrategy and the global semiconductor industry. 

After Rapey D and the Roofie Crew abandoned Ukraine, Europe began to show greater support to one of their own. That's fantastic, but if the same thing happens to Taiwan, will its neighbors step up in the same way? Japan might as it faces similar strategic concerns, but otherwise I'm not so sure.

What does that give China? Well, it gives it #3 on that list above: a window of opportunity to start a war that it might actually be able to win. If you're in Taiwan and this doesn't scare you, it should. It could quite literally ruin your life. It might well ruin mine. Without the income we need to sustain our lives in Taiwan and our only support network being friends, not family, I genuinely worry that economic pressure will render us homeless if we stay to contribute to the defense effort.

In Taiwan's defense (pun intended), everyone in government except the legislature seems to understand the scale of the threat. Civil defense and resilience are priorities, and have been for awhile. Military exercises are being extended. Improvements in military service training have been discussed since 2022, and I do happen to know it's a priority: the government is aware that the old approach to mandatory service, which was mostly marching around, sweeping offices and chanting slogans, is not useful. 

Crucially, despite China's attempts to influence Taiwanese public opinion, most Taiwanese still identify as solely Taiwanese, almost nobody identifies as only Chinese, and only a minority identify as both. As of 2024, those numbers are still going strong. Whatever you're seeing on Dcard or some talking head told you on TVBS, it's not really true: Taiwan doesn't see itself as part of China, and that doesn't look poised to change.

The US may be a lost cause in just about every other way, but on Taiwan there are some faint rays of hope. Joint efforts in military and naval training are ongoing. Taiwanese representatives absolutely travel to the US frequently to do their best to work with President Rapist's administration as well as key state governments. There is no way that TSMC's announcement of massive further investment in the United States wasn't the result of some high-level discussions with government officials -- I don't know that for a fact, but it's the only logical conclusion.

Most importantly, I hate Marco Rubio in every other respect, and he supports Taiwan for all the wrong reasons, but he does support Taiwan. I can't say I'm angry about the State Department changing its public wording on Taiwan policy. The line about 'opposing Taiwan independence' never needed to be there, as Taiwan is already independent. Avoiding provocation with China was never a reasonable goal, as they'll always find something to be 'provoked' by. And yet, President Rapist has a history of firing officials who stand up to him, and his Most Divorced Weird Loser Nazi henchman has been clear that he thinks Taiwan is part of China. I'm not sure which horrible person is going to win out regarding Taiwan policy, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

I hate the idea of Taiwan continuing to work closely with a country currently run by fascists (if government officials and pseudo-officials are giving Nazi salutes and arresting dissidents while ignoring court rulings, that government is fascist). I'd love for Taiwan to be able to defend itself to the point that China has no option but to take invasion permanently off the table. 

For now, though, Taiwan can't afford to ignore world affairs, and it certainly can't disavow President Rapist -- the world's most unreliable felon. 

China knows that. It sees how weak the US is making itself, and I do truly fear that something terrible is coming. 

Worst of all, every time I say this to friends of mine who Know Things, they nod and look sad, or admit they're worried too.

The Parable of the Night Heron

Sometime around 1916, my great-great grandfather converted to Islam. 

Five generations later, nobody in the family knew about it. It wasn't some diaphanous secret, whispered in the old language that none of the kids spoke, banished over the years to successive coffins. It was considered so trivial a thing that it was unworthy of secrecy; it wasn't discussed at all. 

Stories don't die if somebody, in some language, tells them. In a twisted form perhaps, I would have heard about it. Or something like it. Instead I had to learn it from an old xerox of typed yellow pages, scanned and uploaded to the Zoryan Institute website. So I suppose stories don't ever necessarily die. The possibility of resurrection is eternal. 

Movses, a canny businessman from a family made rich by silkworms, sat in some filthy Turkish government outpost in Hamah and was handed a choice: your  family becomes Muslim, or they're deported further south to Jerusalem. He and his wife were in their mid-fifties and might not have survived the trip. His youngest childen were growing weaker. His young cousins, named after the fox, had already lost their mother, grandparents and sister to typhus in the death camps, their father presumed dead after being dragged off to some labor brigade (he was). 

He truly believed in the Christian faith, and he had scruples of sort. He might have refused the officials and taken his family's chances on the death march. But he was also rich, and that gave him a third choice: he converted, and then bribed the official to lose the paper. 

I don't really care about religion, so a lie like that means nothing to me -- one god is as fake as another as far as I'm concerned -- but it would have meant the world to him. 

At least one other wealthy family took Muslim names because they thought it would help them in business. The town pastor refused the "offer", was sent to Jerusalem, and survived. As far as I know, Movses took no names and may not have told any family members. If he did, they never spoke of it. For his trouble, he'd lose his youngest son anyway. 

I only learned of it because those two fox cousins survived and one of them told the story to the Zoryan Institute. 

In that moment, Movses was told to either lie for the possibility of saving his wife and children, or insist on truth and likely condemn them. Being a business type, I don't think he ever considered asking the Turkish official to make a more ethical choice. Why, after all, would the official do so?

So what? Well, a few days ago, a friend posted about an old story, a parable about a bird and a wise man. I think it might have been Biblical; it's certainly religion-scented. He has faith, I don't, but that's cool. 

