All the unfounded "evidence" Ma Ying-jeou used to attack the DPP on 6/4 (Part Two!)

Does this look like the face of a liar to you?

(Yes.)

It's easy to spout bullshit. It's easy to lie, or take a kernel of truth and present a slanted and ultimately inaccurate perspective on it, calling your take the real truth. It's been done since the birth of political discourse because it's efficient, it's simple, and people will believe you.

What takes a long time? Refuting someone else's lies and bad takes. That requires reams of free time and tracts of verbiage. 

Fortunately, I type fast and am in quarantine, and a blog has no word limits. Why not debunk every accusation Ma Ying-jeou hurled at the DPP in his offensive post on June 4th? Sure, he briefly mentioned the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but it's clear what he really wanted to do was compliment Xi Jinping and trash his own country's democracy and elected leader. 

At least, he wanted to trash Taiwan's democracy. I'm reasonably sure he believes that China is his country and Xi Jinping currently leads it. 

Regardless, the crux of his argument is worth refuting point-by-point. Much of what he references was barely covered in English-language media, if at all. He uses specific terms even the most fluent second-language Mandarin speakers might be unfamiliar with (I know I was). And there are people who will believe it. 

I discuss the entirety of his statement in my previous post. Here, I'll address the specifics, starting with the middle of the post where he goes into detail.

Although Taiwan still flies the banner of democracy, under the Democratic Progressive Party's governance, it has gradually slid into "unfree democracy":  closing television news stations, liquidating opposition parties, "checking the water meter" of the people [this is a slang term], interfering with the judiciary,  an all-around 'greening' [turning pro-DPP] of independent agencies, revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president [Chen Shui-bian], using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan'. International public opinion turns a blind eye to these initiatives, which harm Taiwan's freedom and democracy, but I am deeply concerned.

There's a lot to cover here, so let's go point-by-point, news item by news item.

"Closing television news stations"

The television station in question is CTiTV, which has severe editorial integrity issues and has been known to broadcast disinformation.  

It was done because they breached regulations several times and were routinely broadcasting false information without fact-checking. They were also found to lack editorial independence from their owner, pro-China Tsai tycoon Tsai Eng-meng, whose Want Want group receives funding from China. Want Want China Times Media Group (of which CTiTV is/was a part) was also accused of taking orders directly from the Chinese government. The original Financial Times piece is here, but paywalled.

Even if you oppose the closing of CTiTV, it wasn't done to crush dissenting voices. Plenty of pan-blue networks are still on television, and CTiTV is still alive on Youtube. While other networks may have fact-checking, editorial and general quality issues (including pan-green ones, which are hardly a bastion of fantastic journalism), CTiTV is the only one the NCC has actually refused a license renewal to. Typically a network won't fall afoul of the NCC if they plausibly believed false information was true at the time it was broadcast.

Some critical responses to this incident described Taiwan's media environment as being solidly "green" -- Han Kuo-yu even stated that "90% of media is pan-green" during the 2020 election -- and taken CTiTV's downfall as a harbinger of some sort of authoritarian DPP crackdown. That's simply not the case. It's true that by viewership the pan-green channels dominate (at about 66% as per the above link), but that doesn't mean that pro-DPP news channels are the only choice; it means more people choose to watch them.

In other words, it's possible to sincerely disagree on the NCC's decision, but it's not possible to credibly call this a grab to dominate the media or a sign of "Green Terror". 


"Liquidating opposition parties"

This probably has to do with transitional justice. Essentially, Ma is saying here that money the KMT can be credibly accused of stealing over the decades of its brutal, corrupt, totalitarian rule should not be taken from the KMT and given back to the nation it was stolen from. Not great.

"Checking the water meter"

This is Internet slang for the police entering a home on false pretexts, for example, to say that the home's water meter needs to be checked when it doesn't. It's also a catch-all for general intimidation of anyone who opposes you -- usually through a real-life visit -- while making excuses for your presence. 

The KMT likes to complain about this -- Alex Tsai at one point said it would lead to a modern Wuchang Uprising which...what? At first I thought it was pure projection: one thing I've learned in life is that people who make preposterous accusations against others either have engaged in those actions themselves, or want to. If someone (or a group) is screaming "all these bad actors are doing this to me!" but offers little evidence that it's happening, chances are they're the ones actually doing it, and trying to deflect scrutiny. 

Certainly, when I think of police intimidation to quell political dissent, the KMT has far more of a historical legacy. There is flimsy evidence for the existence of a "Green Terror", but the "White Terror" is a matter of historical fact. And frankly, even in modern times the KMT is not blameless.

However, a few cases did pop up after a search. Apparently some police showed up at a KMT think tank symposium saying protests could break out as the discussions were related to upcoming referendums, and protests were happening elsewhere. The KMT insists it wasn't a public event and only the press was notified, calling the excuse for the police presence "farfetched". In another incident, an elderly woman was visited by police after posting disinformation about the then-upcoming 2020 election.

Neither of these incidents, if true, looks great. However, the symposium was not stopped and no one was arrested or harmed. (I also couldn't find any proof that there's some DPP-led crackdown on freedom of expression). The woman was asked to explain her post at a police station in accordance with the Social Order Maintenance Act -- not great, as authorities paying someone a personal visit over something they've said sends a specific kind of message given Taiwan's political history -- but as far as I can tell was not arrested or further troubled. 

While the DPP is hardly perfect and their methods of handling disinformation potentially problematic, neither of these incidents definitively proves that the DPP is turning Taiwan into an "unfree democracy" or instituting a reign of "Green Terror". 


"Interfering with the judiciary" and "turning independent agencies green"

These accusations are more vague, but seem to refer to a variety of issues. This KMT News Network post is barely readable (no, it's not a machine translation) but provides little actual evidence of judicial interference, stopping at an insistence that it is happening. The KMT took a comment about the "Political Investigation Office" out of context in regards to the recent by-election between gangter Yen Ching-piao's son and DPP candidate Lin Jingyi -- there appears to be a lot of booming anger but very little actual evidence that anything illegal took place.

In terms of that "all-around greening of independent agencies", there have been a few accusations of nepotistic activity in various agencies, and an insistence that the NCC (the agency that revoked CTiTV's license, discussed above) has been "turned green" -- all with very little proof. 

I'm not saying that the DPP is perfect and incorruptible; that would be risible. All parties do unsavory things. However, when it comes to these specific accusations, I don't see much there.

"Revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president"

This is getting very long, so I recommend reading the Taipei Times coverage of this issue if you want to know more. I'm not going to opine on whether the law being amended is actually unclear, or the types public funds in question are functionally the same, as I'm not an expert in that area. I'm also not going to spend a lot of time discussing Chen Shui-bian, as that's old news. 

Sure, it doesn't look great to change a law in a way that would exonerate someone convicted of corruption from your own party, although the KMT hardly has a spotless history when it comes to corruption and inappropriate use of funds (that's why the Ill-Gotten Assets Committee exists), and the article notes that they've done the same thing:

While saying that the KMT set a bad legal precedent in 2013 by amending the same article to exonerate former KMT legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標) from allegations of misappropriating public funds, the NPP said the DPP yesterday again set a bad precedent by forcibly passing the bill at the legislature.

 

Think what you like about Ma's accusation here, but remember that he's probably not too interested in discussing the KMT's similar political maneuvers.

"Using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan"

Look, honestly, this just sounds like mad ranting. There's no actual accusation here: Ma is just mad that society rejects his and the KMT's insistence that Taiwan is Chinese and should embrace a Chinese identity. They don't want to admit that the CCP is a threat to Taiwan and attempts at warming relations with them will only hand them opportunities to render Taiwan economically dependent on and politically tied to China, making a move away from unification more difficult. 

They simply cannot accept that Taiwanese do not think they are Taiwanese and that this angers China, and the DPP acknowledges and works with these facts. Acknowledging the general consensus on Taiwanese identity is apparently "propaganda" and being pragmatic on the threat of invasion from China is "politically correct" maneuvering to make Taiwan "anti-China". 

