Swedish citizen Gui Minhai has been held by China for three years and Sweden has been super weird about it

Gui Minhai, Martin Schibbye, Johan Persson, Peter Dahlin

Taipei-based Swedish journalist Jojje Olsson held a talk last week on the case of Gui Minhai. Gui is a Swedish citizen abducted from Thailand by the Chinese government who, beyond some limited contact with family and Swedish diplomats, has been held basically incommunicado. In fact, the talk itself coincided with the date when Gui had been officially held for exactly three years. 

The most informative part of Olsson's talk was his description of what Sweden is doing (or not doing) to get him back. While they are highly involved in closed-door, quiet talks with Chinese officials, it seems odd that these talks are indeed so "quiet": not only has the government not been in regular contact with Gui's daughter, but the case seems to be far more low-profile than it ought to.

This weird silence can be understood in comparison to the government's reaction to two other Swedish journalists who were similarly kidnapped and held for over a year in a foreign country on trumped-up charges. Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye spent over 400 days in an Ethiopian jail for essentially doing their jobs. Similarly, Gui had broken no laws in Hong Kong, where his books (which were semi-biographical tabloid fodder about Chinese leaders) were published, and was in Bangkok when he was taken. Like Persson and Schibbye, he is a Swedish citizen.

This is even more eyebrow-raising, as other European countries (most notably Germany, according to Olsson, but including much of the continent) have not only more publicly called for Gui's release, but have tried to work together to collectively take public action. And yet, Sweden stays on the path of "quiet diplomacy", even though it doesn't appear to be working. Bad publicity scares China. A few polite Swedish diplomats? Yeah I don't think so. 

But in Persson and Schibbye's case, there was an uproar in Sweden and the government much more transparently and openly feuded with Ethiopia over their detainment. What's more, Swedish officials were regularly in contact with Persson and Schibbye's family members.

Why are they raising much less of a fuss in dealing with China over Gui Minhai? Why are they not in regular contact with Angela Gui (his daughter)? When Gui was snatched a second time from a Chinese train under the noses of Swedish diplomats who were taking him to Beijing for medical care, why did the reaction seem so muted?

In the international media as well, while the case has been reported by major outlets such as the BBC and the Guardian, the average person (including the average Swedish person, I'd gather) doesn't even know that this is happening. To even your typical well-traveled educated European, the idea that China would abduct foreign nationals in foreign countries might even seem farfetched. But that's exactly what they've done.

The suggested answer is that China is a powerful country, both politically and economically. Ethiopia means little to Sweden; there are fewer risks with starting an openly critical campaign to get abducted citizens back.

I suggest an even more obvious answer. Here is a photo of Swedish citizens with Swedish names, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye:

Wikimedia Commons

And here is a photo of Swedish citizen with a Chinese name, Gui Minhai:

A screen grab of a screen grab - not many photos are available

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Do you think it could be...?

Yeah, I do.

The rest of Europe, as noted above, seems to understand the gravity of the situation. I have to wonder why the Swedish government doesn't.

Certainly, China wants the world to think that Gui is Chinese and this is a Chinese matter. Gui is not Chinese; he may have been born in Ningbo, but China doesn't recognize dual nationality. The day Gui became Swedish is the day he stopped being Chinese. Regardless, Chinese state thugs forced Gui to say publicly that he wanted to renounce Swedish citizenship and he "slammed the country" on television. (It is certain that this was a forced statement; there is no possibility that this is truly how Gui feels about the matter).

It is well-known that China thinks of basically every person of Chinese ancestral heritage as Chinese; their actual nationality doesn't seem to matter to the CCP. They do this by threatening Chinese students abroad, taking over Chinese-language media aimed at the diaspora and threatening loved ones who may still be in China, among other tactics.

It's also not a stretch to see that they think they can get away with holding Gui in part because he, well, looks Asian. They are betting on the rest of the world seeing this as a "Chinese" issue, not an international one, and that the world cares less about these things. Basically, China is deeply racist about such matters (thinking everyone with Chinese ancestry is Chinese and therefore subject to CCP control  no matter how many generations ago their family left is racist), but they're also betting that we are racist too: that we will care less because Gui is Asian.

Why do I say this? Well, compare China's treatment of Gui to their treatment of another Swede involved in China: Peter Dahlin. Gui published books - legally - that threatened the CCP's reputation. Dahlin is an activist who threatens the CCP by working with human rights lawyers in China.

Dahlin was released after a few weeks. Gui has been held for three years. Dahlin was taken in China, over actions he undertook in China; Gui was taken in Thailand over actions he undertook in Hong Kong.

I'll repeat myself: Peter Dahlin is white and has a European name. Gui Minhai looks Chinese and has a Chinese name.

China didn't want a disappeared European on their hands, so they let Dahlin go. They are betting on you not thinking Gui is European.

Don't believe me? They abducted another foreign citizen too: Lee Ming-che. Lee is Taiwanese, not Chinese. But his name is Lee Ming-che and he looks Asian. Lee was abducted in China, over actions that he took in Taiwan where he broke no laws.

Like Gui, the Chinese government wants you to think Lee is Chinese and that this is therefore a Chinese matter and none of your business. It is no such thing. They want you to fall back on old mental blocks - for you not to care as much about people with Asian faces.

