Go see Invisible Nation in Taiwan this week

I'd been hearing about Invisible Nation (看不見的國家) since it came out in 2023, but been unable to see it as it hadn't been released in Taiwan. Then it got a widespread (if short) theatrical release in Taiwan, in a run which ends tomorrow as of writing, though this may be extended if it does well.

Update: I've heard from a few sources that its successful run in Taiwan has ensured that it will stay in theaters longer, so you have more time to see it. I don't know how long, so this weekend is probably the best option.

I saw it with friends and all I can say is: go. It's worth your time. 

This documentary film broadly covering former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)'s two terms as president, from 2016-2020, interspersed with contextualizing background. It's engaging throughout, avoiding the issues many documentaries have with getting all the information the creators want to include while keeping a tight pace and clear, coherent focus.

                    

While not a hagiography, the film does tend to look positively on Tsai's presidential tenure. To me, an ardent supporter of Taiwan independence and general admirer of President Tsai, I'd simply call it the truth. As Jon Stewart once famously said, though I paraphrase: the truth leans liberal. In this case, the truth leans toward Tsai Ing-wen having been one of the best presidents Taiwan has ever had, vying for the top spot with only Mr. Democracy himself, Lee Teng-hui. 

Tsai also led Taiwan through a fascinating era of Taiwan's political history. Eight years of an elected KMT president -- the only one since Lee, who by the end was seen as a turncoat or ideological traitor by his own party -- showed Taiwan exactly what it looked like to be governed by a pro-China party, although not everyone had realized yet that Ma wasn't just pro-China, he was (quietly, at the time) pro-unification as well.

What do you do with a country that's just been through a major social movement that turned its president into a lame duck well before his natural obsolescence, but whose biggest and arguably only enemy had invested in quite a lot to get their desired annexationist outcome? Invisible Nation seeks to answer this question, or at least provide the information viewers need to ruminate on it for themselves. 

All of the highlights are covered: the Sunflower Movement that helped usher in a new era of leadership, the fight for marriage equality (though this was handled far too quickly in my opinion; getting it passed was harrowing), dealing with China's threats, Han Kuo-yu's nonsense, the influence of the Hong Kong crackdowns, the pandemic response. 

The interviews with everyone other than Tsai come fast and quick-cut, but each is fascinating in their own right. Some are in Mandarin, some in English, but all are subtitled in both languages. Interviewees included diplomats, journalists, DPP and KMT politicians, analysts and academics. These include DPP political figures Enoch Wu, Audrey Tang, former foreign minister Joseph Wu and now-Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, politician and black metal star Freddy Lim, former AIT director William Stanton, NCCU visiting professor Michelle Kuo, journalist Chris Horton and more. Having met some of them personally, it's a solid line-up. There are no weak links; everyone's contribution is valuable and on-point. 

Former president Ma Ying-jeou gives an interview as well, and KMT member Jason Hsu also gave the filmmakers some of his time. Nobody can say that the director Vanessa Hope and her team ignored Tsai's political opposition.

In this, Invisible Nation does gather voices from all sides, including widely-available remarks from Chinese leaders: ominous music tends to introduce these, but Xi Jinping does get his say. It's presented as-is -- that is, threatening and awful. The film doesn't say this exactly, but there's no other takeaway. The man is a monster. 

For people who already know Taiwan, there won't be many surprises in Invisible Nation, from the graceful introduction of the past few centuries of Taiwanese history to discussions of historical events. It's still worth your time, though, for the old footage from those eras, some of which I had never seen (childhood pictures of Freddy Lim anyone?) and some of which brought a genuine tear to the eye, such as Chen Chu ruminating on her time as a political prisoner. The film follows her to the Jingmei Human Rights Museum, where she finds what she believes is her old cell, and tells us why it's padded while showing us what all those democracy activists sacrificed during Taiwan's so-called "bloodless" revolution. 

It's only called that because there was no coup, no compact period of slaughter as there had been on 228. Don't let the term fool you, though: people absolutely did die so that Taiwan could not only have democracy, but have the sort of democracy that would elect a woman like Tsai. 

There are also bits of footage I didn't know existed or had perhaps blocked from memory, including Bill Clinton calling Taiwan Chinese (screw you, Bill), Henry Kissinger being the thank-god-he's-dead authoritarian bootlicker he always was, and Jimmy Carter announcing the switch in diplomatic recognition. What happened at the UN around that time was also fascinating, because the UN's exact words upon kicking out Taiwan have been either ignored or willfully misinterpreted in the decades since.

