The online teaching cloister

I moved to Taipei to enjoy the city, not to be stuck in my apartment all day

A few weeks ago, I began my first face-to-face foundational TESOL training course since COVID hit Taiwan. We'd gone online at some point and were struggling to resume in-person learning. 

It had truly been so long that in the fog of the late pandemic I no longer remember when it happened, only that trying to teach that course online presented a host of problems. I couldn't really demonstrate various in-person interaction patterns, for instance. Nor could we discuss classroom management components such as boardwork and layout in an impactful way. A practicum (demo) is a vital component of this course, but it's harder for inexperienced teachers to lead interactive demos online. Everything takes longer online, too, and it was a challenge to cover the course requirements. 

When we finally opened a face-to-face course, on day three someone tested positive for COVID. Within a week, about half the class was infected, and I was teaching face-to-face with four students and a computer running an online meeting with the other three. I then tested positive, and it was back online for all of us.

My heart sank when I realized how it would go: back to my home office, back behind a screen. Yes, it's an incredible privilege to have a spare room for a home office at all, but it is draining to be stuck in there for days on end, without many chances to go out while Brendan left everyday for in-person work.

Gently put, it's a cloister. More critically, it's a prison.

While I've transitioned back somewhat to in-person teaching and teacher training, enough of it remains online that my latest stint at home prompted me to reflect anew on teaching and teacher training as a profession now that someone like me is just as likely to be working at a screen as in a room with their students or trainees.

To be blunt, I don't like teaching or teacher training online. At all. I've become accustomed to it, and of course I can do it. And yet, while some say online teaching brings people together -- it's possible to take classes you never dreamed possible if teachers and students can meet remotely -- I feel as though the screen divides me from the learners. It causes a rupture, a block. 

Everything takes longer, everything requires more planning. It's more difficult to develop rapport, especially when I have to put my foot down about cameras being left on if at all possible. Some never do, and there are situations where I can't (or shouldn't) force the issue. Imagine having students whose faces you've never seen, whom you'd never recognize on the street. I didn't become a teacher to interact with black squares all day, and I find it very hard to develop rapport this way.

Even with cameras on, I find it difficult to build the same connections with learners and trainees. To "make eye contact" I have to look at the camera, not the face on the screen. It's the same for the learner. I can toggle between these and create a simulacrum of actual, in-person, we-see-each-other eye contact, but it's not actually the same. The effect is ineffable, but definitely there, and entirely negative. 

One-on-one classes aren't so bad, as you only have to do this back-and-forth with one face. The effect is deeply felt in groups, however, especially if one of us is presenting.

I had an office job in the US all those years ago; lots of screen time, very little face-to-face contact. I hated it, and became a teacher because this is exactly what I don't want. It's kind of like attending meetings all day (something which can be tiring if you're working remotely), and you are the coordinator and host of every single meeting. I'm good at this in person. Online? Honestly, not so much -- because I don't want to be at a computer, period.

Pre-pandemic, my various jobs required me to jet all over Taipei and beyond for work. I explored parts of the city I'd rarely or never set foot in otherwise. 

Again, I realize this is a privilege. I understand that most people take the same route to the same office every day if they’re not working remotely, so “going in” isn’t particularly desirable. I get bored easily with routine, which is why I chose a career path through which I’d frequently find myself in different places. It got me out of the house, and I was able to see different parts of the city. My schedule changed often enough that there was always something at least a little new in this; it never got monotonous and I didn’t resent the extra time it took. I like to be on the move. 

You know what I don’t like? Being stuck at home most of the day, unable to leave my neighborhood or even my apartment, sometimes for entire days. If I have a training course in the morning, then an afternoon and evening class, the furthest I’m likely to go that day is the nearby 7-11. If I’m really lucky I might get to go to the ‘everything store’ down the street! 

I hate this. Plenty of people like working from home as it frees them from tiring commutes and allows them to be comfortable in their work setup. That’s great for them. It’s not for me. Mental health walks are uninspiring; I’m not good at walking with no destination. I’ve found myself making up reasons to go outside, which usually involve coffee or shopping, but they rarely take me anywhere new. No new cafes, little local restaurants or novel bus routes. No “hey there’s an Indian restaurant near Sanmin Road!” 

There is nothing worse for an extrovert than being at home all day, usually alone as Brendan still teaches face-to-face, and not feeling the rapport bump from work, either.

I have had more in-person opportunities recently, having started a new part-time gig that I'm enjoying quite a bit and pays very well. It's partly face-to-face, and that helps -- but they also underscore that being mostly online is a problem.

In fact, let's talk a bit about boredom and big career questions.

It’s easy to say I’m transitioning from teaching to more teacher training because it pays much better (to be clear, it does), but I’m also motivated by the level of challenge. It seems as though it should be easy to coast at the sort of work I’ve been doing forever, but I tend to get distracted and stuck if I do the same thing for too long. I know stagnation affects my performance, so it’s time to reach. This means more work overall, but that's the fundamental truth of what it means to seek challenge.

If all of this sounds vague, it’s because I don’t want to give too many specifics about work for all the obvious reasons. Besides, I genuinely like the people I work with. Most of them run their businesses well, or at least well enough that I don’t walk. I don’t want to hop on my blog to gossip about good people. 

Yet internally, I’ve been fighting…something. Distractedness? Demotivation? The delicate balance of work with my sub-optimal health? It could be any or all of these, and 

one of the leading causes is the pivot to online teaching.

Of course it's not the only reason. Working in Taiwan can be tough in certain ways: raises are rare, there’s no such thing as a paid holiday, it’s a battle just to get employers to do basic things like contribute to labor insurance and pension. In general I do not feel that teaching in Taiwan pays enough at the higher levels of ability and experience; I stay in Taiwan because I love Taiwan, but the honest truth is I could make more money in just about any other Asian country. 

Teacher training is a lot fairer in terms of compensation, and I won't lie: that's another reason why I gravitate towards it.

Every day I fight the notion that I’m good at my job simply because I’m a white native speaker. I think I am indeed good at my job, but that’s not the reason! 

None of those are the core of it, though. I’m used to the lack of benefits, and beyond wanting to be comfortable I’m not particularly motivated by money. (I'm only somewhat money-driven.) I didn't start to feel this distractedness until work mostly went online. Period, end of story, that's it: everything else is manageable but remote teaching is not what I want, and never will be. 

What's worse, because I don't actually want to be teaching online, I'm not as good at it. I'm less careful; teacher talking time shoots up; interactions don't vary as much as would be optimal; I'm less innovative. I'm less motivated online, full stop.

Online teacher training is even harder to pull off, but at least the level of challenge keeps it interesting.

Just to clarify, I’ve been forthright about this at work. Nobody reading this who knows me in real life would be surprised to hear it. It doesn’t really change the current situation, though — how could it? 