Still don't believe me? Despite Swedish officials being fairly quiet about pressing for Gui's release, China has started a massive diplomatic row over a family of play-acting Chinese tourists and China's ambassador to Sweden is something of a grandstanding jerk: all of this (even according to Olsson) seems to be related to China's attempts to pressure Sweden to just forget Gui Minhai exists, and to shift the spotlight of the Sweden-China disagreement from a Swede abducted by China to a family of shrieking stooges.

Again: China wants you to forget about Gui Minhai, and Lee Ming-che too. They want you to see these foreign prisoners of the Chinese state as "Chinese", so you won't worry your pretty little head about them. The Swedish government, for some reason, seems to be playing along just enough to keep Gui out of the news. The result is that most people seem to be forgetting about him, if they knew he existed at all.

You, however, should do no such thing. 

This Week in CHINA TENSIONS!!!!

Apparently the old way of avoiding saying that China creates tensions through its own aggressive expansionism and weaponized use of 'hurt feelings' (and century-out-of-date victimhood - more on that later) isn't harvesting as many clicks as it used to. Perhaps passive voice (those tensions - they were just...raised!) isn't thirsty enough, perhaps simply attributing these tensions to everyone but China wasn't interesting anymore.

Now, we need BIGGER and STRONGER verbs to THROTTLE readers' attention because REPORTING THE SITUATION ACCURATELY is apparently not enough.

The accurate situation: China is engaging in territorial expansionism using fabricated historical narratives to justify it. The "tensions" over Taiwan are created by China, and are a policy choice on the part of China. They are not - as someone on my twitter feed put it - a "natural reaction" to what others do. China does not suffer because the US sent warships through the Taiwan Strait. The strait is considered international waters (and this has been pointed out before). Nothing changes in China when a country sends a warship through international waters.

If anything, China is the one creating the situation where a response is necessary. If China hadn't been slowly pushing the envelope towards a world where it controlled Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait as well, the US wouldn't have felt it necessary to demonstrate that it had the right to sail ships in all international waters.

That means that China is not only choosing to respond to this with "OMG that means tensions!" but in fact that they created the tensions to begin with.  

If the media reported that accurately, here is what these completely ridiculous headlines and tweets would actually look like:





Ooh, a new one - "antagonize"! I guess simply "causing tensions" wasn't eye-catching enough. 

But it should be:

 "US May Sail Through Taiwan Strait In Response To Chinese Antagonism In Region" 
(This was later changed to "provoking", which isn't much better.) 









Wow, fury! Really? Actual fury? What has China got to be "furious" about when another country sails ships in international waters, unless it is choosing to be furious?

Nope, let me fix that for you:

"Chinese aggression against Taiwan risks U.S. fury, Pentagon sends two warships into nearby international waters"




EXACERBATE! Hah.

I'm especially saddened by this tweet, because the Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post should understand the region better than this. Anyway, her tweet would more accurately read:

"Two US Navy vessels sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Monday, in a move that warns China against further exacerbating tensions with Taiwan"

Let me add - "already high tensions" - where did these tensions come from? Who created them? In whose interest is it for those tensions to remain high? Who keeps getting angry?

You know the answer is "China", so why does your tweet imply that the U.S. is to blame?





Oh man. LA Times finally got someone other than Ralph "I hate Taiwan" Jennings to write about Taiwan, and they still come out with this garbage. What's even more annoying is that the most salient quote is in the article itself:

“The ships’ transit though the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” said Lt. Rachel McMarr, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. “The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.”

So, if you have to report on this at all (which you don't), maybe try:

"Pentagon sends two warships through Taiwan Strait as warning to Beijing to cease raising tensions"

or even:

"Why is China angry about the Pentagon sending two warships through international waters?"


And your laugh of the day:




China provoked a US response, not the other way around. But this is Global Times, who cares. But let's play anyway:

"China's actions in Taiwan Straits [sic] provoke US response of sending warship through international waters"

* * *


This worries me, because I fear the way these things are being reported won't change. Newly-minted journalists will feel they have to stick to the old lines to get published and won't insist on accurate wording, editors will continue to edit pieces on topics they know nothing about, and actual bureau chiefs (jesus) will EXACERBATE the problem by sharing news that makes it seem as though this situation is everyone's fault but China's.

They know better: like with Chinese "tensions", it's a choice to publish headlines this obtuse and backwards.

It also worries me because China will absolutely continue to use this to their advantage, and nobody will say anything. Then the US will respond to China's actions. Or Taiwan will. And everyone will jump on that, pointing fingers at the U.S. and Taiwan and saying "these guys are exacerbating tensions!"

It makes it impossible to respond to China, when China's own actions are not held up to the same standard. When they are not objectively considered.

Again, this is a choice. They know better. They are helping an authoritarian regime look like a victim, and therefore helping them expand not only their territorial claims but their attempts to export authoritarianism. They are aware of this. Yet they continue to do it.

And, finally, it worries me because China is taking its cues from nobler causes in the West. It's looking at how we legitimately talk about historical victimization and how that affects modern society (think: arguments about inheriting tangible and intangible generational wealth vs. inheriting trauma while still being discriminated against).