If you want loved ones who don't have that grounding in Taiwanese history to understand what this country went through between the Sunflower Movement and the pandemic, or just to understand the history of Taiwan a bit better, this is a solid recommendation. It doesn't exactly replace a history book, but it can review the basics and fill viewers in on what's happened since the classics like Forbidden Nation and A New Illustrated History of Taiwan were published.

It's also a good film for long-termers in Taiwan to show people who haven't visited what it's been like, politically, to have lived here through these events. It can be streamed, but I'm not entirely sure how. 

If I have any quibbles with the film, it's that it perhaps made the KMT look better than they are. It didn't paint Ma Ying-jeou as the bootlicker unificationist he is. It didn't show the full insanity of Han Kuo-yu. It was very, very kind to the opposition -- perhaps, in the name of seeming fair, too nice. This is a party that still wants to push towards a unificationist future that Taiwanese do not want.

Intense Chinese military build-up and grayzone tactics (such as the fake-news barrage that Taiwan has been under since disinformation on such a scale was possible) were also not given the time I felt they deserved. But, of course, in an hour and a half, you can't include everything.

It touched on Taiwanese considering themselves Taiwanese, but didn't back it up with numbers: there's long-term polling proof that Taiwanese don't generally identify as Chinese, and I'd have liked to have seen that mentioned. It did, however, showcase the clear line from former President Tsai that Taiwan doesn't need to declare independence, because it's already independent. 

For me, one of the most interesting lines in Invisible Nation came toward the end. I don't remember who said it, but to paraphrase, they noted that in the past, China has said they'd use force against Taiwan if it moved towards declaring independence. Now, however, they've changed their rhetoric to say that they'll use force against Taiwan if it doesn't actively move toward unification. 

That should send chills down your spine. As the film reminds us, nobody thought Putin would invade Ukraine because it wasn't in his interest. And it indeed wasn't, but he didn't know that because he's a dictator. 

Invisible Nation ends its run on June 19th, though there's a possibility it may stay in theaters if it does well. The show we went to, on a random Tuesday night, was pretty full, so I hope this happens. 

Untold Herstory: The brutal film that you must see

Imagine a Taiwanese crowdfunded film about female prisoners on Green Island making it into Vieshow Cinemas. So central was crowdfunding that donor were thanked at the end (though some had simple nicknames and others cheeky handles like "1450"). 

Although it was reviewed by the Taipei Times, I hadn't heard of Untold Herstory until a very close friend with a connection to the film sent seven free-ticket vouchers.

Imagine, then, that this friend had offered similar vouchers to other people she knew and was rebuffed. "Let the past be the past," they said. Of course, this attitude only protects the villains of history: the same people who call Untold Herstory "the past" which we should "move beyond" probably lose their minds when removing Chiang Kai-shek's statue from Dead Dictator Memorial Hall is discussed. They so often only want to let some history stay in the past. 

The group I went with included people whose families either were touched by the White Terror, or came close to it. They of course have a rather different take on whether The events of Untold Herstory can be considered history at all, seeing as it hasn't even been a century and the party that committed all those atrocities still exists and runs in elections. Chiang Ching-kuo makes an appearance in the film, though they don't show his face presumably because they couldn't find any actor ugly enough to play him. 

His so-called grandson who is Maury Poviching the hell out of that purported family connection might be the mayor of Taipei in a few weeks. 

Is that really ancient history, or is it relevant right now?

***

That's the background. On to the movie. 

The Taipei Times covers the way Untold Herstory pays meticulous detail to language use: people speak in various dialects of Mandarin (you can tell which characters don't speak it natively), Taiwanese, Atayal and Japanese. The guards all spoke Cantonese. As such, the film has both Mandarin and English subtitles, which also make it more accessible to an international audience. If your Mandarin subtitle-reading isn't so hot, catch this movie now: it's one of the rare films of this genre to offer English.

I'm not sure that the prisoners of Green Island would have been allowed to speak that much Taiwanese and Japanese without more severe punishment, but then they also said at the beginning that the inmates were all now numbers, not names. Then they continued to use names, because clearly some rules matter more than others, even back in authoritarian Taiwan.

The plotting and general mood is very Taiwanese. I appreciated the nonlinear scenes which set a certain mood of tension, depression, tragedy and chaos. The opening scenes are slightly disorienting, which does a good job portraying what it likely felt to have your world torn asunder as you land on Green Island for a stint in prison.