There are benefits to being online, however, that almost negate this (almost). Collaborative documents, chat boxes, interactive whiteboards: all things made possible by an online interface. It would be harder to schedule my own Taiwanese lessons if we met face-to-face, and I will probably start Armenian lessons online in the near future -- something that would have been impossible not that long ago. Trainees who can't attend my sessions in person are able to log in for the online ones; they get a benefit they wouldn't have been able to access in the Before Times.

That said, all this new technology never runs quite as smoothly as it should to be considered a true advantage. There’s always that one learner who can’t figure out how to access the materials on Google Docs (or can’t access it at all if they’re in China or have some sort of work-related block to that function). Zoom’s interactive whiteboard is clumsy and annoying. My noise-canceling computer is fantastic when my cleaner is vacuuming, but not great when we need to use audio recordings, as they don’t tend to play clearly. Getting everyone to mute themselves to listen on their own takes — you guessed it! — more time. 

Teaching online doesn’t even come with the only real benefit of remote work, which is freedom to travel and do your work elsewhere for awhile. I can’t go to a cafe — it’s a class! I suppose I could head south or east, but I can’t, say, fly to Europe or the US and work from there unless I want to keep some very weird hours. I’ve tried (ask me about 6am classes at my sister's old apartment in Hoboken someday) and it never really works out. 

It's caused me to ask some Big Career Questions. I love teacher training and don't want to give that up, but if I took on less teaching work and picked up, say, an editing or materials development job, at least I could go to a cafe for a change of scenery instead of spending the entire day in my little office cloister. I won't turn down online teacher training because I enjoy it too much, but I have considered refusing online language teaching to do this. I haven't pulled the plug on that yet, but we'll see. 

There’s no clear solution here; this is just my life now. If I had a different sort of job where I was desperate to escape the fluorescent horror and greige cubicle walls of an office, I’d probably welcome remote work. I became a teacher in part to avoid that! One of the reasons I’ve sought out more work is for those face-to-face hours; it will make the online portions of my job more bearable. At least I’ll have more chances to go somewhere! 

Anatomy of a fake news story: United Daily News and "zero dollar shopping"

Looks scary but ultimately it's just two guys in a lion costume

"My daughter was going to go to the US, but her flight was canceled due to the Canada fires. And also she thinks it's dangerous because of the 'zero dollar shopping' in the news," a friend said recently. 

"What on earth is 'zero dollar shopping'?" I asked.

"You haven't heard of it? It's a big problem in California," she said. "It's in the news!" 

She cited United Daily News (聯合報), a Taiwanese newspaper that's staunchly pan-blue but generally seen as reputable. There is indeed such an article, starting with discussion of 'zero dollar shopping' (零元購) and then launching into several subsections criticizing various, mostly liberal, policy initiatives in California, blaming them for what they imply is the disastrous situation of the state. 

Let's take a look at what "zero dollar shopping" is, dive a bit into the UDN article, and then widen our scope to figure out where UDN got the idea that this is a crisis gripping California and the US as a whole.

"Zero dollar shopping" is essentially organized pickpocketing, looting or theft. I couldn't find a single thing using that term in US media, but that seems be a translation issue: 零元購 or "zero dollar shopping" is a Mandarin slang term in China -- I'm less sure about Taiwan -- for what is essentially organized theft. The closest English translation I could find was "flash robs": there are several references to these at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry for this term, and many of them seem to be from reputable news sources. 

The UDN article reads as serious policy analysis, though it takes the tone of an editorial. It primarily blames California's Proposition 47 for the uptick in "zero dollar shopping". Proposition 47 passed in 2014 and reduces certain non-violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors in an attempt to reduce prison overcrowding. UDN dismisses it as an obviously ridiculous policy choice (again with no input from experts) and calls Black Lives Matter "radical". It calls this and other mostly-liberal policies 'crude' or 'shortcuts' without any sort of input from experts. It's presented as news but is quite literally just, like, their opinion, man.

There was no citation or reference whatsoever in the first part of the article about "zero dollar shopping", though plenty of links were offered to the Wikipedia sites of the various stores mentioned.  The best reference UDN offers is a screen grab of an American TV news report from NewsNation's Morning in America. I watch a lot of infotainment "morning shows" in the US because I spend a lot of my time there severely jetlagged and awake at weirdly early hours. I've never heard of Morning in America, but NewsNation claims to be centrist despite concerns that it actually leans to the right.

Links in later sections of the article include citing a rabidly anti-union website -- not exactly a great source of real news -- and exactly one link that's worth reading: The Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy. They use this link to claim the media has viciously criticized Proposition 47, but the article itself makes the strong case that this criticism is misguided: 

Despite the public narrative that Prop. 47 is increasing crime rates, the evidence indicates that this is false. California’s statewide violent and property crime rates are lower now than they were in 2010, even before Plata. While there has been an increase in rates of certain crimes such as aggravated assault, robbery, and auto theft, Prop. 47 did not reclassify or attempt to influence any of these crimes. Furthermore, crime rates in other cities including San Jose, Oakland, Richmond, and Fairfield have decreased or remained stable. These contradictory outcomes suggest that Prop. 47 is not the cause of Los Angeles’ uptick in aggravated assault, robbery, and auto theft.

It also cites The Washington Post as criticizing Proposition 47. This is a real article from 2015, but it's not linked. It cites an increase in various nonviolent crimes in California, but admits that the link to Prop 47 is unknown and unclear (the Georgetown article above points out that crime rates in California are actually lower than in 2010, which both the writer and UDN would have realized if they'd actually read the article they linked). 

That's all fairly typical in Taiwanese media -- after all, a free press is a precondition for quality journalism, but doesn't guarantee it -- but it gets slightly weirder. 

My friend also said she saw a blurb from UDN discussing "zero dollar shopping" that cited The Washington Post. It's not hard to find this -- here's a screenshot: 

I clicked on that link, and it took me to an entirely unrelated article on US arms sales to Taiwan! Maybe that's just something weird with the algorithm or results, as the headline matches the article it leads to, but language in the blurb comes from the first article linked above. I just thought it was odd. 

The Washington Post story and most of the "organized theft" articles from the "flash rob" Wikipedia page are from the 2010s; only one is from 2022. It points out that crime is actually on the downswing if you go back just a few years: 

Robberies in 2021 are up 3.2% in Los Angeles compared with 2020, but are 14.1% lower than in 2019. In and around Union Square in San Francisco, robberies fell nearly 5% from 2020 to 2021, while burglaries fell 2.3%.

 

It's not rare for conservative media in the US -- which to me is most media -- to confuse correlation with causation and fearmonger incessantly about even the most benign attempts at compassionate systemic reform. This is swirled around by tabloid rags like the New York Post, which more recently brought up Prop 47 in relation to a story about a San Francisco Target "locking down" its merchandise. 