It's taking that - a real, legitimate argument - and twisting it around to weaponize its own "century of humiliation". It is the most powerful actor in Asia, has taken by force most of the territory it says it wants (which is mostly full of people with distinct cultural backgrounds who don't want to be ruled by China), and is an economic powerhouse.

In whatever ways China was victimized in the past - and it certainly was - its claim on Taiwan is not an extension of that. Not historically, not culturally, not legally. The government that rules China now has never ruled Taiwan, and if we're going to talk "antiquity", has only in recent history even considered that Taiwan could possibly be Chinese.

Let me say that again for the people in the back: even if a historical argument supported China's claims on Taiwan, which it doesn't, it wouldn't matter. Taiwan has a culture, sense of history and identity that differs from China now, and they do not want to be a part of China ever. China doesn't get to have an opinion on the future of a territory it does not hold, and which its current government (with its current borders) has never held.

China can whine and cry and play victim, but the fact that it does not have Taiwan is not a facet of its historical victimhood. And even if it were, there is no just world in which the lives of 23.4 million people are an acceptable form of reparations.

And yet all of these headlines about 'antagonizing', 'exacerbating' and 'provoking' China make it sound as though it is. As though China is still being bullied like it's the Opium Wars or something. As though it isn't the one upping the ante, with Taiwan and the U.S. responding.

This is the best possible headline, by the way:





It's from Focus Taiwan so will obviously show Taiwan's point of view, but that happens to also be the accurate point of view in this case, even incorporating a quote from a U.S. military spokesperson.

You know this, journos, yet you report all that other garbage anyway.

Seriously. Quit it. 

Yes, Ko Wen-je said a sexist thing again

The ladies of Taipei according to Ko Wen-je

So, it's time we all just admitted frankly that Ko Wen-je is a sexist jackass.

This time, it's over comments that "Japanese women make themselves up more beautifully" than Taiwanese women, with Taiwanese women not wearing makeup "go directly outside and terrify people", and that being aesthetically pleasing not only shows dedication but is a responsibility (presumably, of women).

I mean, I totally understand. What with Ko Wen-je being such a well-manicured hottie, he sure takes great care of his 'aesthetics' and women can't help swooning over him, I mean, just look at that carefully-maintained visage that makes ladies' hearts go a-flutte - -

Oh yeah THAT guy really has standing to talk about how women need to make themselves prettier. 

Oh, wait, that's not him. Sorry. The other guy is Ko. Hmm. Gotcha.

Do you like gardening, Mayor Ko? Because that is one massive glass house ya got there.

Obviously, it bothers me that the mayor of the city I live in, who is likely to be re-elected, is a sexist jerk.

It bothers me that he remains popular despite being a sexist jerk (if he'd committed actual sexual harassment he'd probably be a goner politically, but apparently stupid, sexist comments aren't enough), and that the media seem to cover for him.

I mean, there's no excuse for his recent comments, but please enjoy some smokescreens for sexist comments in the past:

Ko "clarifies" that both unmarried women and men over 30 are a "national security risk" (note verb choice)

"Gaffe-prone" Ko says he's "still learning to be a politician", which sounds like apologia for comments that are shitty even when non-politicians make them - note the way the prominence of Ko's "explanation" and the use of "gaffe" downplay the nature of what he actually said. And not just one thing - this is over two separate comments, both of which were horrible!

It also implies, from Ko's perspective, that everyday men say these things and that's OK (men I know have assured me they and other men typically don't, even in all-male company), but politicians shouldn't. No, dude. You shouldn't make comments that a woman is "so pretty" that she's not fit to be mayor but that she should instead "be a receptionist or model for tourism promotion materials", or "I didn't become a OB-GYN because I'd have to make a living between women's legs" even if you are not a politician. So there's nothing to "learn" to not say about women in order to be mayor. You're just an asshole.

You really think after these sorts of comments that the women of Taipei think you can do a good job as their elected representative? What woman would want to be governed by you?

So, this time around, let's not do that, okay? Let's call it what it is. Ko Wen-je definitely has his distinct personality and so he makes off-color remarks. Fine. I do that too! I live for off-color things (as long as they're not mean to the wrong people). But can we just admit that off-color sexist remarks belie sexist beliefs no matter your personality? Thanks.

But what bothers me more is that he's the best choice we've got in the upcoming election.

I don't care about one stupid comment, not really. I care that he keeps making them and yet there's no other solid choice to vote for.

I'm not writing this stuff because I want to trash Mayor Ko for no reason, and I'm not writing it because I want him to lose the upcoming election (what I say here won't matter in that regard anyway). I'm aware that the other two choices are worse: Ting Shou-jung is a China-loving, anti-independence sack of empty slogans and Pasuya Yao...I mean, lol.

If anything, that's the problem: Ko is a jackass - a smart, hardworking jackass, but a jackass nonetheless - yet we don't have a better choice. We finally get the first non-KMT mayor since Chen Shui-bian and he's...a jackass. It burns.

You don't adopt Taiwan, Taiwan adopts you: a book review of Formosa Moon

I used to believe that I’d adopted Taiwan, but the truth is, Taiwan adopted me, taking me in when I was in my early twenties and giving me a series of increasingly interesting reasons to stick around....Six months ago, I brought the love of my life to Taiwan. The idea was ostensibly to convince her to love Taiwan much in the way that I did. In this I believe I’ve met with some success.