The overall effect is one of an agglomeration of memories that come together to tell a whole story, but are experienced somewhat out of order, they way you might encounter it in nightmares and PTSD flashbacks. 

Other details lend authenticity: the fact that some of the inmates were indeed refugees from China themselves -- not everyone was from Taiwan, and not everyone was a leftist or home-rule advocate. The authorities running the prison slept with whatever female inmates took their fancy. That the guards were usually but not always cruel. Most people executed were chosen for political reasons, none got a fair trial, and many were hand-picked by Chiang Kai-shek to die.

Upside-down shots from the viewpoint of characters strung up by their legs also imply how justice was absolutely turned on its head: some (though not all) of the characters are actually guilty of the "crimes" they've been sent to Green Island for. The problem is, in any free country they would not be crimes at all. These "crimes" include being a member of a socialist organization, passing newspaper clippings to one another, and merely thinking Taiwan might be better off as an independent state. That they were crimes as defined by a monstrous government only means that justice had been turned asunder. Those that recognized this and suffered mental breakdowns over it were called "crazy". But of course, they were right.

Untold Herstory isn't exactly subtle on the imagery, but I didn't mind that. Every time some KMT officer was unusually cruel or hypocritical, an ROC flag, a picture of Sun Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek was prominently displayed in the frame. The music drove home the point. Sone lines -- "I'm not a Communist bandit, I'm just a Taiwanese ox!", "You are a spy if the Commander says you are a spy!" and the double-edged "how can a flag be just a rag?" were heartbreaking. 

And speaking of smiling in the photograph taken of you just before your execution as a form of rebellion? Well, that just broke me. It broke me. This did, too.

The scene at the end is all the more heartbreaking for being out of context and highly metaphorical: I won't spoil it, but someone in our group recognized scenes like these as a trope borrowed from Japanese films.

It was difficult to make Untold Herstory, and friends pointed out that it probably wouldn't have been made at all even 20 years ago. This was not just because society was perhaps not ready for it, but because the real women who lived these experiences did not want to talk about them, with reasonable justification. It's never easy to talk about that kind of pain.

This is why films like Untold Herstory and the book it's based on do need to be discussed in the present. They exist in living memory. They still affect society. And, after all, only those who want to protect the truly guilty -- the people who committed the White Terror which saw these women and so many others tortured and killed -- seem to think it should be "left in the past". 

They are wrong, so prove them wrong. Go see Untold Herstory. Learn about exactly what the KMT did in Taiwan, and why justice was never served, as those criminals were never truly punished for what they did to the people they imprisoned, both Taiwanese and Chinese. That those perpetrators of crimes against humanity -- and now their sons and grandsons, or "grandsons" -- are even still a political party disgusts me. The DPP needs meaningful opposition, but it shouldn't be a gaggle of mass murderers and their descendents.

Then get a drink afterward, because I promise you will not want to go directly home and stew in your thoughts. 

Crazy, Rich Nations

Original photo from Wikimedia Commons
(to be fair this movie has actually made me want to return to Singapore, but mostly for the food)

You probably think I'm writing in to comment on Crazy Rich Asians because it's a cultural moment and it'll be good traffic for Lao Ren Cha. I'm not - I don't expect this will even be one of the more popular posts. I just have some thoughts on the movie and I'd like to share them.

It took me a few hours, because my mind was completely cleaned out by Henry Golding's golden washboard abs, but I'm over it now* so here we are.

Let me get one thing out of the way first: I really liked the movie, so let's talk about that first. If you don't care, scroll through a few paragraphs to get to my concerns. 

Why did I like it? Because despite some Chinese viewers thinking it "presents a stereotypical view of Asians" to Western audiences, I actually think it smashes these stereotypical views.

I can assure you, of my friends and family who have never been to Asia, very few of them think that Asians live like the Crazy Rich Asians. Most of them think "Asian" and they think "poor and full of gongs" or something. You know, like:

from Wikimedia Commons

Maybe with a dragon or some "ancient Chinese art of kung fu" thrown in. But definitely poor. To many Westerners, only the West is rich.

I am also reasonably sure a large percentage of people I know back home think that the only reason I don't live in a straw hut in a rice paddy and wear a conical hat to work is because I live in a city, which they might well imagine as some cement buildings scattered among the straw huts.