Other recent coverage is more along the lines of the Georgetown journal piece and the LA Times article. Even CNN doesn't buy that "flash robs" are a serious issue because, again, the data simply don't support it.

If the US media is at best divided on the issue -- and in more recent years, inclined to think it's a non-issue -- where did UDN contributor Liao Chi-hung (廖啟宏) get the idea that it's somehow a serious issue crippling California and the US as a whole? From his professional background, I'd think Liao should know better.

It concerns me, because Liao's piece reads like expert analysis, when it's mostly garbage that either lacks meaningful citation, or deliberately misrepresents the content of its references. Yet it was enough to convince my friend and her daughter that there was indeed a massive "organized theft" based crime wave ripping across the US, endangering passerby, and that this was also reported as fact in the US media. I doubt she actually checked the links in the article, and I don't blame her; if I were a non-native speaker I probably wouldn't, either.

There may not be much meaningful support for Liao's position in reputable media, but there's plenty in the disreputable bowels of the Internet! 

At least one of these articles predates UDN's platforming of Liao's absolutely ridiculous opinion, and there are lots of Tiktoks under the hashtag #零元購, and a few Youtube videos. Here's one example, and here's an eye-rolling propaganda piece by some random foreigner in English, put out by CTI (中天). A Yahoo! news article cites the LA Times (which, again, has pointed out that robberies are falling in the long term, not rising). Of course I was mostly going to bring up posts by the Mandarin-speaking online world, as I couldn't find much that was useful searching for "zero dollar shopping" in English. 

This shouldn't have been enough to get Dr. Liao's knickers in a twist about a California legal policy that has no proven connection to crime rates which are, from a longer-term perspective, going down. Maybe he's just a credible guy with a preposterous set of opinions. It happens (see: Chen Weiss, Jessica). 

About ten days after that, give or take, veteran reporter Fan Chi-fei (范琪婓) put out a Youtube video treating the idea of "zero dollar shopping" like a fact of life in the US. The video blurb alone makes the country seem like a lawless scene of hell and disorder. The US isn't great, but it's not quite that. Fan had previously worked for both deep blue TVBS and blue-red CTI (中天), which notably got caught in enough lies that their TV license was revoked (the ruling has since been overturned). However, she's also worked for pan-green Sanli 三立. Fan doesn't seem like a typical unificationist or anti-US mouthpiece, so I doubt she intentionally spread what is, at its core, a bogus story.

Then, in the past few days, frightfully dodgy websites full of extremely dodgy English have been pissing out laughably dodgy content, so that a search for "zero dollar shopping" in English produces plenty of hits. Any native speaker or mastery-level speaker of English as a second language would immediately see these for what they are: an array of utter trash. 

Again, however, this was enough to convince a highly intelligent person and proficient English speaker that the US was a dangerous place due to this "zero dollar shopping". It looks like a joke to me, but it wouldn't necessarily to someone else. 

It's obvious why US conservatives would push this false narrative: attack a blue state, especially one that's seen as an attractive place to live for many. Make Democrats and their liberal policies look bad. Drum up the base. Get people scared and angry about the Other, in this case the fear of violent criminals and by extension, the poor. Tale as old as time. 

Why would Chinese-language media do this, though? Perhaps their crappy websites and baseless Tiktoks are meant to cause not just other Chinese people, but Taiwanese as well, to feel that the US is a terrifying, lawless society. Who would want a poorly-governed superpower as a friend and ally? In fact, who would want to visit it? The US touts itself as a freedom-loving democracy -- is this what happens when you are "too democratic"? Perhaps we should aim to be a little less "free", a little more like, oh, say, safe and happy China?

(I don't actually think the US is "too democratic"; if anything it's not democratic enough. But I hope some of you remember this oft-repeated line in Taiwanese media during the Ma Ying-jeou years. "Democracy is good but Taiwan is too democratic!" Barf.) 

This is indeed what I think is happening, as the English on these websites isn't good enough to convince anyone except middling-proficiency users, and perhaps not even then. Therefore, the show is probably not for us. Added together, they sure look like a preponderance of news in English, though! 

Besides, I've noticed some of these "zero dollar shopping" links are said to be videos from other democratic countries like Korea and Japan (here's one tweet by a pro-China account with a not-insignificant number of followers, but there are a handful of others if you look). It's almost as if they're trying to make every democratic nation that Taiwan has friendly relations with look like a lawless hellhole, when they're not.

I can't prove they're taking Liao and Fan's silly idea that organized theft is causing the destabilization of American society and targeting it at Taiwanese, or Chinese, or others around the world. Besides, it's hard to even prove that these dodgy sites are deliberately engaging in fake news, buttressed by credible professionals. After all, the best fake news has a kernel of truth to it. A handful of US opinionators. A few true-ish statistics. A New York Post article. The fact that a small number of "flash robs" have, indeed, occurred. 

But it sure looks like it's deliberately fake, there are Taiwanese people who believe it, and people like Liao Chi-hung, Fan Chi-fei and UDN should know better.

On sexual harassment, the KMT remains unaccountable for their own actions

I don't have a good photo, even a metaphorical one, so please enjoy a Tainan street scene.

My second job in Taiwan was arguably the worst job I've ever had. It was worse than my "they say we're teachers but it's actually kind of like working at the Gap" job at one of the big chain cram schools, if you can imagine such a thing. I won't name them because they're litigious, and I also tend not to tell the full story -- it involves treating my husband in an unacceptable way -- without a drink in hand.

It wasn't always a nightmare; the first few years were solidly okay, perhaps even enjoyable. Then they changed office managers and I started noticing a pattern I couldn't quite elucidate then, but understand better now: the inability of anyone in the office to be accountable for the most minor of mistakes, let alone apologize or do anything proactively to address the error.

Scheduled for three weeks straight -- including weekends -- despite specifically requesting that not happen? Let's not point fingers, can you just do us this favor? A teacher was not informed of a class cancellation? I don't recall. Random errors appearing in teaching materials, to the point of occasional incomprehensibility? No, you don't understand, that's just a different variety of English. 

There was also a rumor that another teacher was accused of acting inappropriately toward female (adult) students and admitted as much to management. I say "rumor" because I didn't witness it, but I was told by the person accused. He showed no outward guilt, and seemed pleased that there were no repercussions. I knew then that I would leave as soon as possible (there were other reasons, but this was a major catalyst). 

We all make mistakes, and I started out apologizing for mine, however minor. I soon realized that an apology was considered a deep admission of guilt: you'd get a long talking-to in a meeting they were frequently late for (forcing you to wait twenty minutes to an hour for a lecture you didn't need as you'd already acknowledged fault).

Rarely was anyone fired, but if you took accountability rather than making excuses and refusing to admit fault, you felt like you were on constant probation.