- Joshua Samuel Brown, Formosa Moon 
(by Joshua Samuel Brown and Stephanie Huffman, ThingsAsian Press, 2018 - buy it here - and if you're in Taipei, there's a launch party this weekend)


I've heard people say that the best travel writing to read is about places you've never been: places foreign and "exotic" (how I hate that word) that you know next to nothing about, but come to understand in some small way through a guided journey by the author. If I'd ever quite bought into that, Formosa Moon cured me of it, reminding me that there is an earthier satisfaction in reading other peoples' experiences in places you know well.

Although none of the places mentioned in Formosa Moon were new to me (well, some of the hotels and restaurants mentioned were, such as the Dive Cube hotel), there's a certain beauty in reading about a place you're so familiar with that you can smell the air, see the details of the parks and unkempt sidewalks, picture the mountains, know intimately what kind of trees are growing all around and what it's like to live your life in a series of tiled buildings.

A section of the book takes place at Sun Moon Lake. Been there, didn't love it. Another one describes National Chengchi University. My sister studied there for a year. The Dome of Light? I was there two weeks ago. Tainan? I go every time I get the chance. Jiaoxi? Several visits, soaked in the public hot spring too. Huwei? I'm one of the few foreigners who went to Yunlin for fun over a Dragon Boat weekend just to see what it was like.

But there's something deeper about Formosa Moon that I just get. I think pretty much everyone who's made a life here - that is to say, many if not most of my closest friends at this point - understand as well. Taiwan is like a cat: you don't adopt a cat. A cat adopts you.

You might come here thinking you're going to just "go abroad for a few years" and do that privileged First World thing by teaching English to fund your time in Asia (you're probably not an actual English teacher). You might stay for 1, 2, 3 years: most of the cram school crowd seems to turn over in roughly those increments. Some of you won't get it: the traffic - there are traffic laws, I swear - the pollution, the ugly buildings (you will almost certainly live in one of these), the humidity, the long or weird working hours and greatly reduced career options, the crowds will all collude to gently push you out. Or maybe none of them will, and you'll enjoy your time here just fine, but when the clock is up it's up, and you were always going to return to the place you know is home anyway. Taiwan didn't adopt you. That's OK.

Some of you will fall in love here, or find your groove, or take an interest in Taiwan's unique history, or build a community. Or it'll be the damp hills, the palm trees, the local aunties, the 7-11s, the traditional markets. Or you'll watch a major social movement unfold up close and realize Taiwan is a place and a cause worth fighting for. Something about life here will speak to something inside you, and you'll stay. You probably didn't consciously choose to. You were adopted.

In this way, I found it appropriate that Formosa Moon heavily featured cats, though they popped up in the narrative for no particular reason, and certainly not in any planned thematic way. It just did. From the cats of Houtong (another place I know well, and have started hikes from) to the painted cats (among other fantastic creatures) of Rainbow Grandpa to Joshua's friend's cats which provided a cozy sense of home to Stephanie - the other writer of the book - I found the unexpected feline leitmotif to fit. Taiwan not only adopts you like a cat (or it doesn't), but it can be as cool, beguiling or mercurial as a cat, or as winsome and homey as one too. You know your cat loves you, but you're never quite sure how much.

Or, to put it another way:


Taiwan is kind, to its native born, adopted children, and short-term guests alike. But Taiwan doesn’t change its tempo for you. Instead, you must change your tempo to adapt to Taiwan. And this will make all the difference.


Of course, you get to wax lyrical about all of this because you chose to come for reasons other than making a basic living. Supporting yourself may have had something to do with it, but you could have done that where you'd come from. You're aware that exponentially larger numbers of foreign residents in Taiwan had no such privilege. (You are aware of that, yes?)

All this is not to say that only those who know Taiwan should read Formosa Moon. I'll certainly recommend - if not outright purchase as gifts - copies of the book for loved ones back home who perhaps don't get it, most of whom because they've never visited. It describes the country well, and even the pictures (which are very "homey", not glossy professional shots, which I see as a plus) show in accurate detail what life in Taiwan is like.

As the book itself points out, cities like Kyoto (or Shanghai or Singapore or these days, Seoul) beckon to the Western traveler who is planning their first trip to Asia. Most travelers don't think of "Asia" and immediately think "Taipei". So they don't come, and therefore, they don't know. Formosa Moon, I hope, might tempt some of them into finally visiting to see for themselves why I've chosen to stay for most of my adult life.

And not only that, I'll recommend it for its unique perspective. Every other piece of Taiwan-focused travel writing on my bookshelf is by a white guy. I haven't cracked them all yet, but will. I'm sure they'll be fantastic; people whose opinions I trust have told me so. But, so much travel writing is done by white guys hitting the trail alone, and other narrative voices enrich the genre. I don't think I've seen a travelogue written by two partners in a relationship before, each with views that play off or add depth to the other.

As someone who also moved to Taiwan and then six months later convinced the love of my life to move here too, that appeals to me - as a woman and a person in a committed relationship. Ours took a slightly different route: he didn't know he was the love of my life when he moved here (I kind of did, but didn't tell him so right off), and our relationship evolved here, not in the US. I didn't "love Taiwan" when he moved here: my first six months here weren't that great, to be honest. I am sure I have had success, however, in convincing him to love this country as much as I do. We show it in different ways, but I know.