The KMT will never admit that their own forcing of Chinese identity -- including the attempted destruction of the Taiwanese language in favor of Mandarin -- onto an island they occupied was the "internal propaganda" they speak of. They'll never admit that the social change toward Taiwanese identity took place before the DPP took power in 2016, and in fact spiked when Taiwan fully democratized and grew throughout Ma's own administration. They'll never admit that China is a threat, not a friend. And certainly they'll never admit that Taiwanese by and large do not want to be part of China. They'll never admit that their own attempts to force Taiwanese to identify as Chinese failed, and are unlikely to succeed in the future.

There is literally nothing else there, so let's move on.

Furthermore, the coronavirus pandemic has shown over the past two years that the government has not done enough to procure vaccines, and their chaotic 'rapid screening' policies show that the government's "proactive deployment" is a falsehood.  DPP leaders and the so-called "1450" [the so-called DPP "Internet army", named for an amount of money said to be allocated toward cultivating it] attack and discredit any critics [the actual phrase is "smear red"].  

I discussed these particular distortions in my previous post, but I think they belong here as well, so I'll quote myself in green:

 

I'll admit that Taiwan's pandemic response has not been perfect in every aspect, at all times. There have been poor decisions, politically-motivated choices and lags. However, I'd describe the overall pandemic response as sterling -- no, gold standard. Anyone who thinks that Taiwan did a poor job handling the pandemic is straight-up full of it. All you need to do is look at how the entire rest of the world save possibly New Zealand handled it. Most accusations to the contrary distort what actually went on with the early vaccine purchases or blow up small mistakes into catastrophic ones. Most of it is based on lies.

As for the "1450" Internet troll army, well, I'm sure every party has people working on influencing public conversation. I won't pretend it's beyond the pale to say the DPP has one (and the KMT surely has one too -- I recall an ad surfacing years ago promising free bento boxes to attendees of a seminar on how to post online to bolster the KMT's image, but can't find a link).

That said, I can't find any proof that the "1450" army actually exists, and it would be very weird to allocate such funds through the Council of Agriculture, no? What's more, people decrying the "1450" have been known to misattribute the origin of the phrase to mean NT$1,450 paid to each Internet troll working for the DPP. 

Basically, there are a lot of accusations and very little proof here.

In sum, Taiwan actually has done an overall excellent job handling the pandemic. When you see people online praising that, it's because there's good reason to do so. If the KMT is sore that it's not very popular now, perhaps they should look at their own poor governance and attempts to force Taiwan toward closer relations with China. 

That is to say, there's nothing here but more distortion, including some statements that I suspect are outright lies.

When we shouted that the opposition should be treated kindly in order to establish core values in common on both sides of the strait, the ruling party is suppressing or even eliminating dissidents, while falling into "unfree democracy" and "elected dictatorship." 

 

Ah yes, because the KMT is renowned for always being so kind to the opposition. They were so friendly when they threw the Tangwai in jail. Their torture and interrogation techniques were employed in an attempt to establish core values in common! The KMT has never, ever attempted to "suppress or even eliminate dissidents", the White Terror is called that because it was just very bright outside for decades!

Obviously, there is no evidence -- I don't even have a link -- that the DPP is doing this. I discussed the inclusion of "cross strait common values" and the impossibility of an "elected dictatorship" in my previous post and won't repeat them here. 

Needless to say, this is the part of his argument that slides from plausible, debatable issue into lies and hokum.

Not just hokum, but more projection. Didn't the KMT spend decades during Martial Law lying about how the ideals of the Republic of China included democracy, while not instituting democracy beyond the local level in which every candidate was KMT-approved?

When someone like Ma bangs on and on about what the other guy is doing, you can be pretty sure he's done it, or he's aware that the KMT has. What was it that someone said on Twitter? Every KMT accusation is a confession? Like that.

Liars like Ma follow a second pattern, in my experience: they start out with claims that, while refutable, are based on real events or issues. You have to take time and energy to actually refute them. So if you know they're garbage, you ignore them, but if you don't, you might well believe it. In any case, at least some of them might be up for some kind of real debate, even if the actual claim made by that person is fundamentally flawed. 

Then, after you've been tired out, they go for vague accusations and outright bullshit. In other words, there's a veneer of plausibility to start out, which gradually drops as the case being made grows more and more deranged. 

If you ever find yourself reading something that starts out sounding pretty good, makes a few questionable claims that are nevertheless worthy of discussion, and then devolves down the road to Crazytown, be suspicious. This is a perfect example.

🎵 Ma Ying-jeou is a sack of trash 🎶 (Part One!)

This is the first of a two-parter. You can read the deep dive into Ma's actual claims here.

I was going to write a post going after an issue I'm angry about in a sort of general, ambient sense. But this other morsel of news I'm also angry about is timely, so at the risk of blogging only when I'm angry about something, here goes.

Yesterday was June 4th, the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Certainly, in Taiwan and around the world, politicians who put out statements about Tiananmen anniversaries generally avoid the overtly offensive. Some are sharp criticisms, whereas the worst of them are simply too anodyne. 

Take President Tsai's Facebook post for example. She touched on how Taiwanese people and their leaders, as in any democracy, hold a variety of opinions that don't always agree, but can hopefully be united through transparency, sincerity and communication. She touched on the crackdowns in Hong Kong, saying they won't destroy the memories of the people. Perhaps it wasn't necessary to talk about the pandemic and vaccines, but overall it's a perfectly acceptable statement.

Then there's former president and human dingleberry Ma Ying-jeou. I started out calling him a "garbage person" but honestly, I don't want to insult Taiwan's hardworking sanitation professionals by implying their necessary and respectable jobs might also describe such a man.

Ma spent most of it trashing the democratically-elected government of his own country, and included some brief praise -- yes, praise -- of genocidal dictator Xi Jinping. In this swash of effluent, he added a few admonitions that June 4th should be recognized and "rehabilitated", with vaguely-defined addressees. In other words, there are a few okay sentences in a big ol' gurgle of vomit. 

I'm not a professional translator and Mandarin isn't my first language, but I'll take a stab at parsing what he said in English. I think this is important because, having checked the machine translations available from Facebook and Google, the former is unreadable and the latter, while okay, will be unclear to anyone unfamiliar with the issues Ma touches on.

I've broken his words down into chunks for analysis. It's easier this way, and anyway "chunks" are a good descriptor of what Ma is spewing. At the end we'll look at why his post matters at all. 

Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the June 4th Incident. On the one hand, I once again call on the mainland authorities to courageously face history and accept responsibility so as to move forward. On the other hand, I also feel the need to use this opportunity to reflect on the fact that although Taiwan claims to be a "democracy", it is slipping step by step into "unfree democracy." It's highly worthy of vigilance.

This paragraph is hardly the worst. Note however that Ma calls on "the mainland authorities" to recognize the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yes, the use of "mainland authorities" is a huge eye-roll -- not the Chinese government, and nobody in particular -- but is expected coming from him. He'll continue the trend of calling China "the mainland" throughout the post. 

I can't imagine why he would think the Tiananmen Square Massacre deserves to be "one hand" of a larger argument -- it stands alone as its own issue -- but this is Ma Ying-jeou. 

I noticed that he couldn't even use the words "Tiananmen Square", let alone "massacre." Tsai also calls what happened an "incident" (a common way of naming historical atrocities in Mandarin), but at least she uses the word "Tiananmen." That's nothing, however, compared to the straight-up offensiveness of using June 4th as an opportunity to rant about how "on the other hand" Taiwan is so "undemocratic" that it deserves more space in a post about Tiananmen Square than the actual Tiananmen Square! 

As a quick reminder, Taiwan is consistently near the top of democracy rankings in Asia and the world. Ma alone is screaming into the wind that Taiwan is somehow unfree. 

Note as well that this "unfree democracy" tripe is one of Ma's common refrains; this isn't nearly the first time he's used it. It's pretty ironic, isn't it, that Ma is able to go online on social media from Taiwan and say whatever he likes about Taiwan, including scathing (if untrue) criticisms about its government, overall level of freedom, and ruling party. It's almost as if he has the freedom to talk about this issue. Huh! 

The world is unsettled lately. The trade war launched by the US against the mainland in 2018, the explosion of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, and the Russia-Ukraine War that began in February affect global peace and stability at each step. Therefore, I would like to remind the mainland that although the so-called "anti-China" trend initiated by the United States has complicated the situation, that the mainland can turn passivity into action and send a more positive message to the rest of the world.