My purpose here isn't to make them look bad (which is part of why I won't name them), but to tell a small slice of my story while making a larger point about small-scale cultures where accountability and apology aren't the first steps to reconciliation and rectification, but an opening to heap shame on the person admitting fault.

I'd let these memories sink into the morass of things best not fixated on, only to have them come roaring back as I watch the various political parties rush to address their past mistakes in dealing with sexual harassment. I thought this was just the memory of that one guy who seemed proud that he was making female students feel uncomfortable, but my subconscious made the connection before I did. It wasn't that one incident, it was the whole culture of refusing to acknowledge mistakes, let alone admit them or, heaven forfend, apologize. 

It shows strength of character to admit error, take accountability, apologize, rectify the situation if possible and take action to ensure it doesn't happen again. I  learned this in my twenties -- later than I should have -- and it's everyone's duty as adults to do the same. 

That's why it bothers me that as this Not-Really-#MeToo movement unfolds, I mostly feel dismay. 

On the DPP side, people rightfully lost their jobs. Their mistakes can never be fully rectified, but at least there were eventual consequences to their actions. Lin Fei-fan, the former Sunflower leader accused by the media of knowing about the cover-up of the Women's Department case, has ended his candidacy for the legislature. There have been some serious shake-ups at the DPP -- not serious enough, but it's a start.

It's unclear why exactly he quit the race. Perhaps the party decided it was best to shelve him for a future race, perhaps he was a sacrificial lamb, or perhaps he himself decided it was the best course of action in terms of being accountable, or his future political prospects (or both). The DPP absolved him of responsibility, so I suspect the decision was ultimately his own. 

Although it's not for me to say whether it's the right or wrong decision, I admit I'm sad to see Lin drop out. Not following up on the case in question was indeed a mistake, but crucially, to me, he's one of the only people embroiled in this incident to have acknowledged as much and apologized. I don't think his actions are in line with someone who committed a cover-up.

Lin acted like an adult: he was the supervisor at the time, so he decided the buck stopped with him and that he should be held, in his words, to a higher standard. Accountability is hard and it takes guts to apologize, but it's the right thing to do. It's what I want to see in Taiwan's elected leaders.

This is not to absolve the entire DPP. To put it colloquially, they fucked up real bad. he only way out of that is to figure out what went wrong and fix broken mechanisms so it doesn't happen again. Lin himself has said as much repeatedly.

The KMT, on the other hand, has been posturing quite a lot on their commitment to gender equality and a harassment-free culture, but I've yet to see much in the way of real consequences for the many, many cases that have occurred within the party.

New Taipei mayor and presidential candidate Hou You-yi was in charge when a city employee committed suicide over sexual harassment in the city's health bureau. Although the supervisory committee said the bureau handled the case incorrectly, Hou stated that the bureau acted "with humility", but has not apologized or accepted any sort of accountability for the goings-on in his administration, and is accused of trying to bury the news.

Hou, of course, is still the KMT presidential candidate. He's spent a lot of time criticizing the DPP, which the DPP has called hypocritical (Presidential candidate Lai Ching-te called Hou the "last one who can criticize"). 

If Lin had stayed in the race, he would have faced off against current KMT legislator Wang Hong-wei, who narrowly beat Enoch Wu for the seat. The DPP clearly thinks this district is winnable, seeing as they keep throwing star power at it. Wang, as you might have guessed, called on Lin to withdraw from the race. Then she mocked his apology and withdrawal statement as being for the "social disturbance" the incident has caused rather than his own actions (Lin has expressed regret for his actions multiple times), as well as calling her out for "double standards and political manipulation". 

Apparently, Wang didn't think this was fair. Is she right? Did Lin err in calling her duplicitous rather than focusing all of the shame on himself? To determine that, let's look at Wang's actions more broadly.

KMT legislator and former Lienchiang (Matsu) county magistrate Chen Huseh-sheng was found guilty of sexually harassing DPP legislator Fan Yun and ordered to pay NT$80,000. Fan expressed unhappiness with the verdict; it's a small fine well within Chen's means to pay, and he remains in the legislature where Fan has said she feels "disgusted" to have to see him. 

Wang has said asking Chen to resign would be "inappropriate", backing that up with a whole truckload of nonsense. She said there are "many forms of sexual harassment, and some of them are despicable...such as abuse of power", which this was not, and that Chen's case is "worthy of vigilance" but did not merit asking for his resignation. 

In other words, an actual sexual harasser found guilty in a court of law should not have to resign because "sexual harassment takes many forms" and this one was not "despicable" enough, but Lin -- who has never been accused of sexual harassment -- should drop out of the race because he didn't follow up on a case that was reported to him as resolved?

Yep, that's a double standard.

The other high-profile case in the KMT revolves around Hualien legislator, convicted criminal and all-around asshat Fu Kun-chi, who was accused of sexual harassment by a media personality while he was serving as Hualien county magistrate. The comment section of the initial post included several people pointing out that he was a known serial offender.

While the KMT has said they will investigate the issue, Fu's office refuses to make any meaningful comment, and former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-pin, whom the victim named as a witness, has said he "doesn't have a clear memory" of what happened. 

Wang Hong-wei, after spending so much time attacking Lin Fei-fan, apparently has no energy left to say a single goddamn thing about Fu Kun-chi. 

I'd certainly call that a double standard too, and I'm not the only one saying so. Wang and other KMT members sure talk a lot about not tolerating sexual harassment, but when sexual harassment in their own party comes to light, they seem pretty tolerant to me. I guess it's easy to tolerate anything if you "don't have a clear memory". 

You know who else in the KMT nobody seems to have a thing to say about? Taipei deputy mayor Lin Yihua. Her former office director, Lin Tinglin, was found guilty of rape in 2021. The court decided that although Mr. Lin had resigned before the incident took place, he was still Lin Yihua's employee as he continued to volunteer at her office and wear a campaign vest bearing her name. Lin Yihua was found jointly responsible for Mr. Lin's conduct and forced to pay part of the settlement.

Not only did Mr. Lin deny the allegations, appeal the ruling, call himself the victim and say the relationship was "consensual", but Lin Yihua herself tried to argue that she was not responsible as the perpetrator had technically already resigned.

Does Wang Hong-wei or anyone at all in the KMT care to ask Lin Yihua to step down for failing to be accountable for the actions of her office staff? No. She remains a rising political star in the KMT.

I will freely admit my bias against the KMT -- I just can't get over that whole White Terror thing, not to mention their current pro-China leanings -- and it's true that they've launched an investigation into the handling of sexual assault allegations, promising the issue will be handled "satisfactorily". They've even put a few token women on the committee, while refusing to divulge anything about their background! 

Maybe I'm being unfair. I can't say for certain that the KMT's new bureaucratic this-n-that won't fix whatever is broken. Given their track record, however, their assurances plus NT$10 will buy a tea egg at 7-11. 