More poignantly, Formosa Moon captures what it's like to be both in a relationship with a person, and with a country. We never had to face the challenge of Brendan liking Taiwan; he did immediately, on his first visit here. I wasn't sure then how much I liked Taiwan: I didn't decide to make the commitment until three years later. That was when I'd been planning to decide if I'd stay or go; it also happened to be the year we got married. I suppose our somewhat weirdly polyamorous love grew together.

Of course there's a bittersweetness to every love story. You know how they say that in a relationship, someone always loves more, and the other less? And the one who loves less has all the power?

Although I know I can never truly be "a local" (forget not looking the part: it's just not my native culture), I want to stay and advocate for Taiwan, and gain legal rights - not just privileges accorded me out of courtesy as a permanent resident, which can be revoked. I don't expect a perfect life here. It would be nice, however, if in my relationship with Taiwan I didn't always feel like I was the one who loved more. I like to think that by opening myself up to Taiwan, that Taiwan has opened to me a little. I'll never know how much, though.

I'll end, then, on a particular salient quote from co-Stephanie Huffman:


Taiwan and I were certainly friends but had we really progressed to a love state? I didn’t know even know how Taiwan felt about me and I certainly wanted some indication of her feelings before I made any commitments.



Yup. Except I did that thing that relationship advice columnists say never to do: I made the commitment without knowing quite how she felt about me.

Still here though. You see, I was adopted. 

Why is everyone so upset that Ko said Taiwan is a "product on a shelf"?

The screenshot that launched a million words

Because I'm gonna say it: he's right. 


Taiwan must focus on making itself more valuable to President Donald Trump and accept its status as a pawn in the great power game between the U.S. and China, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je said.


Nobody likes to hear that they "must accept their status as a pawn" - but that doesn't make it untrue. We absolutely should not overestimate the US's willingness to defend Taiwan.

And he's not only right about Donald Trump, who is absolutely not a reliable ally to anyone and sees everything as an opportunity that can bolster his own self-image or worth or a threat to be eradicated (or at least shouted at incoherently), he's also right about the US in general. Not only that, it's been true for awhile.

This doesn't mean Taiwan shouldn't deal with the US, or should refuse its help, but that's not what Ko said: he said we needed a strategy to deal with this reality. That's just a correct statement.

But it seemed as though nobody wanted to hear it. What struck me was the swiftness and absolute horror of the reaction from Taiwanese activists, commentators, friends and other people involved in the struggle for a better Taiwan. The general feeling seemed to be, essentially "how could he say such a thing?"

I was a bit curious about that so I asked around, paid attention to various comment threads (like this one) on the topic, and generally just tried to get a sense of what was so terrible about essentially making an accurate, if damning, statement about the US's commitment to Taiwan.

The main point of anger doesn't seem to be the idea that Taiwan is a "pawn", but that the Ko has not equally addressed the fact that if Taiwan is a poker chip to the US, then it's also one to China. Essentially, he's speaking out about how the US sees Taiwan, but is seen by the public as worryingly - and oddly - growing closer to China.

There's a sense among many Taiwanese that Ko has questionable motives, from using China's language on two sides of the strait being "one family" to gaining Chinese state television endorsements to rumors that China is encouraging Taishang (Taiwanese businesspeople in China) to return to vote for Ko and is supporting him for a 2020 presidential run on the assumption that the KMT can't win, with Ko himself not doing much to dispel these notions. I've even heard rumors about some deeply weird cross-party alliances that...well, I won't even go there.

From 幹幹貓: probably one of the most common things I read to improve my colloquial Chinese. It's all in Mandarin but you should check it out!

There's also the general sentiment - captured in the Fuck Fuck Cat cartoon above - that so many Taiwanese voters and politicians are willing to bend over for China at a few sweet words promising economic incentives, ignoring China's stated and obvious intentions. These (often same) people will blast the US-Taiwan relationship as something they can't trust, despite all sorts of actually good things the US has done, from the Taiwan Travel Act to arms sales, without anything close to the ill intent of China.

So it makes sense from their perspective to worry that he'd be so dismissive of Taiwan as a commodity of the US, but silent on how China views Taiwan.

I get that too - here he basically says there is no such thing as "cross-strait relations": one could charitably parse that as "China is a foreign country like any other", but I can see how someone might hear it as "cross-strait relations don't exist because we're all the same" given some of his language choices in the past.

He goes on, however, to basically speak truth to power: saying that Trump has repeated "America First!" ad nauseam, and it's foolish to not believe him. When one reporter said "but some are insisting that you really shouldn't say 'Taiwan is just a product'", he replied, basically, "I dunno, what else am I supposed to say?"

Which...yeah.

I'm sure there are people under Trump who care about Taiwan as more than a 'product', and they've had enough say in the US's recent Taiwan policy that we've seen some real benefits. But an entire book could be written on how past administrations have seen Taiwan as a poker chip - from Bush speaking out against Taiwan independence in 2003 to Obama "selling so few arms to Taiwan that he came close to violating the Taiwan Relations Act", as a friend once put it.

The Bloomberg piece that created this poopfest goes on to say:


The outspoken former surgeon and potential presidential contender told Bloomberg News that Taiwan shouldn’t overestimate the U.S.’s willingness to defend the island from an attack by its much bigger neighbor. Ko, 59, said Taiwan needed to boost its worth to America by strengthening shared values, such as democracy and economic transparency (emphasis mine).