So, y'know, I'm actually happy to see a representation of Asia that doesn't look like the only people who live there are rice farmers or monks and their only purpose outside Asia is to run Asian restaurants and dispense religious wisdom to white protagonists. I live in a pretty developed country in a continent that, for much (but not all) of its breadth, is developed. It's about time the West woke up and realized that. Asians are not all still-suffering victims of Western imperialism (in Taiwan and elsewhere, there are currently-suffering victims of Chinese imperialism, but I'll get to that.) Much of Asia really is criss-crossed by ultra-wealthy families, many of whom claim Chinese ancestry, and all of whom know each other.

To imply otherwise is to say "what? but don't you like gongs and monks? Why are you wearing Versace? Don't you have some traditional robes? Don't let the white man force you out of the rice paddy!"

Which...barf.  

It's also about time they woke up and realized that Asia can't be described with a single word (like "collectivist" or "Confucian" or "ancient") - there are good, decent, down-to-earth people (like Astrid and Colin) and selfish jerks (like Eddie and Amanda), and people who think they are good and decent and self-sacrificing who are in fact kind of selfish (like Eleanor, in a way). You know, like everywhere else in the world.

I also liked it because, while people are writing about how it pits Western and Asian values (does it, though? I'll get to that too), I find it plays with the fundamental rightness of feminist values, and how they can exist in any cultural setting, adjusted to the needs and goals of women in any given culture. When I think "family values", even in an Asian context, I think "values that lift up everyone in the family, with everyone negotiating, cooperating, giving and receiving for the benefit of all, including women", not "women must always sacrifice for the family". That's a feminist value that can exist in Asia - Rachel even references those words in reference to a game of mahjong!

And I'm fine with it being called Crazy Rich Asians even though it's really only about "ethnic Chinese" - a good book needs a snappy title and Crazy Rich Overseas Chinese in Singapore...isn't. It's not a National Geographic documentary, after all. (Anyway those seem to skew toward the poverty and gongs, too - all the stuff Westerners like to feel both guilty over and enchanted by. Not a real place full of real, mostly normal people.) It's not about "Singapore" or "diverse Asia". It's about a group of crazy, rich and crazy rich people. Can't it just be that? Can't something be set in Asia and feature an Asian cast and be about something other than social justice?

I liked it despite the criticisms I've heard from some media and my social-justice oriented friends: that it only shows one kind of Asian (the only dark-skinned or even non-Chinese Asians we see are working in service positions), that despite it not being scheduled to open in China, that it presents a problematic pro-China orientation and presents a view of Chineseness that is frighteningly close to Communist Party ideology - an idea I'll quote from liberally in a moment - that of course it ignores deeper issues of inequality in Singapore.

Or, as my husband joked on the way home, "I'm happy now that we know what the inside of a typical Singaporean home looks like, since we have always stayed in hotels on our trips there!"

All of these things are true, and I can't wholly ignore them. They are very real:

From Kirsten Han writing for the Hong Kong Free Press (linked above and again here):

The Young family, for example, sit around and make jiaozi, a dumpling from northern China that’s unlikely to be part of the traditions of a long-established Chinese Singaporean family, since most of the Chinese who came to Singapore came from the southeastern coast.

It’s also odd that Nick Young’s grandmother, the elderly matriarch of the family, speaks perfect Mandarin, while the women one generation below her speak Cantonese—in real life, it’s far more likely to be the other way around, especially given the Singapore government’s efforts to restrict the use of dialects and promote Mandarin.


and:


On her trip, Rachel Chu learns the difference between the Asian American and Asian experience. But there isn’t an “Asian experience”, per se. It’s not as simple as East versus West, as the symbolism of the film’s mahjong game suggests. Even within tiny Singapore, we see diverging Chinese experiences every day. If anything, it’s the Chinese Communist Party in the People’s Republic of China that seeks to obscure these differences in their efforts to engender feelings of sympathy or even loyalty to the party through the idea of racial unity.


YUP. Hey Westerners - did you know that was a thing? It totally is.

This is echoed in Catherine Chou's piece in The News Lens (also linked above and here):

Repressive government initiatives to solidify Mandarin as the region’s common tongue have been so successful in Singapore, Taiwan, and China that Hokkien and Cantonese are now routinely mistaken in popular culture as mere dialects of Mandarin.

Mandarin thus functions in the movie just as it does in government policies: as an artificial marker of class and sophistication. Cantonese, and especially Hokkien, are used as signifiers of marginality and lower status.