He wrote about how he told this story to his children: a man holds a small bird in his hands and approaches a wise man. To trick the sage, he intends to ask if the bird is alive or dead. The bird is moving and singing; it is clearly alive. If they wise man says so, the trickster will kill the bird. If he says it's dead, however, he'll set it free.

In the story, the sage tells the man "the bird is in your hands." The man asks again if said bird is alive or dead. "The answer is in your hands," the sage replies.

We're supposed to learn from this that our fate is in our own hands, so we should make good choices. His daughter, however, answered that she'd say the bird was dead. Why? Because, she explained, the objective isn't to be right, it's to save the bird. The power -- the ability to make a choice -- remains with the wise man until he decides to abrogate it and ask the trickster to make good choices. 

This is the sort of online story that some would insist never happened, along the lines of three-year-olds who spout implausible wisdom. Like the mom who claimed her kid said "everyone dies, but not words." I know them, though, and I think it did happen. Honestly, I don't care if it didn't. It's not the point. 

So, okay, the objective isn't to be right, it's to save the bird. And that's within the wise man's power until he relinquishes it, unless the trickster grows impatient and kills the bird out of boredom, misplaced rage, or a need to assert dominance. The man with the bird is clearly a bad person. Can we even trust him to release the bird if we lie? 

Movses chose to lie, and his youngest son died of typhus in a death camp in Hamah.

For the longest time, I struggled to reconcile another, modern-day lie with the world I know: that so many people who so clearly support a free and sovereign Taiwan won't take the next logical step and call it a country. In Taiwan, they won't amend the constitution, they won't change the "Republic of China" name. It's a lie, and it can read as undermining the cause.

Though it's debatable whether China has Taiwan in its hands, the sheer scale of military buildup over the past few years is an argument that they do, or that it's their goal. 

Insist that Taiwan is sovereign and has never been part of the 'China' that everyone understands to be China, change the name, change the constitution, be right or die trying -- and maybe you get a war. 

Tell the Chinese government that the bird's fate is in their hands, and you've condemned yourself anyway. You can't trust someone to make good choices as they try to trick the world into either lying, or destroying Taiwan. They're already not making good choices, and they have no motivation to be better people.  You may as well condemn Taiwan to die.

Put off the answer, implying that maybe, just maybe, the lie is acceptable -- the Republic of China isn't the dead name of an ideology and national concept that's little more than a coma patient on life support -- and you might not save the bird, but you retain some of the power and some chance that perhaps it will fly off to some uncapturable state. 

Let's play Bad Pastor -- no, not like that, gross dude -- I mean like clunky metaphors and a bored congregation. Let's make the metaphor plain: 

The US is the self-righteous sage who thinks telling a trickster to make good choices might actually cause them to rethink their path and consider peace. It doesn't even matter who's in power, from Obama to President Rapist to Biden to President Rapist again for some goddamn reason. Not taking a position, committing only to a peaceful resolution of tensions between villain and bird, is telling the bird to watch its neck and not a lot more.

China, the bad guy, desperately wants someone to speak the truth. Saying aloud that the Republic of China is a lifeless shell with no future, but Taiwan is a sovereign and vibrant nation that is culturally and politically distinct from China gives them an excuse to try and kill it. 

The KMT is trying to outright lie -- to say Taiwan is dead so that the ROC may live on as "part of China." Now that they're mostly run by bought-and-paid-for unificationists and overt CCP agents and traitors, they mean that literally as part of the People's Republic. 

But tricksters can't be trusted; this will still be the death of Taiwan. 

The rest of us are just trying to figure out exactly how much we can grease the system. Imply a lie without stating it outright. Keep a dead name, a government system and constitution that's got some ridiculous bits, and our lives for as long as we can. Placate the trickster until we can find a way out.

The objective, after all, is not to be right. It's to save the bird. 

Perhaps it's not exactly the same as converting to a religion you don't believe in but rather than live a lie, bribe someone to lose a paper. It's not incomparable, though. 

It might not work. China might grow irritable or scared enough at any moment and use Taiwan's willingness to imply a lie without confirming it as an excuse to crush its neck. 

But between certain death, another kind of certain death, and asking bad people to be better than they are, it's just about the only path left. 

Taiwan has something going for it, though: China doesn't seem to know what kind of bird it's threatening. It sees Taiwan as a little sparrow, easily captured and held, its bones easily snapped. 

I think Taiwan is a Malayan night heron: hefty in history and culture and uniqueness, strong of bone, with a long, sharp beak and unwavering eyes. (Seriously, those birds will stare you down. They judge you. I swear night herons can see your soul.) They look like they can't fly, but they can. 

I've never heard of a night heron messing up an attacker. They mostly seem to like to hang around and eat tasty things. But it doesn't look easy to kill one with your bare hands. As though if provoked, it would go straight for the face. 

Books by frauds make for the wildest reviews

From Wikimedia Commons

I like to read old books about Taiwan, and it doesn't get much older than this. In 1704, a man named George Psalmanazar, claiming to be a native Formosan and Christian convert, published A Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa. It took England by storm, creating what was apparently a "Formosa craze", with French and German editions to follow. 

The first half or so of the book appears to be a long, unscientific and unphilosophical proof about the absolute superiority of the Christian religion. This part is skippable; it's not at all related to Taiwan and it's hardly rigorous. Psalmanazar (not his birth name) keeps self-complimenting the irrefutability of his logic. I'd say it was refutable, but that would be deigning to categorize it as logic at all. 