So instead of talking about Tiananmen Square in a post ostensibly about Tiananmen Square, Ma decides in the second paragraph to attack the United States for starting a "trade war". I don't want to throw the Trump administration even the tiniest of bones, but was it a trade war, or was it the US finally standing up to China's unsavory trade practices, IP theft, tendency to tear up any agreements it doesn't like and realization that dealing with genocidaires is maybe a bad thing?

What's more, isn't his own party trying to rebuild friendly ties in the United States by opening a representative office, after ceding so much political ground to the DPP there? Isn't KMT chair Eric Chu there right now? It's not just offensive (and parroting the language of the CCP on US-China ties) but politically unwise to write a post about Tiananmen, and then use it to attack the United States right now. Is he trying to sabotage his own party, or does he assume this is vitriol for a purely domestic market -- that nobody in the US will pay attention to his words?

Anti-Asian hate crimes against individuals are indeed a problem, and certainly Trump harmed rather than helped in this regard. That said, the Chinese government bears responsibility for its own poor image as an institution in the United States and beyond.

Notice as well that he addresses this to unnamed authorities "on the mainland", not any specific leader or government body. Rather than scathing criticism, it reads as "c'mon you guys, all you gotta do is just recognize this so you can put a positive image out there!" 

Commentators kinder than me might call this diplomatic. I call it overly-gentle and downright delusional.

In October last year, Mr. Xi Jinping, the mainland leader, spoke of democracy at Central People's Congress Work Conference, extolling the principle that the people hold all the power in the country, and that as masters of the country they rule it to the greatest extent possible.  I sincerely believe this is the right direction to build a society with rule of law. If the trauma of June 4th can be truly faced and dealt with [rehabilitated], not only will it project a good image internationally, but it will cause the two sides of the strait to cease moving further and further apart.

By the third paragraph, he's praising Xi Jinping for his words and "the right direction" he's taking. This compliment is the only time he will address Xi by name in the entire post.

Nevermind that Xi's words are a straight-up lie: people in China hold none of the power, they are not the masters of their country and they don't rule it to any extent. Ma surely knows this, but he never lets an opportunity to bestow some compliments on Xi no matter how inappropriate the timing, and how inaccurate the compliment. This can't be the "right direction" if Xi literally isn't doing what he says here, and is straight-up lying! Which he of course is, and Ma knows he is. Indeed, taking the time in a post about Tiananmen Square to praise Xi Jinping is easily the most offensive part of this whole thing.

Not only that, he's praising Xi Jinping for talking about democracy and governance by the people! In a post about the anniversary of Tiananmen Square! What in the actual name of Jesus is going on here?

To quote respected activist figure Chou I-cheng, Ma can praise Xi and denounce Taiwan's democracy if he wants, but it's particularly disgusting to do so on such a significant day.

He adds at the end that such a recognition might bring "the two sides of the strait" (note: not "China and Taiwan" because he doesn't recognize Taiwan's sovereignty) closer together. Which perhaps it could, but the gulf between the two nations exists not just because of June 4th, and not just because China isn't a democracy, but because China wants to subjugate Taiwan -- and Taiwan does not and will never want to be annexed by China. 

Nevertheless, what does democracy mean when the two sides of the strait have different systems, their narratives and practices are different. Beyond appealing to the mainland, we should also turn inward and examine our own democratic development more carefully.

Democracy means the thing that Taiwan has where the people elect their leaders and have human rights, including the freedom to criticize and remove those leaders. It also means the thing China doesn't have. 

It's inappropriate and offensive to attack Taiwan in a post that purports to be about events that took place in China, especially as Taiwan is indeed democratic and China is not. 

Reading it, you'd almost think China wasn't so bad but Taiwan was a mess, when the opposite is true. 

Although Taiwan still flies the banner of democracy, under the Democratic Progressive Party's governance, it has gradually slid into "unfree democracy":  closing television news stations, liquidating opposition parties, "checking the water meter" of the people [this is a slang term], interfering with the judiciary,  an all-around 'greening' [turning pro-DPP] of independent agencies, revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president [Chen Shui-bian], using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan'. International public opinion turns a blind eye to these initiatives, which harm Taiwan's freedom and democracy, but I am deeply concerned.

I have so much to say about this litany of accusations against the DPP.  In fact, I dive into it here.

Each is worth diving into for several reasons: they provide the "evidence" for Ma's perspective and case against the DPP in the most detail, they're commonly reported in Chinese-language media but not so much in English, and they form the backbone of the DPP's argument for why they're better leaders than the DPP.

They're mostly bullshit -- though the most plausible ones are listed first -- but breaking down why each one is indeed its own uniquely-shaped steaming turd will take a lot of time and verbiage.

It's fascinating how Ma tries to claim the high ground and make it look like he has a detailed and multi-faceted case against the Tsai administration, which is mostly founded on a heaping pile of garbage.

Finally, he seems upset that the international community has a generally positive view of Taiwan (or that understanding of and sympathy for Taiwan is growing among Western nations). Why? Does he want the world to think Taiwan is a shithole? Does he want everyone to disparage Taiwanese democracy the way he does? 

Furthermore, the coronavirus pandemic has shown over the past two years that the government has not done enough to procure vaccines, and their chaotic 'rapid screening' policies show that the government's "proactive deployment" is a falsehood.  DPP leaders and the so-called "1450" [the so-called DPP "Internet army", named for an amount of money said to be allocated toward cultivating it] attack and discredit any critics [the actual phrase is "smear red"].  

I'll admit that Taiwan's pandemic response has not been perfect in every aspect, at all times. There have been poor decisions, politically-motivated choices and lags. However, I'd describe the overall pandemic response as sterling -- no, gold standard. Anyone who thinks that Taiwan did a poor job handling the pandemic is straight-up full of it. All you need to do is look at how the entire rest of the world save possibly New Zealand handled it. Most accusations to the contrary distort what actually went on with the early vaccine purchases or blow up small mistakes into catastrophic ones. Most of it is based on lies.

As for the "1450" Internet troll army, well, I'm sure every party has people working on influencing public conversation. I won't pretend it's beyond the pale to say the DPP has one (and the KMT surely has one too -- I recall an ad surfacing years ago promising free bento boxes to attendees of a seminar on how to post online to bolster the KMT's image, but can't find a link).

That said, I can't find any proof that the "1450" army actually exists, and it would be very weird to allocate such funds through the Council of Agriculture, no? What's more, people decrying the "1450" have been known to misattribute the origin of the phrase to mean NT$1,450 paid to each Internet troll working for the DPP. 

Basically, there are a lot of accusations and very little proof here.

In sum, Taiwan actually has done an overall excellent job handling the pandemic. When you see people online praising that, it's because there's good reason to do so. If the KMT is sore that it's not very popular now, perhaps they should look at their own poor governance and attempts to force Taiwan toward closer relations with China. 

When we shouted that the opposition should be treated kindly in order to establish core values in common on both sides of the strait, the ruling party is suppressing or even eliminating dissidents, while falling into "unfree democracy" and "elected dictatorship." 

I have more to say here, but I'll save that for my next post.

Obviously, there is no evidence -- I don't even have a link -- that the DPP is doing this. Name one dissident who has been "suppressed" or "eliminated" by the DPP. 

Now, how many dissidents has the KMT suppressed or eliminated in its history?

There ya go.

There are two more points worth making here: first, tying "finding common core values" to "cross-strait relations". This implies that Ma's complaint isn't that the DPP hasn't tried to find common ground with the KMT -- it's hard to say whether they have or not, as the KMT doesn't seem very interested in finding common ground with them -- but rather that they haven't tried to find common ground with the Chinese government.

This is, of course, a euphemism for refusing to engage in talks that are aimed at eventual unification between Taiwan and China, or a recognition of the (fabricated) 1992 Consensus. It means that the DPP can't and won't work with China's insistence that all negotiations and discussions must begin with mutual agreement that Taiwan is part of China and Taiwanese people are Chinese.

Which they can't -- Taiwan isn't part of China, Taiwanese mostly don't identify as Chinese, and it goes against both the public consensus and the DPP's ethos. That's literally the whole point.

That line about "elected dictatorship" is another howler, barely worth acknowledging: there is no such thing as an elected dictatorship. It's possible for democracies to be less free or even unfree -- and there is such a thing as a sham democracy (I mean, even Vladimir Putin gets "elected"). But there is no such thing as an elected dictator. If you are elected and you can be removed, you might have authoritarian tendencies, but you are not a "dictator". 