But I can say that the DPP has actually fired people over this, and pretty quickly too. Everything's still ticking along just like it always was at over at the KMT. When high-profile people actually get canned and those who helped cover for perpetrators step down from office, I'll believe that it means something.

The DPP is far from perfect, and I won't sit here like a brainless pine cone and insist they've done nothing wrong, or that there isn't something very broken in their own male-dominated party culture. But Lin Fei-fan apologized, reflected, stood up and took the hit like an adult. When Chen Hsueh-sheng and Fu Kun-chi are made to step down and Hou You-yi and Lin Yi-hua face similar accountability, maybe I'll believe that the KMT might turn a corner, too. 

Women Making Waves

This is a long ramble, so strap in. I have no intention of editing it to be shorter, though I might make some structural, proofreading or content edits.

Back when I finished DPP: The TV Show Wave Makers, I had all these high-minded ideas about how I would write about my perspective and impressions of the show as a medium of expression. I wanted to point out all the little things I noticed, such as the son of one of the main characters being named Yang-yang in a lovely nod to Edward Yang's Yi-Yi (A One and a Two). Wave Makers has more of a dramatic arc than Yang's last film, but the tone has a similar observational quality. Although the chief villain from the ruling party wasn't based on a certain former president per se, I noticed how Leon Dai's portrayal of a smarmy vice presidential nominee looked a hell of a lot like him; in one scene, the character is even seated in front of a Chinese painting of galloping horses. Horses! 

That former president has never been accused of sleeping with his assistants, but certain other figures in the KMT are fairly well-known for their alleged awful treatment of women. It's not hard to see what the character was based on.

Of course,  would also entail discussion of the central drama of the show: not the fictional election that takes place across the eight episodes, but the show's feminist core in which women grapple with the ways that politics and society both target and fail them. I too have voiced concerns over the treatment of women in social and political movements -- for instance, while not nearly as bad as the right, the left has a misogynist streak that isn't talked about enough, and as a pro-Taiwan foreign woman I am sick to death of other Taiwan advocates supporting overt woman-haters, accused rapists, anti-abortionists and (mostly hypocritical) anti-LGBT tradwife-stanning all-around shitsacks. 

In other words, it is very hard sometimes to support Taiwan as a woman, when your fellow advocates think it's acceptable ("for Taiwan!") for someone who was found guilty of sexual assault and openly treats women like objects of either desire or mockery to be the president of the country where you vote. Although as a straight, cis white woman I deal with far less discrimination and violence than most other women, I too am infuriated by the active oppression of women being deemed acceptable as long as some other goal is considered more important. 

The show grapples with what it means to make compromises and sacrifices in the name of some higher ideal, which resonated with me. It's tiring, feeling some pressure to pretend women's issues don't matter (and therefore Republicans in office in the US are acceptable because they're better "Taiwan allies", even though this seems to no longer be true). I'm losing my patience for it, if that patience ever existed. If we don't all care for each other, and do our best not to sacrifice one group's wellbeing and then pretend there's nothing wrong with that, then what is the point of fighting authoritarianism at all? 

Anyway.

While Wave Makers was a fundamentally DPP-sympathetic show, anyone paying attention noticed that the creator was nevertheless trying to draw attention to the fact that sexual harassment, tolerance of anti-LGBT hate (including physical assault of gay people) and the resulting hypocrisy regarding what a progressive party claims to stand for are, if we're being honest, pretty rampant in the DPP. 

I also think anyone paying attention already knew that, but it was rarely discussed. 

I wanted to discuss all of this and more in a much longer post, but now I can't, at least not yet. What we're all following instead are the sexual assault allegations rocking not just the DPP, but the KMT and to some extent the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) on the heels of Wave Makers -- or more likely, because the 2024 election is starting up. Here's a mostly-complete rundown in English of the current accusations and scandals.

The initial story to break was eerily close to the main plot arc of the show: a female DPP employee was sexually harassed, the harassment was covered up, and legislative candidate, Sunflower leader and Guy With A Good Reputation Lin Fei-fan, tasked with supervising the department where it took place, allegedly knew and did nothing.

I say "allegedly" because I don't actually know what Lin knew. However, his explanation that he learned only that there was an incident but the parties chose not to pursue a formal complaint, and regrets not following up personally, makes more sense to me than all of the theoretical talk of respecting women, while denying any specific harassment took place, from the KMT.

Lin has also suspended campaign activities for the time being to work with the party investigation, met with women including female friends to ask their opinions, and discussed how pushing aside these issues for some semblance of "solidarity" is not good enough. He has offered a real apology and does not deny the incident happened.

I can't say for sure that he definitely knew there was a cover-up, or didn't. But these actions imply sincerity, and I think it is far more likely that he is telling the truth than not. I doubt a legislative candidate who wasn't taking the issue seriously would actually suspend their campaign activities.

To be honest, I've avoided this a little. Partly it was just life: I was in Tainan for work as the news kept breaking. Partly it's personal: I've experienced sexual harassment (to be honest, it was assault, but I've processed it, am doing well, and rarely think of it now). I've also had bad people attempt to use my previous openness about that experience against me through intentional misrepresentation, and watched a thread about it devolve into unrelated but overt lies. It sometimes bothers me that, if I am open about it, many people don't seem to reflect much on the ways in which their own inaction and silence has allowed an anti-woman culture like this to fester. I don't feel particularly shy about discussing this, but I also don't care to rehash it, either. 

There are other reasons why I felt conflicted about writing on this topic; I won't divulge them. 

Here is one I will discuss: I'm a woman, but I'm not Taiwanese. I don't subscribe very strongly to the notion that only people from certain groups should ever share their opinions -- generally, people from affected groups will have more thoughtful, nuanced and interesting things to say, but if an idea is well-reasoned and insightful, I don't mind as much where it comes from. What's more, plenty of bad ideas come from the right group of people: Wave Makers showed us this too, with all the nonsense being spewed on Taiwanese political talk shows.

However, on this particular issue, I'm somewhat uninterested in hearing all the chatter from anyone who is not a Taiwanese woman. That presumably includes myself! But more than that, although some insights have been welcome, I have trouble taking seriously all the copious wordage spilled by men about this issue that primarily (though, to be fair, not exclusively) impacts women. 

Much is made of the need for more Taiwanese voices in Taiwan discussion spaces, reporting and advocacy. There is merit to this. And yet, when an issue impacts women -- Taiwanese women, in this case -- so many men think they're qualified to weigh in as though specific perspective from the group most affected no longer matters. One example of this is the most recent Taiwan This Week on ICRT. I respect Gavin Phipps and while the show is good as long as the guests are good (they are often very good, but not always), I have a real problem with his inviting two white men on the radio to talk about sexual harassment mostly experienced by Taiwanese women.