Following that, a series of short chapters outline what Formosans wear and eat, how their islands and cities are laid out, some very improbable designs for Formosan boats, various customs, money, marriage rites, their relation to Japan, their social classes and their government. He includes some notes about the grammar of "the Formosan language" -- apparently tones signify grammar differences? -- with an alphabet and translations of various Christian verses into "Formosan", which resembles pig latin. 

Obviously, Psalmanazar was a fraud. He was probably born in France, and had never been to Formosa or East Asia at all. It was all completely made up, based on basically nothing -- although he'd clearly incorporated some basic knowledge of China and Japan, even that included a fair amount of fabrication --there was never a Japanese emperor named "Tampousama", for example; the Emperor of Japan during the beginning of their isolationist period was Go-Mizunoo, aka Emperor Kotohito, and he did not die as a Christian exile in Goa. 

But there's something really fascinating about the fraud. Not the expected banalities of why he did it, although he seemed to me unlike a lot of impostors in that he wasn't so much pretending to be something he wished he really had been as simply seeking a false identity almost for the hell of it. His original goal had been to travel to Rome; the fame and society-crashing came later. Still, who cares? 

What interested me was how his fake culture and language, including fake social classes and a fake religion said a lot more about what people really do when they fabricate knowledge about people different from them. In fiction, so many characters are based on people the author knows, tweaked to be more interesting or appropriate to the story. So it was with Psalmanazar, whose fever-dream of East Asia seemed mostly to be based on a twisted representation of European culture, mixed with a heavy dollop of orientalism and finished off with descriptions of Generalized Foreign Lands and a sprinkle of random nonsense. 

Take his descriptions of the social structure and religion: he describes an absolute monarch named Mariandanoo, followed by a series of nobles and their wives, with illustrations of their clothing -- they all pretty much sounded like European-style nobility and their clothing were just weirder versions of things Europeans have been known to wear. The religion seemed to include one God, with a bunch of other gods described more as saints, and a holy book called the Jarhabadiond, is just an odd spin-off of Abrahamic religion with an added pagan element of worshipping celestial bodies. The language sounds vaguely Indo-European: a general is a carillan, a poorhouse is a caa tuen pagot ack chabis-collinos, and fictional cities includes Chabat and Pineto. Marriage is Groutacho. Some words appear to be just weird-ized Asian-sounding things, such as the fictional islands of Peorko and Loctau. The alphabet looks like it sprang from the mind of someone who wanted to create a new writing system but couldn't quite get the Roman alphabet out of their head.  

Other words are just random nonsense: my favorite is the word for one hundred, ptommftomm (though taufb for the number one is fun too). You can read the extremely weird translation of the Lord's Prayer into fake Formosan on Wikipedia.

                           


In his later autobiography, Psalmanazar claims he was a linguistic prodigy in his youth and had considerable intellectual gifts otherwise. Perhaps -- his fake Formosan language does seem to have enough internal consistency to have come from a fairly intelligent mind. But it isn't particularly imaginative otherwise, and he was a known liar in other ways. 

Some elements, including close attention to astronomy and the name of the capital (Xternetsa) appear to be gleaned from what might have been public perception of Indigenous American cultures. A few ideas, coincidentally or not, are accurate to some of East Asia in general at that time, but not Formosa per se. One god-saint, Amida, is basically Japanese for Amitabha. 

Other elements, such as the descriptions of exotic animals and their uses, including the eating of snakes and use of skins as clothing, seems to be just generic foreign and exotic stuff. He claimed that Formosa had camels, lions, tigers, rhinocerots [sic], elephants and sea-horses, all tame and of service to people. Brendan and I agreed that by 'sea-horses' he probably meant hippopotamuses, but the idea of a tame seahorse that serves humans is more amusing. 

Showing that he hadn't even tried to do a little background reading to make his fakery more believable, he claimed that Formosans had "no knowledge of dragons". I'm not sure to what extent dragons exist in various Taiwanese Indigenous mythologies, but for the Chinese immigrants who were settling Taiwan by then, well...it's a bit weird to say they'd never heard of dragons.

So what does a spirited rando with some (but not a lot) of imagination do when he sets out to create a fake culture to pretend to be from? Apparently, it's to exoticize their own culture, throw in some random bits about far-away peoples circulating in the general social consciousness of the time, put the whole thing through a weird-izer and sprinkle some gibberish on top. 

At least, of course, when someone can't be bothered to think beyond what they already know to come up with something truly unique. 

Some of Psalmanazar's fabrications are weirdly true, if only by coincidence. For instance, he describes the capital Xternetsa as being near a large mountain "which abounds with many wholesome springs", which is technically true of Taipei. He describes an extremely sexist social hierarchy in which men can have multiple wives but women are restricted to the home without her husband, except for the first wife. This was actually the way many Chinese settler families operated in Taiwan at that time -- although I'm not sure if even the first wife could go out in those cases -- but that's because patriarchy is a common and unsurprising facet of many cultures. He wasn't describing something unique or exotic so much as pretty basic ingrained sexism. 

Once again, Psalmanazar shows us that most people, when trying to be imaginative, just end up repeating some distorted or lightly fictionalized version of what they already know. It's interesting, I suppose, at least for what that tells us about how we view the world through our own cultural lenses and often don't even realize it. 