On the 33rd anniversary of June 4th, we hope that the mainland will face history and move forward, but we cannot sit idly by and watch Taiwan's democracy fall backward, or advance toward "unfree democracy" and "elected dictatorship." We must begin with ourselves and defend Taiwan's true democracy.

There's not much to analyze here: this paragraph just concludes the post and re-iterates the justification for using a post about Tiananmen Square to attack the Tsai government, Taiwanese democracy and the general trend away from identification with Chinese nationhood and ideals in Taiwan.

It is worth discussing why this matters, however. Who cares about this old fuckbucket's post? 

Well, first of all, because the media is paying attention. New Talk posted Su Tseng-chang's response calling his words a "laughingstock". KMT-friendly outlet United Daily News, widely seen as reputable, simply reposted it without comment. People predisposed towards pan-blue sentiments will read that and not see all the problems inherent in his post, or question whether it's appropriate to use the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre to attack their own government, implying that China might move in the right direction (and indeed is, according to Ma, already doing so) and Taiwan is the real authoritarian state. 

What's more, Ma still unfortunately holds a hell of a lot of power in the KMT, keeping it from reforming into a party Taiwanese might actually want to vote for (that is, one not so laser-focused on insisting Taiwan is Chinese and the CCP is a friendly government and good-faith negotiator when it is clearly neither). He's very good at rhetoric -- I might think his post is a steaming turdpile, but I have to admit it's a well-written turdpile -- he's pulling a hell of a lot of strings in the KMT, and he's probably not going away. He almost certainly has a hand in the general tenor and perspective the KMT wants to project into the world and Taiwan.

That's a shame, as he seems to have nothing useful, inspirational, thoughtful or even truthful to offer.

Everything I've learned about leaving and returning to Taiwan during a COVID outbreak

I wanna be where the people are...

We've just arrived back in Taiwan after a month in the United States. I'd read a lot about what it would be like to return, and had some idea of what our arrival and quarantine experience would be like. However, most of those posts were written before the big outbreak in Taiwan; coming back now feels fundamentally different than I suspect it would have just a few months ago. So, I thought I'd write about it. 

The rules regarding who can quarantine at home -- which differ between local cases and incoming travelers -- are not particularly clear. Yes, incoming travelers can quarantine at home if they have a residence with no other non-quarantine people, and their residence isn't subdivided into multiple addresses. Brendan and I are quarantining together, so yes, two travelers returning on the same day can stay in the same residence. No, you do not need two separate bathrooms. 

In fact, nobody will even check your apartment. I already kind of knew this from a friend in a position to know these things -- if your apartment meets the "one person per residence" requirements, I was told that "the CECC doesn't care about how many bathrooms you have." Somehow, however, I had this idea in my head that upon arrival or perhaps the day after, someone would come and inspect our quarantine quarters. That didn't happen (and thinking about it now, I don't see how it could have). I'd spent a lot of time fretting about this, when it amounted to nothing at all. 

But let's rewind a bit and talk about the requirements both to leave and return. Many people insisted that to board the plane in either direction you'd need a PCR test, which would be a considerable financial outlay. That turned out not to be true: to leave, you need whatever the airline and arrival country require. For us, that was a rapid antigen test done at a lab. We did this at minimal cost at Taiwan Adventist Hospital, which we chose for proximity as well as ease of registration (of all hospitals offering tests, theirs was the only one with a website that made sense.) It was also one of the few offering antigen tests, not just PCRs, and didn't extort foreigners (Tzu Chi, I'm looking at you -- your discriminatory fees should be illegal and I'm thinking of filing a complaint.)  Choose something nearby as you'll have to return for your results. 

We also thought travel insurance would be smart. Unfortunately, affordable Taiwan-based plans require you to pay up-front and then make a claim, which I didn't want to deal with. US-based plans are based on residency, not citizenship, so aren't available to us as they only cover international trips out of the United States and back. I called Allianz to ask about this and got horrible customer service ("well, I think we have an office in China," they told me. "But I don't live in China," I said. "It's the Republic of China!" You can guess how I replied.) Other plans like World Nomads would cover us but were far too expensive. We ended up going with IMG as they have a network in the US, offer COVID coverage and trip+health insurance, and had the lowest prices. 

You'll need the antigen test results and a travel declaration (generally available through your airline's website) to fly out, as well as proof of vaccination. Leaving Taiwan turned out to be the only time we had to prove our vaccination status; I'm still happy I obtained an international yellow card at Taipei Medical University Hospital. The digital certificate also works and is free (the WHO-issued yellow card costs about NT$900), but what can I say? I'm analog. Again, hospitals have very unclear procedures for registering for this service. At Taipei Medical, in theory you can register online for "family medicine". In practice, none of the doctors on the menu seem to have any availability -- it's better to call (no, the receptionist won't necessarily speak English.)

Arriving in the US is nothing at all -- there's no quarantine, nobody checks who you are or where you're going, you're just released into the country as though there is no pandemic. Returning to Taiwan, of course, is a different story. 

We ended our visit in New York City, where in theory you can get a free PCR test. However, there's a bit of an outbreak there now, and results are not guaranteed within the required 48-hour window. You might get lucky, but if you don't, you'll need a last-minute appointment and that'll cost you (the place we booked was charging $389 for same-day results). We made appointments in advance for next-day results at $175 -- the test itself is still free, but the guaranteed turnaround will cost you. Fortunately, we were able to cancel our quarantine hotel, and the returned deposits on our rooms more than covered the cost of the tests. The results will generally be emailed to you, and showing the document on your phone is fine.

          

Nick Kembel has an excellent post which discusses the Quarantine Entry Form, so I won't go into too much detail. The automatic screenshot system didn't work for me (it kept blipping out), but it turns out the only thing anyone will look at is that first page saying you've submitted it with a bar code. A few of the questions on the form are confusing, however. Here's a quick redux:

1.) For "purpose of coming to Taiwan", we selected "back home" even though we're not Taiwanese, as none of the other options applied. 

2.) Even though we were quarantining together, we each selected quarantining at home with "one person per residence". At no point does the form clarify that two people on the same flight can choose this. 

3.) For the test results, as we were coming from the US, we selected that we did want the saliva test, and did want the results. 

4.) On my phone, the field for my APRC number kept reverting to my passport number, so check that before you hit "next". The form also kept switching my day of birth to the 1st, even though I wasn't born on the first of the month. Fortunately, you can go back and edit the form before you submit. 

5. When noting transportation from the airport to your quarantine location, the two options are not very clear. Choose the one that is not "arrange your own vehicle". 

6.) When you're done, the system's screenshot may or may not work (it worked for Brendan but not for me). Make sure you have your own screenshot too. You can do it on your phone -- a process I found frustrating as it kept blipping out -- or on your computer, if you send yourself screenshots.

You can complete this form once you have a quarantine location and negative test result. We did ours the night before.

Upon checking in for our flight, we learned that if you don't have a Taiwanese passport, you can't do it in advance as you need to show proof of a visa (yes, APRCs obviously count). The automatic check-in machines at the airport also stop you at this point, and it took awhile for us to flag a clerk and get all of our documents approved -- negative test result, quarantine entry form submission screenshot, APRCs. This delay caused us to be in the last boarding group, which was somewhat annoying as flights are no longer as empty as they once were. 

Even with far stricter entry requirements, Taoyuan airport offered a smoother, better-organized process than Newark (or any US airport, really). Generally speaking, all you have to do is follow everyone else. I strongly recommend using the bathroom as soon as possible, if you need it, as it may be awhile before you can use one again. 

On arrival, there are two lines: one for those who received a confirmation text from the MOHW that their quarantine form was approved (check your texts when you arrive!), and one for those who have no confirmation and need it manually checked. If you have the text, click the link to open your approval page and screenshot that. 

You'll be handed your spit cup and a piece of paper with your information on it; hold onto this. You don't actually do the spit test until you exit the airport. This is slightly annoying as it means you have to carry it through baggage claim, but the process is now much faster -- you no longer have to wait at the airport for your results. 

For the first time in years, we had to actually go to an immigration counter to be let in the country, and received a passport stamp. This part was fairly easy, though I could imagine the lines getting quite long. 