Why? There wasn't a single woman -- better yet, Taiwanese woman -- they could have had on the show to discuss this very woman-centered issue? Frankly, it's infuriating. If we're going to talk about Taiwanese voices, great. But how about women's voices? Why is it still okay to stifle those? I hesitated because being a non-Taiwanese woman didn't feel like sufficient qualification to speak on this issue, but men in general are perfectly fine with it, it seems. Again, why?

Certainly, a good opinion is indeed a good opinion no matter where it comes from, but the only opinions that have made much sense to me in the past week have come from Taiwanese women. For example, this excellent piece in Voicettank (in Mandarin) discussing how Taiwan's #MeToo movement has not yet come (all the nattering men, in contrast, keep calling it "Taiwan's #MeToo movement"). 

I'm too tired to translate tonight, but writer Zhang Yinhui (張茵惠) points out all sorts of things that most women know in their gut, and men seemingly do not: that stories about sexual harassment and assault that can be easily told are also relatively easily solved, but most stories are complex and interwoven in structures built and maintained by imperfect people. Wave Makers showed us that there is no such thing as "the perfect victim", but it's hard to really feel that unless you are that imperfect victim, or one of their close connections.

Zhang also pointed out that the DPP nominating Li Zhenghao (formerly of the KMT, and accused but acquitted of non-consensual filming of his ex and refusal to delete the images, but not found guilty) caused a lot of progressive women to wonder why they were continuing to be silent so as to not "topple the bird's nest" -- that is, not threaten the DPP's chances of election. What's the point, when they're going to say they care, but then turn around and nominate someone like Li anyway?

Most importantly, Zhang noted that we cannot possibly say that Taiwan's current scandals constitute a #MeToo movement, because too many men who are known to be serial sexual harassers and offenders continue to be in power. She pointed to former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-zhe, who crowed about the DPP's scandals while ignoring allegations in his own party, the TPP. He's still running for president, and has openly and unapologetically said some horrifically misogynist things. He has paid no political or persona price for this.

She clarified that although the current spate of allegations focuses on the DPP, in fact the pan-blue camp has seen many more such cases by volume if you look at the past several years. The recent news has not caused much reflection in the opposition camp, either.

And yet, how many people are talking about the KMT's rampant issues with sexual harassment? A few, but not nearly enough. Besides, Zhang said, #MeToo is used by relatively powerful women to take down a few awful men. While this is a good thing, it hasn't done much to address systemic social and political failures that allow it to happen. 

I agree with this. Wave Makers got a more or less happy ending -- perhaps because creator Jian Liying herself has said she was harassed by exiled writer Bei Ling, who continues to call it a "fabrication", denying Jian her happy ending -- but chances are, the women coming forward across the Taiwanese political spectrum now will not. Recall how the issue of comfort women is repeatedly to score political points, but the actual World War II-era comfort women got very little justice? The same thing is happening here: accused of things they can't possibly ignore, both sides have turned into giant smearing machines, using real sexual harassment allegations not to seek justice for those harassed, but to attack each other. The victims probably won't get much of anything for all of it, let alone justice or, heaven forbid, systemic change.

Of course, men can experience sexual harassment and assault too, and in fact some of the allegations have been brought by men. I do think many men understand and empathize with what women face constantly; some have had it happen to them. So, I would never say that a man can't or shouldn't talk about these issues. Indeed, they can!

However, I find myself not particularly wanting to hear male perspectives on an issue that primarily, though not exclusively, affects women. The experience of being treated like a verbal punching bag by some men after I spoke more openly about what happened has made me more distrustful of men speaking about this issue -- some of that suspicion is justified, but I admit some might not be.

I say this gently, with only friendship in my heart. I've Donovan Smith's article in Taiwan News was factually correct, but didn't quite strike the core of the issue. Certainly, he can empathize with the current national conversation, and I know other men who understand because they've been harassed or assaulted, or been a target of people spreading lies about them without much recourse. So, I'm limiting my comments to this article only.

That is to say, the allegations wracking the DPP were all accurately summarized, and Smith did note that the KMT is hardly innocent in this regard. He's correct that the DPP cannot run on a platform of "okay, maybe we're also a little rotten but we're not as rotten as them".

However, to state that the current allegations of cover-up are only hitting the DPP, implying (though not outright saying) the problem is somewhat specific to the DPP, isn't quite right. There's a reason why this is hitting the DPP harder, and again it's locals who've pointed it out so succinctly.

News about sexual assault in the KMT hasn't taken off the way it should because everyone already knows the KMT has a rotten record on this. It's not surprising. That Fu Kun-chi is accused (and is denying anything happened) is not surprising. There's a list circulating on Facebook of all the known sexual assault allegations from other parties, and the vast majority -- far more than the DPP is dealing with currently -- are from the KMT. Some of these cases are known to have resulted in the woman's suicide (this link includes just one example, but there is at least one more, by a worker in Hou You-yi's administration in New Taipei, mentioned in the list liked above.) 

This is not to minimize the way the DPP has disregarded women's issues in its own ranks. These need to be dealt with, and to be honest, Zhang is right. They probably won't. It's simply necessary to point out that the DPP is catching most of the flak for this because people's expectations of the DPP are higher. This is partly due to Taiwan's political history, and partly because the DPP bills itself as the woman-friendly, progressive alternative to the traditional, rotten KMT. Of course they should do better! But it's also not right to let the KMT fester without comment, letting them win elections because the DPP looks bad on some issue, when they're actually worse on that same issue.

What's more, these scandals are hitting the DPP now because, from what I've read about the KMT's history with this issue, women who are harassed more or less know that there's no point to speaking up. Politicians and officials will insist they take sexual harassment seriously, promise that they'll diligently follow up on every case, but either decline to comment or deny that any particular case happened at all.  The DPP does cover-ups, but the KMT outright denies.

Why complain when you know that's how it will go? Why should any woman think she'll be heard if she speaks up against a member of the KMT? From rumors that Lien Chan is a domestic abuser (if the messages between Lien's daughter and her friend at the American school showing evidence of misconduct sounds like a familiar plot point...well) to a KMT city councilor openly screaming about how a female firefighter who reported sexual harassment is at fault for not locking the door, they make it impossible to speak up. They know what they're doing, but I'm not convinced they truly know it's wrong.

The current scandal may be hitting the DPP harder, but this is deep, ingrained, societal and political, and it is the result of continually sidelining women, and then telling them to lay low rather than capsize the whole boat. That is, to not make waves. 

How many women have not had their talents fully recognized because they were not given the opportunity to shine by misogynists, and how many women slunk off and quit because, once landing that job, they were sexually assaulted? In comparison, how many men have had that happen to them?

Smith also assumes Lin Fei-fan "knew about the cover-up", linking to a shoddy TVBS article on the issue. As discussed above, I don't know what Lin knew, but it strikes me as more likely that he's telling the truth. To me, it feels a little too close to putting Lin in a similar camp as the KMT's overt denialism, which may be unfair.