The lack of curiosity from someone claiming brilliance was also, well, something. Here's a conversation I had with Brendan about it: 

Me: The thing is, he could have been so much more believable if he'd just read up a bit more on the part of the world he was claiming to be from.

Brendan: Do you think he really cared?

Me: Not rea---

Brendan: Well there ya go.

I suppose what surprises me is that this research, even if he didn't care, would have helped him perpetuate the farce awhile longer. Toward the end he starts discussing the massacre and general kicking-out of Jesuits from Japan around 1614, which did happen. It's so otherwise inaccurate, however, that it not only seems lazy to have not just included something based on verifiable accounts, but that it reads like a ticking time bomb with Psalmanazar's name on it: enough people knew about the Dutch in Formosa and the flight of Christians from Japan that eventually, someone was going to point out that he was talking nonsense.

The thing is, in the early 18th century, Taiwan would still have been predominantly Indigenous, no? While it's a stretch to say that the Austronesian cultures of Taiwan had gender equality, they were certainly more progressive in this way than many traditional societies. You may recall that Chinese writing about Taiwan called it an "Island of Women" for this reason. So of all the places he could have chosen to fabricate a backstory, he picked the one where in many parts, the sexist tropes didn't quite fit. 

I'm not even getting into the stuff that falls under Generalized Exotic Foreign Barbarity Tropes. Think child sacrifice (apparently thousands of younger sons were sacrificed in Psalmanazar's Formosa every year, and it's implied that the priests eat them), wearing metal codpieces, animal skins, being warlike, you know, all that stuff. The most insulting passage in my opinion wasn't about cannibalism or codpieces or the straight-up gibberish language, but the passage on music. It's hard to select quotes because, like many men of his time, he used insufficient periods. I'll try, though:

It must be acknowledg'd that the Art of Musick was not known for many Years in any of the Eastern Countries, neither had they any certain method of singing and playing upon instruments of Musick, though they had then such as resembled the Drum and the Tabor, the Trumpet and the Flagellet, the Lute and Harp: But since the time that the Europeans came thither, they have learn'd the way of making and using these Instruments, which are now made almost after the same fashion as they are here in England.

Which...what?

For when they heard the Jesuits play upon the Organs in their Churches, and sing Musically after the manner of the ROmish Church, they were mightily taken with it, and inflam'd with a desire of learning the At of Musick, which now by their industry and ingenuity they have attained, tho' not in perfection, yet to such a degree as wonderfully pleases themselves; and therefore they commonly use both vocal and instrumental Musick at theur Marriages, Funerals, Sports and Recreations, and at their offering Sacrifices, chiefly when they Sacrifice Infants. 

Okay then.

Thus it is in Japan, but in the Island Formosa, the Natives still observe their ancient method of singing and playing upon Musical Instruments, if their way of singing may be call'd a method; for except some few particular Prayers, which are sing by the Priests only, the People sing all other things, every one after a different manner, according to his fancy; which they do not look upon as ridiculous, because they know no better...

Screw you, dude. 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot -- the entire book claims and then assumes thereafter that Formosa was annexed by Japan and was for all intents and purposes Japanese, and the nobles there went to Japan to pay respects to the emperor. That's quite funny, seeing as Japan did try to annex Taiwan a century or two before, but wasn't successful because they couldn't find a king or emperor to demand tribute from. Ha ha. 

Don't they know they could have just contacted this guy? Apparently he's the King of Formosa!

On the one hand, one of the goals of this book appears to be encouraging missionaries to go to Formosa to "civilize the pagans" (scare quotes are mine). On the other, he treats Taiwan as wholly separate from China. That's honestly a lot more than I can say for some of the analysts today who claim to understand Taiwan. but then write their own fictitious garbage through a completely Chinese lens, and in some cases read as insulting and dismissive of it in a modern sense as Psalmanazar was then. At least this guy's nonsense treated it like a unique culture. 

That might be my most controversial take on this short, weird book. The West knows more about Taiwan now than it did in 1704, but that doesn't mean it understands a lot. A combination of people having their own lives and not a lot of time to learn about places they'll never visit along with relentless propaganda from China have harmed attempts at increasing understanding about Taiwan. Many will therefore read some utter nonsense in, say, Foreign Policy, by people passing themselves off as Taiwan experts, and take it as fact because they don't know better or don't care.

It's a perpetual problem for places that aren't as well-known (or face a well-funded war machine trying to take them down) -- there will always be someone looking to benefit from others' ignorance about these places, or create narratives about them that suit their own ends, rather than the place they're talking about. 

Some of these modern fraudsters are Taiwanese, some aren't. Arguably the KMT has it in their DNA: they, along with the CCP, have been creating twisted or wholly fabricated narratives about Taiwan for their own ends for a few generations now, and don't seem to be stopping anytime soon. They've convinced far too many people that Taiwan is Chinese (it's not -- I'd even argue that it's not just politically distinct from China, but culturally as well) or that the people identify as Chinese (they don't), or that Taiwanese schools are founded on Confucian thought, for better or worse (they're not). 

We can laugh at poor old George Psalmanazar, smart and eccentric but not terribly creative and clearly deeply, deeply racist. But really, British society believed him in 1704 for reasons not entirely different for why people believe nonsense about Taiwan now.  