At that point you'll pass through customs and follow the lines to the spit test location. Nobody will ask you if you need to use an ATM, so if you need one, speak up (I ended up having to run back into the terminal, which was allowed). I didn't need a SIM card, but it seemed like those who did were in for a long-ish wait at Chunghwa Telecom. Notably, none of the other providers' booths were still open when we arrived. That was irritating for me as I had to pay my phone bill after being away for a month, but I was able to ask a friend to do it for me. 

At some point in this process you'll be handed a sticker to wear that indicates you're transferring to quarantine, and two home test kits -- one to take on your last day of quarantine, and one to be used if you experience symptoms.

Once you leave the terminal you are sent outside to do your spit test. There's a video on how to do this set to adorable guitar music on Youtube, and instructions in the booth. You don't actually need to stand there for a full minute -- you just need to be sure you have sufficient saliva in your mouth. 

Finally, you'll be sent to the quarantine taxi line. They'll take a photo of your health declaration certificate on your phone (that's the approval text you get from the MOHW on arrival and use the last six digits of your passport number to open, or have done manually if you don't have a text message approval -- not a new document). By the time you get to the front, you'll have been sprayed down in a bit of hygiene theater, and be put into a taxi which already knows your destination. 

The next day, we each got calls from the CECC. (No visit and no snacks unfortunately. I'd been looking forward to the snacks.) They asked us if we needed help with food, water or garbage disposal during our quarantine, and let us know that we'd receive a daily text about our health -- "press 1 if you feel fine, press 2 if you don't". Nobody asked us to take our daily temperature, but of course we're keeping an eye on it anyway. This seems like a smart way to handle thinly-spread resources: someone is keeping an eye on us, but it's not as intense or scrutinizing as I'd imagined from reports of quarantining people back when Taiwan had few or no cases. 

We were lucky enough to have one of our cat sitters fill our fridge with fresh groceries using money we'd left behind, so quarantine for us is mostly just chillin' at home. Here's one thing I hadn't realized, though: I get over jet lag much faster when I can go outside, or have things to do and places to be. Without that -- especially without direct access to sunlight -- I'm feeling the effects much more strongly. I've fallen asleep both afternoons that we've been back, and just felt generally discombobulated in my new time zone. For the first time ever, I got over jet lag in the US faster than I am managing it in Taiwan; usually it's the opposite. My sleep cycle is a straight-up mess right now. We have good natural light in our living room, but I need sun. I might stick my head out the window for awhile tomorrow.

This morning we received our test results and got our first text. Otherwise, honestly, quarantine is just like chilling at home. 

All in all, despite the recent outbreak, my impression is that the government is doing a solid job allocating its resources well. The quarantine entry form is still confusing, but the arrival process is pretty smooth, and they seem to have streamlined their focus on inbound travel quarantiners. 

No, America isn't "provoking China" or "threatening war", so please cut the horseshit

Greetings from the northeasternmost part of the United States! I’ve been aggressively trying not to blog, and surprisingly, recent news regarding Taiwan has made that easy. I have little to say about the Laguna Woods shooting; it’s a pure tragedy and it feels base to analyze it. Regardless, the most important thing to note about it is the violence inherent in a “unificationist” agenda, which has already been covered quite well. COVID? Sick of it. 

But there is something I want to address in the wake of Biden’s affirmative words on Taiwan, which is the completely preposterous reaction. To be fair, I can see how any given American voter with no ties to Taiwan and a tenuous grasp on the issue might object. 

Certainly, if you see it as yet another military conflict far away that will drain your country’s resources, or are committed to an anti-war stance on principle, you’re likely to oppose such a move. I don’t agree with this stance per se — “They came for [people who are not me] and I said nothing, now who will stand up for me?” —  but I understand it.

There’s been another reactionary wave, however, which is as predictable as it is disappointing: accusing the US of provoking China, rather than naming China as the obvious provocateur.

I’ve seen this from bootlicking genocide denier and tankie clown Caitlin Johnstone, who baldly lied when she called Biden’s words “directly threatening a hot war with China”.

Everyone shit their guts out for weeks when Trump made some asinine tweets about North Korea but Biden repeatedly threatening direct hot war with China while waging a world-threatening proxy war against Russia is just fine normal stuff.

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 23, 2022

He was not. He was asked if the US was “willing to get involved military to defend Taiwan if it comes to that”, and he said “yes, that’s the commitment we made”.

That is to say, if China starts a war, if China provokes a conflict, if China threatens Taiwan, then the US would be “willing” to get involved, “if it comes to that”, which sounds like strong language but really just means they’re not ruling out a possible defense of Taiwan if China provokes them.

You may not agree with that stance, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not a provocation. It’s fleshing out a potential reaction to a provocation by China. He strengthened that stance with a recent speech at the Naval Academy, but again, did not actively commit the US to a war in defense of Taiwan.

But Johnstone is a Grade A Useful Idiot, and her opinions do not matter. Far more disappointing are the reactions of people who are not only more relevant, but who honestly should know better.

For instance, longtime Taiwan expert Bonnie Glaser had this to say:

“We could actually provoke a Chinese strike against Taiwan…rather than deterring the attack, which is, of course, what President Biden hopes to do.”

She also said that “it might well provoke the attack that we are trying to deter because Xi Jinping could conclude that China should act while it still has a conventional advantage. He might feel pushed into a corner by a U.S. direct challenge to Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan.”

I normally hold anything Glaser has to say in high esteem, enough to generally give her the benefit of the doubt, understanding that she wants the best for Taiwan as we all do. Keeping in mind that, if anything, I’m biased in Glaser’s favor, her words above are a pile of absolute horseshit.

Yes, it sucks saying that about someone I generally respect. 

First, while it’s true that the web of agreements, acts, assurances and communiques that makes up the United States’ deliberately ambiguous commitments toward Taiwan do not directly obligate the US to defend Taiwan in the wake of a Chinese attack, that’s not quite what Biden said, is it?

The Taiwan Relations Act gives the United States the policy go-ahead to consider a strong defense of an invaded Taiwan — “to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”

That means we’re not specifically obligated to defend Taiwan, but we have the policy-backed ability to be willing to do so, if it comes to that. That’s what Biden was asked, and that’s what he said we committed to. A willingness, a possibility, a potentiality. That’s hardly a rock-hard promise of defense at all costs. It certainly is not, as Johnstone fibs, a direct threat of hot war. Perhaps the language was a bit stronger than expected, but it was not out of line.

Secondly, again, the US is not the provocateur here. I can imagine scenarios in which US meddling might cause Country A to declare war on Country B, but whether you consider past conflicts to fit that mold or not, it’s simply not the case regarding China’s threats against Taiwan.

I don’t know how much clearer this can be: China is the one threatening a war. China is the one bullying Taiwan. China is the one intentionally buzzing Taiwan’s ADIZ and attempting economic coercion and electoral chicanery. China is the one who wants to start that war. If a war broke out, China would be the one declaring it. That makes China the government doing the “provoking”, period.

Even if you think Biden’s words were “provocative” (they weren’t), China is hardly the victim in this story. We can all sympathize with the kid who gets teased one too many times and finally throws a punch, but China’s the one threatening Taiwan. The US is a bystander telling them to stop, not taunting them into beating up Taiwan.

Let’s go deeper: even if you think China is some sort of victim of a big mean United States here, we expect more than playground reactions from world leaders. Xi Jinping isn’t some kid in junior high, despite often acting like it. You don’t react to the president of a foreign country saying they object to your expansionist, subjugationist national agenda by attacking another country. You shouldn’t attack another country at all unless they’re attacking you, or you’re aiding an ally. For any reason. Even if you think it’s “your” territory.

That’s something a bad government chooses to do, not something they are “provoked” into doing. If they don't want to be the villain, all they have to do is not attack. To say otherwise is, again, horseshit.

It’s dangerous horseshit, too: what exactly is Biden supposed to say? Are we supposed to hem and haw and mince our words to appease dictators who have their hearts set on mass murder? Are we supposed to point fingers at ourselves and say we’re the bad guys, when the CCP is the one escalating tensions and acting provocatively?