Holy fishguts, this is spot on.

This isn't only a problem in Singapore - it's also a deep social divide in Taiwan. For a few generations now, the KMT colonizers (yes, colonizers) have promoted Mandarin as the lingua franca of Taiwan, a country they believe is "a part of China" but which a.) isn't, b.) fuck you, KMT and c.) was never a place where Mandarin was a native tongue, before it was forced on the Taiwanese. To do this, they not only made it punishable in some circumstances to speak Taiwanese Hokkien (and caused one to be 'under suspicion' in others), but made it so that Mandarin was the language of the upper classes, with Hokkien being the language of "ignorant farmers" (無知農夫). The language of the gauche. The language of the excluded.

And believe me, the point has always been to explicitly exclude. How do you get people who speak a totally different language, and who might rebel, to accept you as their sovereign masters? Make 'em think their language is merely a coarse dialect of the common tongue you share, and you are the learned scholars who have come to educate them in your common tongue's purer, better form. 

In the film, the good-hearted, nouveau riche Gohs (who, in their kindness, though perhaps not in their campier qualities, remind me of Taiwan a little) speak Hokkien, and are excluded from "society". The posh, old money Youngs should speak Cantonese, but instead speak Mandarin. Peik Lin points out the 'class' differences explicitly, but Western audiences aren't likely to notice the linguistic ones.

This leads to another concern I have: Taiwan is mentioned in Crazy Rich Asians, but it's always a sidebar. China gets a not-quite-appropriate quote at the beginning of the film (a point that Kirsten Han made in HKFP), Singapore gets the "Lives of the Rich and Famous" treatment: Taiwan, on the other hand, is portrayed as just another place where rich Chinese might live and do business with other Chinese - despite it being qualitatively different not just culturally, but economically. Taiwan isn't Singapore or Hong Kong - it's not rich and shiny. It's not a waking dragon like China. It is remarkably unpretentious and down-to-earth. Even its shiniest district - Xinyi - is only a little shiny, and not really at all glitzy.

I like it that way, but it does spell out for me the differences between "countries that cooperate with Chinese cultural imperialism" and "countries that tell China to eat it". And, as a smart friend of mine recently wrote in a paper you will almost certainly never read, a key difference between who can have a close relationship with the PRC and who must be suspicious of them and look for other options is whether or not China respects that country's borders. China and Singapore can be close, because China isn't threatening to invade it. Taiwan must be wary, and so Taiwan is shoved eternally, unfairly to the sidelines.

So, Singapore can sign on to this movie that promotes a certain ideal of "Chineseness" within its borders if it wants to. Singaporeans of Chinese heritage can call themselves Chinese, if they want, and claim common cultural roots with Chinese people in China. The movie clearly portrays those roots inaccurately, but Singapore isn't going to lose its sovereignty over it.

But there is no room for Taiwan as it is in the Chinese world of Crazy Rich Asians: it can try to claim its place as part of the "family", which many in Taiwan would like to do given their ancestral roots in China. But that means being eaten alive by the Communist Party's insistence that being Chinese means you are a part of China, are loyal to China the CCP and follow certain cultural prescriptions decided by China the CCP. Or, it can deny its links to China and Chinese cultural heritage, but always feel a sense of exclusion.

The CCP has, like Eleanor Young, made it so there is no winning hand for Taiwan: it can't turn away from the "Chinese" cultural roots that many would like to claim without being kicked out of the "family", but it can't claim its place at the table without being subsumed by China.

It's also worth noting that the values touted as "Asian" in the film were common in the West just a few generations ago - they're not "Asian", they're..."traditional". Therefore, the values that eventually stand up to "traditional" ones in the film aren't "Western", they're "modern". 

Considering this, even if there were a way for Taiwan to win this game, in the version of "Asia" that Eleanor (though not necessarily the movie as a whole) puts forward where "Asian" is (falsely) conflated with "traditional", there is no room to be both Asian and liberal/progressive. If "Asian values" include self-sacrifice, choosing family and duty over love and a whole pallet of misogyny, where the gay cousin is accepted - but not entirely (the actor who plays Oliver Tsien says of the character, "he knows he’s an outsider in his own family just by being queer") - where is the space for an Asian country like Taiwan that has, say, decided to enshrine marriage equality into law, has a strong social movement culture and actually attempts (though not always with success) to enforce gender equality laws in the workplace?