Deciding on Insides: Lin Yu-ting, gender conformity, Taiwanese identity and me

A scarlet ibis at Taipei Zoo

Even before the Taiwanese media began whaling on JK Rowling for stating female Taiwanese Olympic boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) is a man, with many commenters falsely believing she is transgender, I was thinking about issues of gender, identity and culture. 

For some background on Lin, I recommend Min Chao's excellent post on Medium. To summarize, Lin is not trans. She was registered as female at birth. The Medium post says she grew up in a single-parent home; Taiwan News says she took up boxing to protect her mother from domestic abuse. She has faced bullying for her androgynous looks. The controversy stems from an allegedly failed gender test at a competition in New Delhi. I say "allegedly" because both the test type and reasons for the failure are reported as "unspecified" and results "confidential", and the athletic organization running that event is mired in controversy and shunned by the IOC. Lin later passed eligibility requirements, including a medical examination in Hangzhou.

Claims that the test given by the Russian-backed International Boxing Association showed Lin, as well as Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, has having XY chromosomes seems to stem from a single Russian Telegram channel. We don't actually know much (anything really!) about the test or its results and I don't exactly trust one Russian official posting on Telegram as a reliable source of information. It's unclear if Lin has elevated testosterone levels, but even if she does, that wouldn't un-female her.

That hasn't stopped the TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) squad from dismissing Lin outright as "male". It's not really a surprise: if one's chief goal is isntigating hate, one "unspecified" failed test by a sketchy organization is sufficient fuel for that fire.

It bothers me deeply, however, that refuting the hate directed at Lin forces one to reaffirm that she is a cis woman, implying that the criticism would be warranted if she were trans. That they'd be right to criticize if she were trans, but she simply isn't, or that there's something wrong with being trans. Truly, I don't believe this -- I would not care if she were. I don't think transphobes are blinkered just because they fell for what increasingly looks like Russian disinformation about two women who have never transitioned. I also think they're blinkered because they oppose full human rights for trans individuals.

A fair amount of the media coverage does seem to care; as much as I love watching UDN and others stick it to JK Rowling, I would not go so far as to call it enlightened discourse. I do commend UDN for pointing out that gender is not a binary, and neither testosterone levels nor chromosomes necessarily identify a person as specifically male or female. The article notes that we don't actually know the results of the tests, nor do we know anything about Lin's anatomy or whether she's intersex, and it's wrong to speculate. This is true. They take a non-position on the discussion of transgender athletes, correctly pointing out that it's irrelevant to Lin Yu-ting's career. It's a more thoughtful take than I'd expect from a conservative Taiwanese media outlet, but not exactly standing up for trans rights. 

All of this has snagged on a loose wire in my own brain. I've been thinking about it for awhile, both in relation to Taiwan and myself. 

One person's aphorism can so easily be another's thought-terminating cliché. Think about "wherever you go, there you are". As an adage offering traditional wisdom, it simply reminds us that we can't run from  our true selves. It can easily be twisted into something far more sinister, however: you can't change who you are, implying that your identity isn't yours to construct. Rather, it's decided by societal forces, doctrine, orthodoxy, others' perception of you -- and you must either accept it, or suffer. 

Some time ago, I read a tweet noting that many on the Western left stand up for trans equality and the right of any person to decide on their own gender identity and expression, but those same leftists will turn real pink real fast when it comes to Taiwan -- not giving Taiwanese any space to cultivate their identity. According to some, gender identity is fluid butTaiwanese are Chinese whether they like it or not (just as the anti-trans ideologues insist that your gender is your gender, whether that reflects who you really are or not). Who gets the right to decide who they are (and who doesn't) is thus unfair and arbitrary. 

I don't remember whose tweet it was and can't find it, but if you do, please comment below so I can give proper credit.

As with critics of Lin Yu-ting, such beliefs are based on scant or questionable evidence: incorrect references to international law, extremely biased interpretations of history that excise any facts that don't fit their narrative -- for example, that for most of their reign, the Qing only controlled about one-third of Taiwan, and as a colonial outpost at that -- straight-up wrong incantations of US policy or the Republic of China constitution. These critics demand that Taiwanese be Chinese, because it makes them uncomfortable that Taiwanese would have their own agency, or even just historical facts to back up their chosen identity. Taiwanese who disagree aren't conforming properly to the narrative, so they have to be attacked online, called 'separatists', threatened with execution, told they aren't who they say they are. Treated as less than human, not deserving of full human rights, including self-determination. Anything -- anything -- to keep them under control. Conformed. Y'know, doctrine over reality.

That doesn't sound terribly different to me from the TERF crowd insisting that one questionable test with unspecified results from one extraordinarily shady organization is enough to pounce on her for being "trans" or "a man", when she is neither. As a friend put it in a private conversation: 

"...people want to control gender expression and force everyone to fit into tidy little boxes, and anyone who violates that should be unpersoned in their view. Like, I feel like they're so obsessed over tamping down trans people, that they have to go after any kind of gender non-conformity. Trans people are the ultimate violators of conformity, so they have to engage in this witch hunt until everyone is back under control."

It also goes in the other direction. Some who will defend the right of Taiwanese people to determine their own identity -- politically, culturally and otherwise -- will then turn around and insist that it's different with gender. That Taiwanese have the right to identify as solely Taiwanese, but if you dare to state your reality over their doctrine on gender, or express yourself differently, you're not a person and don't deserve full human rights. 