Do those who agree with Glaser and (ugh) Johnstone think the US should continue to be wishy-washy about Taiwan? How has that done anything but cause China to ramp up their bullying and increase their military expenditure with an eye toward Taiwan’s future subjugation? Are we supposed to pretend that “not directly challenging” Beijing’s claim will cause them not to act on that claim, when they seem to grow more belligerent, not less, about acting?

Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps they believe that the CCP, less worried about the US’s reaction, will believe it can bide its time? If that’s the case, however, you’re just making the same mistake we’ve made for decades: handing China time to prepare for an invasion that they will absolutely undertake when they think they can win. You’re not deterring them, you’re giving them rope. Because again, they haven’t toned down the subjugationist tirades; they’ve ramped them up.

Glaser said one more thing that pissed me off:

Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund, said Taiwan’s government “focuses on the president’s declaration that he will defend Taiwan” [ed: he didn’t say that] “which they welcome because it provides reassurance to their public and boosts support for the ruling party. They ignore the rest.”

No, it does not merely boost support for the ruling party. It is the general consensus of the people of Taiwan that they do not wish to be annexed by China. Yes, there is a wide range of opinions and not all agree; that’s what it means to have a free society. But generally, it’s the most common belief and that’s not likely to change. In that way I suppose it provides reassurance, but that’s not just a political tool of the DPP — it’s the will of most Taiwanese.

As for “they ignore the rest” — the rest of what? That it could make China angry? Again, at what point does the assurance that 24 million or so Taiwanese will not be abandoned to a genocidal horror show of a government trump the desire to lick boots for a “peace” we cannot guarantee, because we wouldn’t be the ones starting the war? 

Let me be clear: even the best people can spout horseshit. This doesn't mean Glaser is a bad analyst or bad at her job. But on this point, she is wrong.

At what point do we realize that it’s China’s decision whether or not to invade, and regardless of what the US says, they could always choose not to start one? Are Taiwanese supposed to feel more reassured by the same old mealy-mouthed prevarication that has, for decades, emboldened China?

We know that the CCP is not above genocide and horrific political repression. They’ve proven that in East Turkestan and Hong Kong. We know that supporters of China’s plans for Taiwan are quite happy to “take the island, not the people” — a euphemism for the mass murder of anyone who resists Chinese rule. That is, most Taiwanese, as most do not consider themselves Chinese and do not want their country to be a part of China. We know those people are willing to act violently, frequently posting sick fantasies of outright massacre of Taiwanese.

Are we supposed to continue to give the bully more room to operate by refusing to say that we might step in if their harassment of Taiwan goes too far? Are we really so scared of Xi Jinping that our leaders cannot say one true thing: that China’s threats are unacceptable? Are we so beholden to cowardice that we truly cannot even speak, and any time we do it’s a “provocation”?

I genuinely struggle to understand how China always gets off so easy. Any other country treating Taiwan the way China does would be called what it is: a bad actor provoking tensions and threatening to start a war. We were the bad guys for invading Iraq. Russia is the bad guy for invading Ukraine. Hitler was the bad guy for invading everybody. European countries are the bad guys for their colonial histories.

And yet China is somehow a poor widdle baby victim who gets “provoked” by the Big Bad United States, even though they’re the ones invading Taiwan? How does that even work? Why do the normal rules for who provokes whom not apply?

I'm not the only one who thinks so, either:

Why is it acceptable in US Taiwan policy discourse for there to be such a thing as "provoking China." How did the CCP hypnotize experts with advanced degrees and decades of experience to plainly stipulate that China's actions aren't accountable to normal geopolitical physics?

— Pacific Standard 🚜🌻 (@PacStandardTW) May 25, 2022

It happens a lot, too. China commits a genocide, but the rest of the world are somehow stoking tensions for wanting to respond. Taiwan has an ADIZ and treats it like any other country who has one (including China!), but its very existence provokes China. China regularly issues bone-chilling threats regarding its intentions toward Taiwan, and yet we're all the bad guys for countering them because talking back “raises tensions?

It's all such fucking horseshit, and I am sad to see douchelord tankies and respected intellectuals alike fall for it, and even repeat it.

It is not a provocation to say that China’s constant bullying of Taiwan is unacceptable, and if it ends in China starting a war, the US might be willing to step in, or to point out that we do have the policy go-ahead to do so if we choose. The bullying, by China, is the provocation.

Again, the US is not the source of provocations here. China is.

Anxiety, COVID, and Me

The National Museum of Prehistory, Tainan

I haven't been blogging as much as usual for two reasons: the first is that we're about to leave for a necessary trip to the US in less than a week. While I'm excited to see friends and family after years away, it's stressful to plan a pandemic trip, and the timing isn't our choice: there are some things that require our personal presence in the country of our citizenship.

On top of that I had two writing deadlines for Taipei Quarterly. Expect a post about that in the upcoming months; I think it'd be relevant to Lao Ren Cha to do a rundown of all the restored heritage buildings they've been having me visit. 

The second reason is plain old anxiety. COVID has finally hit Taiwan for real, and handed an outbreak that probably can't be reduced to zero anytime soon, the government has abandoned COVID Zero and taken up a mitigation strategy. In my anecdotal experience, the populace seems fine with this.

Perhaps they're tired of the looming threat of lockdowns, or perhaps they've been watching the unfolding disaster in China and don't want their country to go down the same path (which I doubt would happen regardless). Perhaps they feel safer as most Taiwanese are now vaccinated. Nobody really wants all restaurants and cafes to close again, though I haven't actually been to a restaurant or cafe in weeks.

I have seen more caution -- stricter mask wearing, more use of hand sanitizing stations -- but there's one area that has me deeply uncomfortable: the lack of a return to working from home wherever possible. Sure, some offices are re-adopting those policies or offering flexible work-from-home options, but it just doesn't seem to be the imperative that it was when we had case numbers in the hundreds, before crushing that outbreak. Now we're above 10,000 a day, and people who don't need to go to the office are still going.

Few seem as worried about this as I am, and I acknowledge that my opinion is both out of step with about half of public opinion and fueled in part by personal anxiety. I have a trip coming up for which my presence is crucial in two states at two different times, at the risk of some serious setbacks. I can't get sick. If I do, I can't go. If I get sick in the US, I can't travel, but have no good isolation options (and miss the things that really need to happen). If I get sick towards the end of the trip, I can't come back. Anyone would be anxious about this. 

While I've been telling myself the worries will ease once the trip is done, that certainty slips by the day. 

If everyone is fine with face-to-face work, that means a lot of the work I'm offered will be in-person as well. I don't particularly want to say yes to in-person training (my English teaching work is all online; only teacher training is in person), but I may not be given a choice. And while we're not broke, I can't exactly choose to turn down work and play housewife until it's all over. 

In other words, if everyone else is fine to continuing in-person work, I feel pressured into accepting it, too. I don't have enough of a financial cushion to say no forever. Yet I don't want to do it. I want the option of going online, of being able to say I'm not comfortable with this and still have work.

There is no good reason for this attitude on the part of employers. It seems that most just don't particularly feel like making remote work the norm until this outbreak begins its hopefully inevitable decline. It's not very scientific, and it's not rational. Nobody wants a full lockdown -- I don't support that either -- but it's just not logical to go out often and spend lots of time indoors with other people's germs in the middle of a major outbreak, if one does not absolutely have to. 

There are employees who don't mind going to the office, of course. One of my students pointed out that she likes her coworkers, plus there's always free coffee, drinks and snacks (it's true, that particular office is very strong on all-you-can-consume snacks and beverages). But mostly, I want to know why employers seem more accepting of an outbreak at their office. 

I don't love it. I don't support it. I don't want it. I am deeply uncomfortable with it. And there isn't much I can do about it. Cue the anxiety. 

So I haven't been writing much, because I just don't know what to say when all I can think of is don't get sick don't get sick don't get sick don't get sick. 

There's a lot I want to talk about, too. From an upcoming post on restored Taipei heritage buildings to an exploration of the way the KMT is trying to replace Taiwanese democracy activism with ROC stories from China to the utter preposterousness of the notion that "the US funds Taiwan independence separatists", I have things to say. Just no will right now to say them.

Maybe I'll find my mojo again -- get my groove back or whatever -- when I return from this trip. Or maybe I'll become a weird hermit who stores her pee in jars. Who knows?