In short, in the version of Asia that Crazy Rich Asians puts forward, where traditional values are accepted unanimously by all, where does a country like Taiwan fit in? It's almost as if certain other, larger, crazier, richer nations don't want that country to exist at all...

So...I liked the movie. It was fun. It was well-made and well-acted. It was more thoughtful than a romantic comedy needs to be. It's a breakthrough moment for portrayals of Asian characters in film.

But I also...didn't. Because the portrayals of what it means to be "Chinese" in it are entirely the brainchild of a crazy, rich nation. And even if it wanted into this 'family' of Chineseness, Taiwan would always be rebellious, gay cousin Oliver. Though far less accepted for who she is.

Western academics and commentators love to point out that overarching cultural narratives are usually promulgated by the most powerful members of a group, and exclude the least powerful. We've become good at spotting this in our own cultural contexts: what it means to be American is projected as a white person's view of Americanness, what it means to be a businessperson is a male view of business culture, the notion of what "romance" means is a straight one, etc.

It's about time they realized that this happens in Asia too, and what it means to be "Chinese" or even "Asian" is a narrative that the Chinese government is actively trying to control - and of course, they are the ones with power. And money. Also, they (the government) are freakin' insane.
*not really over it, but I'm still fundamentally a Freddy Lim girl

Opening China to Taiwanese films: it's a trap

Or, please consider this your daily reminder to never, ever trust the Chinese government, ever. They never do anything 'benevolently', at least when it comes to Taiwan. There is always an underlying motive. The CCP is evil, not stupid.

So what could the motive be for lifting restrictions on the Chinese market for Taiwanese films?

Frankly, it's the same reason why they allow so many Chinese students into Taiwan, and have made Taiwanese universities sign "memoranda of understanding" that certain topics the CCP doesn't like won't be discussed. It didn't seem like much was happening as a result, and the topics were not actually banished from Taiwanese university classrooms, but the point was, China could have started insisting on enforcement whenever it wanted, and if this or that university refused, no more revenue stream from Chinese students' tuition for them! Good idea to get them good and dependent on it, first, of course.

The article itself, despite its laughable breakdown of history (the same old risible "since 1949" nonsense), contains this answer within it:


An Fengshan, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said: “Taiwanese compatriots can share in the opportunities arising from China’s economic development.”


Yo, An Fengshan can cho - - - oh yeah, I'm trying to be less vulgar about serious topics.

Ahem. Anyway.

The translation of An's foetid garbage talk is this: when Taiwanese movies become more popular thanks to wider distribution in China and Taiwanese film production companies start to feel more dependent on Chinese revenue, the Chinese government will start placing demands - enforcing harsher censorship rules, trying to control which stars can appear in which movies, that sort of thing. Shutting down productions they don't like by suddenly having a problem with the Taiwanese crew they were allowed to come in with.

It's just another way to try and control Taiwan's media output. 

Not wanting to spend the time/money/resources to make two versions of the same film or lose potential sales by casting "unwelcome" stars who do not parrot Beijing's propaganda, companies will just start self-censoring from the get-go to stay in the Chinese market. So we in Taiwan will end up watching Taiwanese movies with more of a CCP-approved Chinese twist.

Then there's this:


Similarly, reducing the numerical limits on Taiwanese talent, is unlikely to mean complete derestriction. China has actively excluded Taiwanese performers who it considers politically undesirable. In 2016, producers of “No Other Love” were ordered to remove veteran Taiwanese actor Leon Dai from the film which was in post-production at the time. Dai fell foul of mainland authorities by not being clear enough over his stance on Taiwanese independence.


Pro-Taiwan actors and other film industry workers will find themselves short of roles. Stars that want to stay bankable will start touting CCP-approved trash. Some might try to "stay out of politics" to avoid threatening their livelihoods, but the Chinese troll mob will crow that this is not good enough, and they will feel public pressure to actively speak out in Beijing-friendly ways. This already happens with stars who aren't trying to be political (even Chinese ones) so don't think it won't start happening on an even larger scale. 
And then we will have a whole crop of Taiwanese stars who are publicly pro-China and anti-Taiwan no matter how they actually feel. This will certainly affect public morale in Taiwan, exactly as it is meant to.

Again. Never trust the Chinese government. Ever. Not ever. Especially when it comes to Taiwan, they can never, ever be taken at face value. Everything they do is in service to their greater goal of annexation.

Oh and seriously An Fengshan can choke on a fat one. 

Sorry, couldn't help myself. 

#notsorry