This is why anti-trans ideology is so strongly linked to white supremacy: preserving the system, the hierarchy, the doctrine, at all costs. Frankly, you can say the same for Han supremacy, and keeping people in tidy little gender and ethnicity boxes is just as much cornerstone of the CCP's Han supremacists as it is to the West's white supremacists. If anything, it's worse. Have you seen the state of LGBTQ+ rights in China? It's pretty bad.

You know what else is linked to Han supremacy? Denying the reality of Taiwanese identity and Taiwan's distinct cultural heritage. For One China to Rule Them All, that simply cannot be allowed to exist. Conform or die. 

I have one more thing to say about this, and it's a little more personal. Beyond simply wanting to be a good person who respects the agency and self-determination of others, this bothers me so much because I, too, needed to have a conversation with myself to decide my insides. 

I am a cis woman, in that I was assigned female at birth and continue to identify as female. I've been told more than once that I am female because I was born female, and that's all there is to it. Something about that has never sat right with me. Since I was young, I have not felt specifically or quintessentially female, although being in a woman's body also doesn't bother me. 

How much of that comes from inside -- my own brain not accepting without question that I am a woman? How much from outside -- society presenting to me various 'roles' for women and ways to present and conform as a woman, none of which I particularly relish? I don't know. It's probably both. I spent years desperately out of love with myself because for far too long, I lacked the lexicon to have a true reckoning between my inside and my outside. 

That's why the trans rights movement benefits us all. Yes, even those of us who are cis. We don't all conform, we don't all feel exactly right in our bodies, or as though we naturally are a certain gender just because we were assigned that gender at birth. I didn't! Thanks to all of the trans people who fought for respect, recognition and rights, we now have that lexicon. Those of us who need to have the internal dialogue now find it a lot easier to do so.

I didn't not want to be a woman, but I also didn't entirely want to be one. I wasn't terribly interested in the expectations that come with it. Not just the sheer amount of external maintenance (diet, skincare, makeup, clothing, general 'ladylike' presentation), but also the life paths I was expected to inhabit. Wife? Okay, as long as he's a feminist (and he is). Mother? No thanks. Person discriminated against because of her gender and its presentation? Girl Next Door? Gawkable Object? Feminist But Only If You're Hot? Fuck off.

There have been times when I would have preferred to have been seen and treated as a man, though that might have more to do with how much more leeway society gives men in general than my own internal struggle to identify and come to terms with my benthic discomfort.

I navigated this as you might expect, from the cropped hair and army jackets of my late teen years to wondering why not being particularly ladylike didn't result in the benefit of a more athletic "tomboy" persona. I wouldn't have minded being fit! There was the rejection of Not Like Other Girls (that's a misogynist trope), but also wondering why Quirky Artsy Cool Girl is only an identity available to the thin and hot. Now that I'm older, even Fun Worldly Bohemian Aunt remains elusive. She remains slender and feminine with elegant poise as she sips her drink in some foreign café and buys one for her underage niece; I fart a lot, have terrible posture and a body more reminiscent of Angry Feminist Cat Lady (which I kind of am), or perhaps Overcooked Pierogi (but I do like pierogies). If I had a niece, however, I'd take her to Italy at 16 and buy her a drink.

Ultimately, I did decide on 'woman', which makes me cis. But it wasn't an obvious or foregone conclusion. I was unhappy because I needed to have that reckoning, and growing societal recognition of transgender and other gender non-conforming people -- a world where it is a little easier than it was before to be who you are -- also benefited me. It gave me what I needed to work myself out. 

I once commented in some anti-trans thread that I'm a woman because I decided to be one, and it's more coincidence than anything that my insides match (well, match reasonably closely) to the gender I was assigned. Someone shot back "no, you're a woman because you were born a woman!"

Which is just another way of telling me that they believe my identity is not my own to decide, they know who I am better than they do, my internal questioning threatens their conformity, their doctrine matters more than my reality, and their aphorism is my thought-terminating cliché -- except I refuse to terminate the thought. 

In fact, as a cis woman, I feel a lot more threatened by transphobes and their followers insisting that women have to act, look or be a certain way than I do by any trans woman, ever. Latching onto "but look, he's clearly A MAN!" (as though appearances and personal judgments decide gender), or unproven, evidence-free claims is bullying. And transphobes love bullying. As someone who's been called a man simply for standing with trans women, even though I have never been a man, it scares me. 

You know what doesn't scare me? Trans women.

And does that not sound quite a bit like the "Taiwan is Chinese! Taiwanese culture is Chinese culture!" people shouting as though they know Taiwan's identity better than Taiwanese people do, or that Taiwanese people have no right to determine for themselves who they are, that Taiwan's refusal to conform to a Chinese narrative threatens their ideology?

This has diverged quite a bit from the discussion surrounding Lin Yu-ting, but it grabbed hold of something way down in the depths of my own self, so I hope this has been as worthwhile for you to read as it was for me to write.

Defining Ma Ying-jeou's "relevance"

He deserves an unflattering screenshot

I recently read with interest Donovan Smith's analysis of the continued relevance of former president and slightly burnt mannequin Ma Ying-jeou. Smith argued that despite being called "irrelevant" by the pan-green camp, that his power player position in the KMT meant he could not possibly be so. 

Donovan makes a good point. When it comes to shaping KMT policy and which puppet or inveterate Very Good Boy he'll trot out as his skin mask at rallies and for elections, and whose prior image he'll eviscerate in order to turn him (they're always male) into his next puppet, Ma is frighteningly relevant. 