Perhaps it's normal for bloggers to just take breaks, and I need one now. Maybe that's fine too. In the meantime, I guess you'll find me behind an N95 as I travel the northeast corridor of the United States, or at home dusting my pee jars.

Asian Boss interviews political party officials in Taiwan and doesn't disclose that fact

KMT official Eric Huang (黃裕鈞) being interviewed by Asian Boss, who didn't disclose his position. But hey, at least he calls Taiwan a country!

After the last debacle with Asian Boss, I was hoping I'd be done forever with them. Vox pop interviews aren't a very good way to gauge public opinion, but I'd hoped they'd learned their lesson after the last time they set up a fake "street interview" with a deep blue Youtuber and got caught immediately. We know they use these tactics because the videographer they tried to hire for that interview talked openly about how Asian Boss approached them and what they were trying to do. 

The next video they released from Taiwan didn't include any set-up interviews that I could find. It wasn't a particularly good video, but as far as anyone can tell it was all above-board and done mostly ethically. The worst I could say about it was that the translations in some cases were a bit off, and didn't wholly accurately express what the people interviewed were trying to say.

This latest video, however, contains a huge disclosure issue. One of the first people to appear on the "vox pop" video about mandatory military service in Taiwan is the KMT Deputy Director for International Affairs Eric Huang (黃裕鈞). You may remember Huang for being tasked recently with reopening a KMT party office in the United States.

Huang posted the video quickly to his Facebook feed and admits he was the person in the video (between the mask and different haircut, it was difficult to tell at first). 

He also insists he was approached randomly on the street near his home in central Taipei, and that he disclosed to them that he worked in politics. 

The fact is, I can't prove that either of these statements is untrue. All I can say is that it seems implausible for a busy party official most well-known for a job that requires him to be in the US frequently to not only be stopped randomly, out of all the other pedestrians they might have picked, and that we already know -- from the link above -- that Asian Boss has created fake street interviews before. 

The question, however, is whether it matters.

The problem with this isn't that Huang appeared in a video. While the difference between seeking someone out and passing them off as a street interview is pertinent, even if it can't be proven beyond a doubt, it's still a major problem on the part of Asian Boss that they interviewed someone who is (was?) slated to be the KMT's deputy representative in Washington (apparently he's only back in Taiwan to get that set up). Rumors are that he might instead run for city councilor in Taipei. It doesn't really matter -- he's a well-known KMT figure in the news and Asian Boss did not disclose that fact.

Whether this was indeed a random meet-up (again, implausible) or a planned interview, Asian Boss certainly knew of Huang's position in the KMT and said not a thing about it. They treated him like an ordinary citizen with a non-political job.

That is wrong. It's unethical. It's presenting a false narrative. 

Asian Boss got caught doing this before, and should have learned that if they're going to make mediocre street interviews in Taiwan, at the very least they have to actually do random vox pops. Apparently they also need to be reminded that they can't interview people they know are political party officials -- again, random or not, Huang says he disclosed this -- and pretend they're just anybody. They're not. Unlike, say, a schoolteacher, software engineer, accountant, designer or fry cook, the job of a political official actually matters in this context. 

From an ethical standpoint, one does need to disclose such things. So why didn't they? Do they want to keep ensuring that they get their desired amount of pan-blue viewpoints? Do they want to push a particular consensus view but can only do that if some interviews are not entirely, honestly disclosed? Why?

Seriously, Asian Boss. Why? If your goal, as you often state, is to platform Asian voices without political bias or agenda, why don't you actually do that?

And why, exactly, does Asian Boss keep doing this with pan-blue people, whether they be Youtubers or party officials, but never even things out and interview pan-green ones? They could easily do both, as long as they disclosed that fact. It's suspicious that this behavior only flows to one side of the political spectrum. Perhaps it tells you something about Asian Boss's own biases.

I have to admit that nothing Huang actually says in the interview is that bad. He calls Taiwan a country and clarifies that it would never do anything to provoke a war. Of course, the KMT's idea of actions that should be avoided lest they "provoke a war" doesn't exactly line up with my opinion, as they often use it as a cudgel to criticize any acknowledgement that Taiwan is already independent -- but that's beside the point. Huang himself has been called somewhat 'better' and 'more enlightened' than the dark blue oldsters that occupy many party positions, and while I am sure there are many things we don't agree on, but they're not on display here.

Frankly, what he says here is reasonable enough that a friend of mine wouldn't have noticed he was in the video at all if he hadn't recognized him, and I wouldn't have recognized him (again, between the mask and the haircut, it's not very obvious) if he hadn't posted about it himself on Facebook. 

Asian Boss, however, needs to do better. Their actions in Taiwan are suspicious enough that their entire global operation should be called into question, and their videos from other countries also checked for these sorts of issues. If they do this in Taiwan, how can they be trusted not to do it elsewhere, too?

They need to disclose who is in their videos, if their job is relevant. Eric Huang's job is relevant to the questions being asked. If they're going to make middle-brow videos in Taiwan, at the very least they have to do so ethically. 

Or they'll just keep getting caught.

This Taiwan "explainer" masters the art of "technically true, but what are you implying?"

Lots of windows, but nothing inside

Recently, the Economist posted a video "explaining" the Taiwan/China situation. While just a 3.5 minutes long, it's astounding how much this short video, backgrounded by creepy History Channel Aliens music, gets so very wrong. 

Taiwan’s sovereignty has been disputed for centuries. Though the island sees itself as independent, China insists it is part of the People’s Republic.

An attempt to take Taiwan by force could ignite war between America and China.

Read more: https://t.co/9oRkEXbbfX pic.twitter.com/2IxBBg0rNx

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 16, 2022

Without preamble, let's take a look.

The video starts with a Chinese perspective, starting listeners who may not know much about the issue with just one side's take. Although it's clear that this is China's view, it introduces the topic with words like "renegade province" and "reunification". The professor (Steve Tsang) delivering it is also quite clear that this is China's perspective, and he's not wrong about that -- but it feels unbalanced to introduce the video with just China's current beliefs, but not Taiwan's. 

Following that short quote with the government position (which is the mainstream general consensus) in Taiwan would have balanced this out. While the video goes on to talk about democratization and a shift in cultural affiliation, it never actually states outright that polling data in Taiwan clearly show most Taiwanese identify as solely Taiwanese, the majority who identify as both Chinese and Taiwanese prioritize Taiwanese identity, and most Taiwanese consider the status quo to sufficiently meet the requirements to be considered an independent country. 

All of these things are true, and ignored in favor of a lengthy discussion on the CCP and KMT positions on the matter. 

Let's dive deeper into a few quotes from the various speakers:

"At the end of the Second World War, Taiwan was handed back to the Republic of China" (emphasis theirs)

How is this possible? The Republic of China did not exist when Taiwan was ceded to Japan. Notably, the entirety of Taiwan had only been controlled by the Qing for about a dozen years; for most of their 200-year "rule" of Taiwan, they only held the western third of the island.

Regardless, you cannot hand "back" a territory to a government that did not exist when the territory was ceded. 

I could add other nitpicks to this -- the fact that the status of Japan in Taiwan wasn't actually settled until the early 1950s, not the end of World War II; the question of whether any legally binding treaties support the legitimacy of the Republic of China on Taiwan; the difference between a government and an occupying force; what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to say about it; that giving Taiwanese ROC citizenship is not the same as naming the ROC as the legitimate government; and that even the KMT at the time recognized that it didn't have great legal standing to actually take Taiwan. 

But they're beside the point -- the simple truth is that you cannot hand something "back" to a government that did not exist when the thing was given away by a different government.

"By 1949, Mao's Red Army had swept to victory, deposing Chiang Kai-shek's military dictatorship, forcing the former leader and about 1.2 million of his anti-communist supporters to retreat to Taiwan."

This is technically correct, but it maintains an iron grip on a Chinese view of Taiwan -- Taiwan from the perspective of a retreating army from China -- and completely ignores what Taiwan itself was going through at this time. 

This take makes it sound like Taiwan didn't have any people, and the Nationalists arrived on a barren island devoid of people to set up a nation. In such a view, the people who already called Taiwan home in 1945 are erased. This video implies that 1.2 million people came to Taiwan and just did, y'know, whatever. It's not like there were any locals to oppose them, nothing happened on February 28, 1947! 