Again, yeah. What reasonable person would argue with that?

I could argue that playing up values like 'shared democracy' wouldn't matter - the US has a history of ignoring human rights abuses, or responding flaccidly to them, when economic benefits might be at stake (including the US's response to Tiananmen Square after 1989). That doesn't mean we shouldn't make this a selling point for Taiwan, however.

But, this is apparently not good enough: there are all sorts of rumors about his having a role in organ harvesting (getting discounts on organs from China? Something like that. I'm not too clear), on the nature of his previous visits to China and other things I won't bother with.

I'm not saying I believe all of this - I'm just pointing out that this is what is being said.

Some of the above are clearly election season character-smearing trash or at best should be taken with a Tainan Salt Museum mountain of salt, yet a lot of the comments I've been seeing slamming Ko for calling Taiwan a "product on the shelf" for the US reference the above rumors as though they are fact, and therefore prove that Ko wants to move away from a stronger relationship with the US and towards a friendlier one with China. Of course, they prove no such thing.

I don't know. I see their point vis-a-vis China - I too have been disappointed with Ko's rhetoric in this area (though much more worried about his only serious opponent's even stronger pro-China talking points). I find it odd that he'd be so quick to abandon the base that voted him in, of not-quite-DPP pro-Taiwan voters and Sunflower-energized youth to start talking like a weird old unificationist, and yet, I remain agnostic on the notion that he actually is a unificationist. I also remain agnostic on the idea that he has some deep-level "four-dimensional chess" strategy going on to deal with China: the evidence doesn't support that, either.

And I've been deeply disappointed with some in the Taiwanese electorate who are willing to believe any and all claptrap from China, who really is our enemy, and then are so quick to turn around and criticize the US.

Anyway, I get it. We big-noses are talking about how Ko is "telling it like it is" because we're just thinking about his comments vis-a-vis the US, without looking at how they stack up to his comments about China. Removed from that context, we're right. Put back in context, however, I see why this angers a certain subset of Taiwanese.

Finally, there's a sentiment among some as well that Ko supporters are becoming overly rabid themselves - acting like extremists or fundamentalists, balking at the slightest criticism (I've seen this in action, by the way - it is, in some cases, a thing). Among Ko supporters, there's a sentiment that everyone knows the guy speaks bluntly and undiplomatically, and we all say we want politicians who say what they mean, so are you really going to crucify him every time he does exactly that?

And yet, I can't repeat it enough: when you strip all that away and look at US-Taiwan relations specifically, and ignore the rumors dogging Ko in other areas, you have to admit: he's absolutely right. Trump keeps repeating "America First" - and when people tell you who they are, believe them. 

Taiwanese teens know that their English classes are terrible

As an English teacher who believes in the power of authentic communication in language learning -after all, that's how I learned Mandarin - I've been following the work of Taipei Teen Tribune with interest. It's an English-language 'new media' website with articles written by Taiwanese teenagers, with a lot of really great content (and a useful site to follow if you want to know what Taiwanese youth are thinking). And as a professional, I'm interested in how it has helped Taiwanese youth to develop their English language proficiency.

Recently, 12th grader Irene Lin wrote this insightful piece about what it's like to learn English in Taiwanese schools. It goes something like this: 


Many students, who are able to get high grades on tests, are incapable of having an actual English conversation nor write an 
essay on their own. Lessons are designed for students to be able to answer grammar questions and fill vocabulary into sentences rather than practical usage.

Treating English like a math problem is the major flaw in Taiwan’s English education. Students are taught to look at a sentence by breaking them down into pieces based on parts of speech. Overemphasizing grammar and neglecting content causes students to misuse vocabulary and leads to a lack of ability to comprehend meaning.


Lin suggests a solution that pretty much every professional educator with solid training can get behind:


The amount of reading, writing, and speaking needs to increase to solve the problem. However, we not only need to increase the amount but also its difficulty. Students learn more vocabulary through a novel compared to a five paragraph text; learning to write an essay provides the opportunity to learn critical thinking, an ability that Taiwanese education has never taught.


The analysis itself could go deeper, but what is said is spot-on. I'd bend over and do backflips to have a student like this in my classes, and I don't even teach teenagers (I work with adults). Essentially, she's spot on that macroskills work needs to be increased by a massive amount, with an eye to creating users, not learners of the language. Taiwan's secondary school language curriculum currently focuses on passing the various national exams, which in turn are focused on a grammar-structure-heavy view of language.

It's a classic example of negative washback, and the effects are already well-known: while many Taiwanese English teachers are open to more communicative-competence oriented language teaching, only elementary school Taiwanese teachers of English feel they're able to actually incorporate this into their teaching. This is true even in Tainan, where "English as a second official language" has been a policy for a few years now: elementary school teachers are overall more enthusiastic than junior high school ones, almost certainly due to the pressure of preparing learners for national exams.

At the secondary level, teachers repeatedly say that the pressure to prepare learners for exams (which do not focus on communicative competence at all) keeps them from meaningfully incorporating learning approaches that are shown to produce competent users, not just test-takers.