In fact, I'd argue one cannot discuss KMT policies and directions without at some point discussing Ma. Even when he's not got his talons into this or that KMT candidate, his vision for what the KMT -- and Taiwan as a whole -- should be still shape the policies, platforms, desires and wet dreams of hardcore deep blue supporters. While their numbers may be dwindling, they're still a political force and not dismissed so lightly. 

So yes, in that sense, Smith is right. Perhaps, though, we should consider what these commentators mean when they call Ma "irrelevant" -- because it depends somewhat on how you define the term. 

The thing is, one might interpret political relevance as requiring being at least somewhat in touch with the general (or at least popular) consensus. You're relevant if your own ideas and commentary reflect the national mood, however roughly. If what you say resonates with the public and perhaps most importantly, the voters. 

In this sense, Ma is indeed irrelevant. It would be easy to point to his Deutsche Welle interview just before the election. He laid down some real whoppers here. Leaving aside "Taiwan can never win a war with China" (debatable, but I'll give him that based on the power imbalance), Ma stated that we should "trust" Xi Jinping, a point so ridiculous that it was basically an own goal for the KMT. I don't think it lost them the election, but it didn't help. However, if we're talking about Ma's relevance, I found this bit more alarming (and mendacious): 

Unification is something that our constitution says [sic]. So it's actually acceptable to Taiwan. But it has to be done peacefully, and through a democratic process. If that can be done, the chances are people in Taiwan may be interested in accepting this.

He says that again later on -- "if it is peaceful and democratic, the people of Taiwan will probably accept this." It's not a slip.

The constitution doesn't actually say that -- if it ever did, the series of amendments adopted from1990s through 2005 extirpated it -- but whatever.  It's not even the ludicrous notion that unification could possibly be peaceful or democratic when the government Taiwan would be unifying with openly doesn't care about democratic norms, and their massive military preparations indicate they don't care much about peace, either. 

What renders him irrelevant is the second half of that quote: the idea that because the constitution says it and theoretically it could be voted for (which would mean no immediate war), that "chances are" Taiwanese people would be "interested in" such a path. 

Every major poll, whether we're talking status quo or Taiwanese vs. Chinese identity, and the past three presidential elections have shown that the people of Taiwan are not interested in peaceful unification. Whether or not it's peaceful is not the point; they don't want unification period. They want to continue to govern themselves under the sovereignty Taiwan has as a result of the so-called 'status quo'. That is, a form of independence  (depending on how you define 'independence' -- my definition includes Taiwan's current state and so does President Tsai's). 

For such a thing to be "democratic", Taiwanese people would have to vote for it in a state of non-coercion and without political interference from China. Ma seems to think they might, if dialogue continues. The polls, however, say otherwise. If unification is deeply unpopular, and most Taiwanese don't even identify as Chinese, chances are that won't change. 

It wouldn't avoid a war, by the way. In the highly unlikely event that Taiwan chooses this path, once they see that they've quite literally used their democracy to vote away said democracy, and brought all sorts of oppression upon themselves the second they 'democratically' diverge from Beijing's plans for Taiwan, all hell will break loose. It will make Hong Kong look like a children's birthday party. There will be a war of some sort, and there will be violence and slaughter.

There is no such thing as peaceful unification with the PRC, because even if Taiwan 'agreed' to it (which they wouldn't, because most people are not that stupid), the mass death starts when they realize what they've lost and begin to resist. 

To even imply that democratic and peaceful unification is possible, and that Taiwanese would be interested in it -- or that they'd be so gullible as to believe it were possible -- is such an extragalactically out-there thing to say with a straight face that I simply cannot reconcile it with any notion of "relevance". Ma's finger isn't even on his own pulse, if he has one, let alone the pulse of the nation. 

He doesn't stop the Chundertown Express at any point during this interview, by the way. When it's pointed out to him that Taiwanese don't identify as Chinese, especially among the youth, and reject unification and the 1992 Consensus, he says those young people need to "understand" what cross-strait relations and the 92 Consensus mean "to them" -- one China, respective interpretations. He takes it for granted that this interpretation (which China has never agreed with, they've never accepted the 'respective interpretations' aspect, so it's not a consensus at all) would be popular and accepted among Taiwanese. 

But it wouldn't, because to do so, they'd have to fundamentally believe they are Chinese, which they do not. (Ma does not engage with the poll results showing most Taiwanese do not identify as Chinese; most likely he believes that forcing pro-China changes to the education system will sufficiently brainwash that notion out of their minds). 

His off-the-rails commentary (or lack thereof) on public opinion and what Taiwanese "will probably accept" is so far removed from what Taiwanese seem to actually be thinking that I simply cannot call it "relevant". 

When the presidential candidate you taxidermied into your own little puppet boy publicly distances himself from your words, you might still be a political player but when it comes to public opinion and the path Taiwan is on, again, you're not exactly relevant. 

On that note, Ma only remains relevant within the KMT because their stance on China has not evolved to be more palatable in Taiwan. You might argue that they're hanging onto him because they have nothing better -- he's the last KMT candidate to win a presidential election. I'd argue the opposite: the KMT's platform is stuck in the dark ages because Ma has his talons in it; he won't let it evolve or modernize. 

I suppose that's a form of relevance, but not in the way most people likely mean.