Hell, even Annette Lu, who is so often wrong on contemporary issues, got it at least partly right this time: the current scandals are the direct result of a "male centric legacy" that treats women as objects that can be treated however men wish, that sexual harassment tends to be difficult to prove and therefore is rarely discussed, and that it's not unique to a particular party. 

If Annette Lu is right for the first time in awhile and her points are worth considering, maybe we really should be listening not to men -- and especially not white men -- but to Taiwanese women. Maybe we don't need an ICRT program that platforms two white men to talk about this issue. I always value Donovan Smith's contributions but maybe in this specific case, he's not the person to listen to. 

I've felt pressure to not make waves in pro-Taiwan circles, where absolute garbage humans are tolerated as long as they're sufficiently dedicated to Taiwan's cause. I've experienced sexual harassment not unlike what a lot of the women coming forward in Taiwan describe. I've felt pressure to then not speak about it too much. I fail to see how we can built not just a Taiwan recognized as independent of China, but also a Taiwan worth living in, if we ignore issues primarily (though again, not entirely) facing one marginalized group. The DPP is facing a similar conundrum: they claim to not only want Taiwan's continued independence, but also a better Taiwan for all citizens.

How can they do that if they, too, ignore women's safety and wellbeing? And how are we ever going to move forward if the stories of women finally being told are just being used as inter-party attacks and not steps toward real justice? How can we move forward if we don't prioritize women's -- especially Taiwanese women's -- voices? 

I have a lot of Taiwanese female friends (they all speak good English; maybe ICRT could have asked one of them, or literally any insightful Taiwanese woman, to discuss this issue). They're feeling this hard right now. I see it on their faces, I hear it in their voices even if we don't linger on the topic. Generally speaking, they're not interested in beating up on Lin Fei-fan for negligence (they're all dark green Sunflower supporters, so I'm not surprised). They already knew Fu Kun-chi was this kind of guy; even the initial post about him by media persona Tung Cheng-yu had several comments pointing out that he was a known serial harasser. 

What they do seem to want is justice. Change. For Taiwanese women to be listened to and taken seriously, even if they are not "perfect victims". To get opportunities they lose because men with power who hate women withhold them, or make them contingent on tolerating sexual harassment and assault silently. They're sick of being asked to choose between supporting the party that cares about Taiwan's continued independence, and speaking frankly on the ways that party has failed women. 

I may not be Taiwanese, but I am a woman, and I empathize. Indeed, empathy is possible from all corners, but I'm seeing a lot of mudslinging and very little movement towards actual change.

Do 'most' Chinese really favor outright war with Taiwan? (Sort of, but not really.)

Don't ask how Taiwan should cross the red bridge. Ask whether.

Much fuss was made of a recent study in the Journal of Contemporary China assessing public support in China for various means of annexing Taiwan to China.

The authors don't don't use the term 'annexation', but that's what it would be -- not only does no option for peaceful dialogue leading to mutually-agreed unification appear in their so-called "full range" of policy options, but such an option is indeed unlikely to work. There's no plausible scenario in which Taiwan would want unification with China, and the resultant coercion to achieve that goal is, by definition, annexation.

I'm getting ahead of myself, however. I want to talk about the main finding from this article, published in media such as the South China Morning Post. Their headline reads "Just over half of mainland Chinese people back full-scale war to take control of Taiwan, poll finds". 



                         



I can't read the whole SCMP article as I'm not a subscriber and not interested in becoming one, but it leads with the assertion that "55 per cent in favour of “launching a unification war to take back Taiwan entirely”, with a third opposing it and the remainder saying they were unsure."

That sounds scary indeed. What are we to make of it? To be honest, not that much. I obtained a copy of the original publication -- not necessarily easy as I lost my academic access a few years ago -- and read it to see if it really does support the idea that most Chinese are "in favour" of all-out war to take Taiwan.

Well, that is indeed one possible interpretation of the results. However, I think it's a bit exaggerated, if not outright skewed. I don't just mean that the authors come to more moderate conclusions (though they do), but that I genuinely don't think a careful reading of the study supports the idea that so many are "in favour" of war, so much as they believe war to be one acceptable possibility among many. I'm no master of methodology, but I also think the study has some methodological issues and interpretation bias. 

Let's start with the finding heard 'round the China Watcher Circles. It comes from this figure: 

Yes, it's true that 55% of respondents said they supported "full scale war", with 33% opposed. The opposite -- "separation" -- had 22% acceptance, with 71% opposed. 

I am putting "separation" in quotes because it implies a change in the status quo. However, China and Taiwan are already separated under the status quo -- the PRC does not govern Taiwan -- so there would be no act of separating. It's a telling clue that the authors, despite their best intentions, are biased.

In other words, everything but "separation" was acceptable to the majority. This doesn't imply they are "in favour" of full-scale war. It means they find it one of four acceptable policy options presented, with less-aggressive options also on the table. The exact same number of people support the status quo as full-scale war, with likely quite a bit of overlap.

Although it's impossible to say without more data, one might reasonably infer that many such people would prefer not to resort to full-scale war unless other options are exhausted. Or perhaps many don't actually feel strongly about fighting a war for Taiwan, but feel they have to indicate acceptance for any number of reasons. 

It's still worrying, as when those options fail -- which they will -- these respondents say they find full-scale war an acceptable solution.

However, it's not as scary as 55% of Chinese wanting to go straight to war. I don't know if SCMP clarifies this later in the article as I can't read it, but you wouldn't get that impression from the free-to-read blurb.

The authors, to their credit, do point this out. They even mention that only 19 (not 19%, but 19 respondents total) supported full-scale war as the only option. Not 55%. Not even 19%. 19 people. Here, they explain it a little further: 

A closer look at the data suggest that the respondents largely fall into three categories based on their answers. First, 313 respondents (17.1%) are ‘pacifist’, who found either or both of the two non- aggressive options (‘status quo’ and ‘separation’) acceptable while rejecting the other three options. Second, 572 respondents (31.4%) are ‘bellicose’, who found some or all of the aggressive options (‘sanction’, ‘military coercion’, and ‘full-scale war’) acceptable while rejecting the other two options. Finally, the remainder of the respondents are ‘ambivalent’ (939, or 51.5%), as they endorsed both aggressive and non-aggressive options or were unsure on some or all of the policy options. Importantly, this simple partition of the respondents points to an even smaller share of citizens in support of the aggressive policy options. [Emphasis mine]. In fact, only 19 out of 1,824 respondents (or about one percent of the sample) rejected all but the most extreme option of armed unification.