There is just no way to incorporate anything like communicative teaching, task-based learning, a lexical approach or the Big Mama of bilingual education - CLIL, or Content Language Integrated Learning - at a national level as long as the teachers are still pinned to the wall vis-a-vis the national exams.

The exams themselves need to either be scrapped (at least the foreign language sections, though I'm of a mind to say the whole thing should go, with more proficiency-oriented assessment methods taking their place), or revamped so completely that they look nothing like what learners do now. There is just no place in modern language learning for pages and pages of grammar analysis without any nods to practical usage or even meaning in context.

There's just no other reasonable way to teach English for proficiency - you can't expect teachers to do that and to produce test-takers who can handle a grammar-heavy sit-down exam at the same time. The tests have got to go - but good luck convincing parents, some old-school teachers, and more conservative officials in the Ministry of Education that.

Certainly, meaningful skills and systems practice should be a part of any meaningful language-learning curriculum, but it's not enough to say "increase the difficulty."  As other professional educators in Taiwan have noted when reading this, another big issue is that the ways in which language classes in Taiwanese schools are already difficult are not the ways that will produce proficient users of English.

For example, as a knowledgeable friend pointed out, there's a glut of vocabulary in the current curriculum - far too much to absorb in any real way. If the target language for each class is 4-5 new words at most - but those words are truly used in terms of collocation, colligation, common usage, presence in idiomatic speech and more, and strongly contextually presented, by the end of a typical Taiwanese student's education, they will have still learned thousands of words - more than enough to be proficient, if they can use them across several collocations and phrases.  The difference is that they'll be more likely to actually remember what they learned, rather than trying to cram five times that many lexical items into their brains, vomiting it all up on tests, and then forgetting most of it soon after.

That Lin and her peers already know they're receiving a sub-standard language education is a start. That Lin is able to say clearly that her education does not teach her to think critically is, ironically, a sign of critical thinking ability. It gives me faith in the new generation, so I'll kindly thank you to stop calling them strawberries and mindless phone drones.

All of this leads right back to issues with making English a "second official language" in Taiwan. 

The idea itself isn't a bad one, and the stated goals of the program are actually quite reasonable. The goal isn't to make everyone a fluent speaker, or even necessarily a fully proficient one. They're to make Taiwan a more navigable, understandable destination for foreign visitors and businesspeople - essentially, to internationalize. They're to make English less 'scary' (so, for example, maybe shop assistants won't run away when they see me because they're afraid to speak English; nevermind that I speak Mandarin), and to improve the English curriculum that Taiwan already has. The timeline is reasonable as well.

That said, the fact that Taiwanese youth already go through about a decade of English classes in school, and most who don't come out speaking English in any meaningful way (those who do have almost always taken additional after-school language classes) is a massive problem. Simply having more classes won't help if the curriculum is ineffective. But if the curriculum doesn't work because it's preparing learners for exams rather than teaching them to use a language, it can't be changed unless the exams change.

Tainan is already doing a good job with this on the tourist end, with improvements such as English audioguides now available for major temples, so that any visitor can take a self-guided English-language tour of a number of Tainan temples, and by all accounts the work is quality.

When it comes to improving actual education and proficiency, however, my big worry is that there's simply no way to know if it's working. There seems to be no assessment mechanism built into Tainan's program, which is a yellow (if not a red) flag itself. Even if there were, it's so new that we'd have no idea if it were working by how anyhow; it's too early to know. That Lai has announced the initiative at a national level now is pure politics.

These issues aside, the problem that Lin dances around in her piece is exactly the thing that I fear will torpedo the program: we have no idea whether the continued existence of the national exams in Tainan is having an effect on the "English as a second language" program there, because there's not only no data, but no mechanism that I know of to collect it. Now, imagine that problem on a national level. I just don't see how this is going to work unless we kill the test-heavy way languages are taught in Taiwan now.

That itself is hard to do unless we clean house in terms of the teachers and Ministry of Education officials who will fight such changes, and not just hire "more teachers", but implement improved training for those teachers (both foreign and local - the time is here when it comes to no longer allowing uncredentialed 'native speakers' to be hired as English teachers in Taiwan, with little or no institutional support or meaningful training once employed. Although that's how I got my start, the system simply has to change.) For foreign English teachers, insisting on an internationally-recognized certification - especially now that one will soon be available in Taiwan - and setting parameters for which certification programs are accepted is just a first step.

On top of that, an entirely new curriculum will have to be written, which challenges learners in appropriate ways. What it means to assess learning will have to be entirely re-vamped. Only through consulting with experienced, trained teachers can we ever hope to do this well. 

Until that happens, we might be told that English education in Taiwan is going to change, but teachers will continue to prepare for the ludicrous national exams, and students like Irene Lin aren't going to see their language education get any better.

I'm not holding my breath. 

IELTS takes a political position (and my ongoing battle to fight The Man)

Jerks.

As my husband noted in his nail-on-the-head post on the same topic, pretty much every IELTS teacher and examiner we know is horrified by the change on IELTS's website of "Taiwan" to "Taiwan, China" (Notably, Hong Kong and Macau bear no such designation. If I didn't already know this was all about politics, I'd say that's odd).

Many of us have written to IELTS to protest the change, including me. I'd include a screenshot, except that e-mail contains references to the nature of my employment which I cannot divulge, but which when blacked out render the letter incoherent. Suffice it to say, it was an angry but basically formal letter of protest and complaint.