To be truly relevant, you do indeed need to have some basic understanding of current public opinion, why it is what it is, and how to present your ideas in such a way that they might at least be considered in that light. Ma is constitutionally incapable of this -- pun intended.

It's not surprising, of course. This dude is deeply in love with Chinese-style authoritarianism and seems to wish more than anything that the KMT itself had the ability to be just as authoritarian. You know, like in the bad old days when they could just drag anyone who disagreed out back and shoot them.  

Looking at it another way, consider commentary about Ma's irrelevance to be a backlash against the way he acts every time he goes to China, and much of the resulting media coverage. He certainly traipsed around that country like he was some sort of ambassador on an official dialogue and peace mission. Whatever part of his brain had a stroke leaving him unable to empathize with Taiwanese people seems to have been filled with delusions of grandeur, that he can represent a side of the 'Republic of China' that China can talk to, because they agree they're part of some interpretation of China.

Even basic reporting on the visit implied (without saying outright) that his visit was somehow relevant to Taiwan's current government, even though Ma wasn't there in any official role. He was basically a glorified tourist-cum-useful-idiot. Other media make it sound like he is some sort of rational, peace-seeking emissary with the potential to "build ties" and -- again it is implied -- reduce tensions. That no serving Taiwan president has visited China is mentioned in such reports to imply that it matters to Taiwan if a former president does so. But I'm not sure it does, when his party doesn't even have the presidency. In terms of Taiwan's policy vis-à-vis China, he is irrelevant and his visit is irrelevant.

I even heard a radio segment in the Western media on his visit that I can't find again (so it's not linkable), but which astoundingly managed to get every basic fact right, while getting the story completely wrong. It implied again that he is some sort of peaceful messenger from Taiwan, creating hopeful dialogue and averting war unlike that dastardly Lai Ching-te whom Beijing dislikes for unspecified reasons. 

No discussion of how Ma's party had just lost the election in a historic third term for the DPP, possibly helped along a bit by that DW interview. No discussion of why Beijing dismisses Lai, or who exactly is refusing official dialogue (hint: it's not Lai). No mention of how unpopular Ma's opinions are in Taiwan, and how profoundly he misunderstands and outright ignores public opinion. 

Listeners abroad who don't follow these issues might take that hopeful note to heart -- oh look, a former Taiwan president is looking for dialogue with China, that can only mean a reduction in tensions! They'll completely miss the context that he's not speaking for the government, his trips are not affecting current policy, it's not even Taiwan who doesn't want dialogue but rather China gumming up the process, and his views do not enjoy broad social support.

That is, the take-home impression might be that Ma Ying-jeou is more relevant than he actually is.

When that's what the rest of the world is reporting about the guy who left office as the most unpopular elected president in Taiwan's history, like he's a beacon of hope in ever-escalating tensions (which are implied to be created by the DPP when in fact they are entirely manufactured by China), then perhaps one does want to call him irrelevant in response, no?

Because he's not an emissary. He has no official role. He's not in China to build ties between the two governments, because he no longer works for the Taiwanese government. He's not "building cultural and social ties" because his own views are completely out of tune with Taiwanese society and culture. He's promoting himself and the KMT to their support base.

While he's not quite sunk to the level of "local resident surnamed Ma" or "Taipei area man", he doesn't enjoy the broad social respect that a former president might expect. According to one poll, less than 40% of voters approved of his last trip to China in 2023, and that one was ostensibly of a more personal nature. 

Of course, it really wasn't: he was attempting to set the groundwork for the KMT's China policy, giving the KMT's presidential candidate less room to offer their own interpretation of cross-strait affairs. That worked for awhile, with Hou Yu-ih seeming to capitulate to Ma on matters of policy.

As we saw in the DW interview, however, Ma eventually seemed to take it a step too far and ended up with Hou declining to sign on to the broader Ma vision for the rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation.

Ma himself seems to think his actions, and especially these trips to China, have an effect on cross-strait relations, but from what I can tell, they don't. He seems to believe he can convince Taiwanese voters of the fundamental correctness of his vision, and their Chineseness. It has not worked. He tried to Frankenstein an opposition candidate to the DPP, and failed.

So when we say he's "not relevant", we mean that his actions do not reflect a broad social consensus and don't actually change much in Taiwan. When his actions are reported on as though he actually were the highly-respected elder statesman he believes himself to be, it gives the wrong impression to readers who don't know the whole context. 

When Ma actually has a policy success as an elder statesman that enjoys the support of the electorate, maybe we can talk about his return to relevance. When he lays out a groundwork for cross-strait policy that the ruling party doesn't feel they have to distance himself from, that might matter. And it would be unfair to dismiss him as completely irrelevant. His lightly-melted spectre haunted Hou's campaign and continues to rattle his chains in the halls of KMT headquarters too much for that to be true.

But if you define 'relevant' as "taking actions which have a tangible impact on Taiwan's governance", or as "engaging in statesmanship which enjoys broad support", he's not exactly relevant, either. If you include "has some understanding of public opinion and incorporates it into his actions and statements", he's so deep in left field that he's left the stadium and is wandering alone in the woods. He doesn't even seem to understand that public opinion exists, let alone that he should consider it.

And if a rando in the woods babbles on and on about how Taiwanese will choose "peaceful unification" and no-one's there to agree with him, did he really say anything at all?