The fact is that 1.2 million people increased Taiwan's population by a great deal, but they were still the minority. The majority of Taiwanese already living here deserve to be considered in historical views like these.

This erasure is common in older literature from Taiwan, by the way. Pai Hsien-yung, Lung Ying-tai and even the beloved Sanmao have engaged in it to some degree.

"Everyone on both sides agreed that there was one country called 'China'. They just disagreed what it was."

They most certainly did not! The only way this is true is if you consider the views of two dictatorships to be the sum total of the views of "everyone" on "both sides". I don't think that way and you shouldn't either: "everyone" includes all people, and in the mid-20th century, nobody asked Taiwanese people what they thought. There is plenty of proof that not all Taiwanese agreed that there was one country called 'China' at that time. Many, but not all.

The view of a recently-landed dictatorship that has no regard at all for the wishes of the people on the island it's retreated to -- and in fact massacres them for asking for even slightly better governance -- does not represent the views of "everyone", period.


"As economic growth surged on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan and China let down their barriers."

These "technically true, but" statements are so interesting. Yes, economic growth surged in both countries but at different rates; China was in the doldrums of Cultural Revolution (and still recovering from the Great Leap Forward) when Taiwan's economic miracle began. China's economic advancement happened later, and far more unequally: eastern China jumped ahead, leaving behind the rest of the country as well as deep wealth inequities. China is now a bigger economy than Taiwan, but Taiwan is the more advanced economy overall, with greater wealth equality, purchasing power and GDP per capita.

The two sides did "let down" some barriers under Ma Ying-jeou, but for China this was a means to an end: unification. Ma was in on that plan, a unificationist to the core (though a closeted one for awhile). Taiwanese were literally sold a bill of goods: the promise of economic benefits without political ramifications. 

The benefits never materialized -- the various agreements didn't do much for the Taiwanese economy, if anything hollowing out the job market as work was siphoned off to China -- and the political ramifications soon became clear. More on that below.

"Cultural divisions between Taiwan and the mainland deepened."

The resulting backlash was far more than a "deepening of cultural divisions". It was a pushback by Taiwanese of what, exactly, the Ma administration was aiming to do to Taiwan: render it economically dependent on China so as to make unification inevitable. 

It's fortunate that this happened, as the economic effects of continuing with the Ma Ying-jeou vision would have been disastrous for Taiwan. 

What does it really mean to say that "cultural divisions deepened"? This makes it sound like Taiwan and China were naturally culturally similar until democratization, at which point they naturally began to diverge. While divergence did accelerate in that time, this is not quite right. When the Nationalists arrived in 1945, unlike commentators today who seem to assume that Taiwan simply was a Chinese society returned to Chinese hands, they understood that centuries of Qing neglect as a "backwater" and a half-century of attentive, albeit repressive, Japanese rule had created in Taiwan a society that was not quite "Chinese" despite the ancestral roots of most of its inhabitants. When Sun Yat-sen visited Taiwan before 1945, he viewed it as Japanese. Even Mao did not initially envision a Communist "liberation" of Taiwan as something that would come from China, but rather something Taiwan should do for itself. 

Given all this, in 1945, the KMT did everything in its power to destroy Japanese cultural memory in Taiwan and replace it with Chinese nationalism. They tore down temples and other structures, defaced buildings and pushed Mandarin Chinese, then a foreign language in Taiwan, on the population. They turned Taiwan culturally Chinese by force. 

Is it really a "deepening of cultural differences" if Taiwan, after decades of this treatment, woke up and realized it had a unique history and heritage that diverged significantly from China's? 

I don't think it's true that cultural differences "deepened". they were merely uncovered. It was a Taiwanese society finally able to speak for itself. 

"Despite claims that it wanted a peaceful reunification with Taiwan, in 2005 China passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of force should Taiwan formally declare independence."

Why the use of "reunification" here? Not only did the ROC not exist when Taiwan was ceded by Japan, but the People's Republic of China has never controlled Taiwan. How is a "reunification" possible between two sides that have never been united? 

This part is not terrible -- it does make it clear that China poses a threat -- but it still centers a Chinese viewpoint and puts some of the responsibility for possible war on "Taiwan independence", where it doesn't belong. Taiwan is already independent; it has everything an independent country needs to govern itself, and it indeed governs itself. It's China that threatens to upend this.

This take also ignores the road the DPP is currently trying to take: one where a formal declaration of independence is not necessary, because Taiwan is already independent. 

The Taiwanese view is offered far later on in the video, with this:

 
"The more that China shows its teeth and shows it's not willing to tolerate even a semi-democracy in a place like Hong Kong, the more that the Taiwanese people think, what kind of promise of autonomy makes any sense of us?" / "They simply will not accept the prospect of being part of a very hard authoritarian Leninist political system, whatever the economic benefits."

It really is interesting how the technically-true parts and the questionable assumptions meld together to weave a problematic narrative. There is nothing incorrect in the statement, but it leaves the listener to assume quite a bit that is not necessarily true. 

First, while it's true that Chinese treatment of Hong Kong has noticeably dampened support for any sort of "unification" agreement that would include "autonomy" (essentially, One Country Two Systems), the fact is that enthusiasm for this model was on the downswing long before the tragedy of Hong Kong took place. People identifying as solely Taiwanese surpassed those who identify as both Taiwanese and Chinese in 2008 -- the year pro-unification Ma Ying-jeou was elected. The 2014 Sunflower Movement gained popular support in Taiwan just before Hong Kong experienced the Umbrella Revolution. President Tsai was elected before the 2019 Hong Kong protests. 

It is safe to say that One Country Two Systems was a dead idea in Taiwan, supported by few, well before Hong Kong's downward spiral. Watching Hong Kong surely hardened or underlined that view, but the consensus already existed.

As for the "economic benefits" of unification with China, the lack of meaningful economic growth under Ma Ying-jeou shows that there likely would not be much. If anything, it would hurt the Taiwanese economy to be joined to China's. Think about it: a manufacturing base that isn't wholly trusted by the world despite so many consumer goods being made there; the CCP's certain desire that Taiwan not be too prosperous so it won't feel able to break free again; the way jobs in Taiwan were suctioned off to China where labor is cheaper after even slightly closer relations; the idea that unifying with a country with more poverty, fewer social services (it's true!), less equality and lower GDP per capital would somehow make Taiwan wealthier.

How could anyone look at all that and say that unification with China would be economically beneficial to Taiwan? 

"It should be impossible to imagine this not ending peacefully, but it is also impossible to imagine this Chinese government allowing Taiwan to drift away."

Admittedly, it took me awhile to parse this statement. I've said before that for every person that asks how Taiwan could possibly become formally independent from China, they should also ask how Taiwan could possibly integrate peacefully and harmoniously into China. It can't. That's not possible. They should ask themselves whether voluntary unification is possible. It's not -- forget "remote chances" -- it's not going to happen. This trend has only pointed one way since democratization and it's not the way that leads to Taiwanese suddenly deciding China is great. 

To his credit, this person does seem to pose the issue as one between a war toward annexation or China releasing its claim on Taiwan. And it's true: China deciding not to start a war is the main (well, only) way to avoid a war. 

It's just a weird way to put it.

"Is America still able to deter China? That's now in real doubt."

Again, this is technically true, but it elides so much and implies that the facts of the issue are not quite what they are. First, it ignores the existence of a Taiwanese military, but Taiwan does indeed have one. It ignores the assertion by President Tsai that Taiwan could hold off the first wave of Chinese attack, which I believe. (She diplomatically avoids the likelihood that assistance would be needed after that first wave).

Yes, US support for Taiwan -- among support from other countries -- helps deter China. But this ignores the fact that Taiwan would fight regardless of US help, and implies that the US is the one stirring up this conflict by angering China. The "see, the US is really the problem here!"  absolutely love this line of reasoning. The video doesn't go quite that far but gives them plenty of fodder for their gish-galloping arguments. 

The opposite is true: China is stirring up this conflict because it wants something it cannot have and does not deserve --  Taiwan.

By the way, I made a video too. I think mine is better:

I made a slightly improved (better timing) version of my Explainer — is #Taiwan part of China?

(No.) pic.twitter.com/YvwbsKlp8K

— Appeasement doesn’t work 🇺🇦🐅 (@laorenchanna) April 17, 2022