We all got the same completely irrelevant form letters in reply, which didn't actually address the issue we wrote about:

"Thank you for your enquiry and comments. The IELTS Partnership is updating IELTS websites and materials in order to ensure that IELTS remains available to test takers in Taiwan. The IELTS Partnership will continue to deliver IELTS tests in Taiwan, ensuring that the widest number of Taiwanese students and professionals can benefit from the work and study opportunities that the test provides."

You can write to them too, by the way, their email is globalielts@ielts.org. See if you get the same bogus form letter! It'll be a fun international discourse comparison!

Of course, I wrote back to point out that their form letter reply was irrelevant to the protest lodged and got a snottier, though I suppose more relevant, reply:

"Thank you for your feedback. Please be aware that your position has been noted. Our priority continues to be to ensure that the widest number of Taiwanese students and professionals can benefit from the work and study opportunities that the IELTS test provides."

This is where I got a little testy. I'd say "I have a short temper", but several days on I decided to send this anyway. It won't make a difference, so please enjoy it as a retort created for your entertainment:

"If you consider them 'Taiwanese students', why do you list their country as being 'China'?"

Here's the thing. I know perfectly well that we're probably not going to win this, because The Man doesn't care about our tinny complaints. It pretends to be apolitical while taking a political, pro-Beijing position. And that is what you're doing when you list Taiwan as "Taiwan, China": you are taking a political position. You are saying Taiwan is a part of China, a position most Taiwanese do not agree with.

It's hard to fight the power, which as a friend pointed out, is the entire point of having power - so it's harder for people to fight you. IELTS pretends to be a dispassionate language proficiency test, but it's also a source of power: are you a non-native speaker who wants to study in the UK (or other countries) or get certain kinds of visas? You have to take it. It's tied to the government through British Council and the UKVI service. That's power. It's not just a test.

It wants to think it's not The Man, but it absolutely is. And as The Man almost always is, IELTS is wrong.

For me, this is the point at which "Taiwan, China" stops being an abstraction: it's not just an unfair, stupid thing that terrible companies do for money. It affects me personally: I'm associated with the brand. Some of my income comes from them. If I refuse to accept this, there is a real impact on my life, moreso than boycotting airlines or slagging off TOEFL. I don't earn money from those companies. I don't know how I can take dirty money now, so for the first time in a very long time, I'm faced with a choice between a chunk of my income, and my principles.

As China expands its forcefulness, more people like me will start facing that choice. I have to hope enough of them will choose principles, as I'm headed towards doing, but I know that many won't.

This isn't a small issue relegated to Taiwan and China. It affects people like me. It affects international workers and foreign residents.

And, as Brendan pointed out in his excellent post (which you should absolutely read), IELTS is essentially helping China accomplish its political goals, which serve as precursors to its military goals:


The government of the PRC would like nothing more than to take over Taiwan and incorporate it into their territory....This is not the ranting of a conspiracy monger -- China isn’t even trying to hide its intentions. 

 Whether China takes Taiwan by force or by “peaceful” coercion, it doesn’t want the rest of the world to see it as a larger country taking over a smaller, less powerful country. That would look very bad. Instead, China wants the rest of the world to see Taiwan as a recalcitrant part of China that needs to be brought to heel. That’s why (among many things) it’s got people pushing to change “Taiwan” on those drop-down menus to things like “Taiwan, China” or “Taiwan, Province of China”. It’s all about changing the world’s perception of Taiwan so that if Invasion Day comes, the rest of the world doesn’t see Xi Jinping as another Hitler invading Poland. 

And every airline that lists Taiwan as China and every educational institution that forces students to declare their country as “Taiwan, China” is complicit in this. With Beijing -- not politically neutral.


I don't know how to fight that. I don't know how to tell you to fight that. I'm still weighing my options, although I know that not acting is not an option. I don't know what to tell my students, except not to take IELTS.

I know some Taiwan-based examiners read this blog. I know a lot of Taiwanese do, too. I don't know what to tell you.

I considered suggesting a strike, and still think that might be a possibility. I worry, however, that it will hurt local centers like IDP Taipei, who are not our enemies (I suspect a lot of the local employees of IELTS centers are on our side, in fact) without really hurting IELTS as a global organization. It might be our best shot, however, at getting this story to stay in the news and embarrass IELTS as much as possible.

I considered a petition, but TOEFL ignored the one directed at them, and IELTS will too. That's what The Man does - he ignores petitions, because he has power.

I considered saying you should change your scripts and say explicitly that Taiwan is NOT CHINA, but that could hurt candidates' performance and that's not fair. It's not their fault (even with the Chinese candidates, it's not their fault at all that their government sucks).

Of course I will continue to encourage Taiwanese students not to take the test.

Something more should be done, but the result has to hurt IELTS Global. What should that something be? I don't know yet. But I have no intention of going away and I have no intention of quietly choosing money over principles.

All I can say is that I encourage you to organize (and feel free to get in touch with me, by the way. I'm easy to find). Be creative, and don't back down. The Man usually wins, but that doesn't mean you have to sit down and obey meekly.

I wish I had better advice, though. I'm not sure what the next move will be, but I can assure you we're not done here.