Basically, to say more than half of respondents "favor full-scale war" is not quite right. More accurately, about half of all respondents favor some move toward unification, but it need not be war and indeed, might be peaceful. One-third view it as unacceptable, and the same percentage who do find war acceptable also 

The authors removed respondents who found all five options acceptable or unacceptable, for a total of 259 removals: 70 who found all options acceptable, and 189 who found all options unacceptable (I'm very curious about what this latter group tends to think are optimal policy options instead, but doubt I'll ever know). That's more people removed for finding both "separation" and "full-scale war" acceptable than people who favored only full-scale war. I do understand that such a response means they probably didn't take the survey seriously, but that it outweighs the number who only support the most bellicose option is, I believe, telling.

Frankly, this isn't surprising. In fact, given the extremely skewed and brainwash-prone education system in China, I would have thought support for military coercion, if not all-out war, would have been higher and support for Taiwanese independence would have been lower. That about one-third of respondents are fine with Taiwan maintaining its independence is actually more hopeful than I would have predicted! 

The authors point this out, too: that support for full-scale war is not as clear-cut as it may seem, and Chinese leadership should understand this. 1/3 of Chinese accepting Taiwanese independence whereas only half wanting war -- and almost no one wanting war as the only option -- is not the solid wall of public support that the CCP needs to attack Taiwan. I can imagine that quite a few Chinese who find war an "acceptable" last resort would nonetheless be very angry if a war were launched without attempting more "peaceful" means first. 

I also want to point out that the authors did not, in fact, include "all" policy options. Although I don't think unification would come of it -- frankly, none of these options would bring about "peaceful" unification, as Taiwanese simply do not want it, and being sanctioned isn't going to change that -- they fail to include "dialogue", "persuasive incentives" or "supporting preferences for unification among Taiwanese" (that is, helping out the unificationists in the KMT or more radical parties such as the New Party), or any truly peaceful means of pushing their agenda. This really isn't a full slate of policy options! 

They further separate "the status quo" and "separation". I could call this bias, but I'll be generous: perhaps they rightly believe that Chinese view these two concepts differently. Perhaps they view "separation" as China officially giving their blessing for Taiwan's sovereignty, and 'the status quo' as China neither recognizing Taiwan's independence nor doing anything about it. While I don't think there's a big difference -- the status quo is that Taiwan is not governed by the PRC, period -- I can understand that Chinese citizens might. 

The authors are indeed fairly reasonable in their interpretations of the data gathered. I'll quote at length here as this study is not readable to all: 

Conventional wisdom holds that the call for armed unification has been ramping up in mainland China in recent years,60 setting the stage for ‘an all-out war . . . devastating to all’.61 Despite the media hype, there is scant empirical evidence indicating the extent to which the Chinese public would support such a war rather than non-violent means to unification. Understanding mass support for the different policy options Beijing could adopt to ‘resolve the Taiwan Question’ is important because we know this is one issue about which public opinion holds sway over Chinese leaders....

We find that at the aggregate level, only a slim majority of the respondents are explicitly supportive of waging a unification war, which has been the focus of current policy debates and academic research, and a third of them are explicitly opposed to it. These numbers are consistent with a survey conducted on an urban sample in 2019,62 thus bolstering our confidence in the external validity of the findings. This also suggests that public support for armed unification has remained relatively stable, despite the rapid deterioration in Beijing’s relations with both Washington and Taipei....

Our study has important policy implications. Both pundits and policy makers who sound the alarm for an imminent or inevitable war in the Taiwan Strait, one that likely would involve the US and its allies, implicitly assume that Beijing’s hands are tied because most Chinese support ‘wutong’ and the public’s patience is wearing thin. An ambitious paramount Chinese leader who cares about his domestic audience can only make things worse. Our findings suggest that this pessimistic outlook may be based more on myth than on reality.

That said, I am not at all sure that they controlled for "social desirability bias" despite claiming to attempt to control for this (however, at least they mentioned it!) Having respondents analyze each option isn't a bad idea, but avoiding social desirability bias first requires guaranteed anonymity -- something that is impossible online in China and that any thoughtful respondent would realize was not necessarily a given. They might have opted in, but also been thinking (not without reason) that someone, somewhere was monitoring the answers.

Avoiding social desirability bias also requires evaluating questions carefully so as not to induce answers that respondents might think are "acceptable". The authors claim to have done that by avoiding the term "Taiwan independence" (smart), but as above, they did not offer all the possible non-military policy options, instead presenting two non-coercive and three somewhat or very coercive choices. That is, more coercive choices than non-coercive ones. Respondents might therefore feel a nudge that it's "better" to choose some form of coercive method, even if it's just sanctions, rather than none at all. Given the chance to say any or all given option is acceptable, why not also choose the one that the government so plainly wants you to support (war), as you can also choose the one you might think is more reasonable (such as sanctions)?

Regarding that bias, the authors do point out the role of the education system in China. They're clearly aware of the role of oft-repeated propaganda. That said, I'm still not sure they truly understood the impact this might have on the results. When people are fed fairly simple slogans (think "national rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation!" or, in Taiwan years ago, "long live the Three Principles of the People!") they might repeat those slogans in a "normal" and peaceful environment. It's so normalized that there probably isn't much of a second thought -- you repeat the slogan without much thought for the actual policy underpinning it or its details. How many Taiwanese once chanted "long live the Three Principles!" without thinking or caring much about what the Three Principles actually were?

I don't see a way to control for this: as with polls showing most Taiwanese are willing to fight to defend Taiwan, we can only gauge what respondents say they believe about war in the moment, not what they'd think or do under actual wartime circumstances. However, Taiwanese aren't pushed by society, education and the government every day to engage in sloganeering and not think too much: everyone is free to say they'd fight or not. You won't be put on a watchlist. That is to say, it's more difficult if not impossible to truly control for social desirability bias in an authoritarian regime. Offering five different options for analysis is insufficient to counter such inculcation. Why not acknowledge this?

Although I applaud where the authors attempt to either reduce or confront bias regarding outcomes, some parts of the introduction and analysis have me scratching my head. Towards the end they reference "The Taiwan Question" -- a heavily loaded term that has connoted genocide when used to describe other groups such as Jewish people and Armenians -- seemingly without much thought. They treat the 1992 Consensus as a real agreement between the two sides, when it was not a consensus and not even called such until 2000. Taiwan/China history is presented in a way that makes it seem as though Taiwan actually was fully controlled by China before 1895, when it wasn't. It was considered and treated as a colony, and for most of the centuries China "controlled" Taiwan, they only really controlled the western third or so. Total Chinese governance of all of Taiwan didn't last long at all. 

To their credit, they do not use the term "reunify" except in quotes, although they pepper the term "mainland" a little too liberally and do call it "returning" and "national unification", forgetting that, of course, Taiwan is not part of the current PRC "nation" and that Taiwan does not have a mainland. Taiwan "returning" to China is used only in reference to what respondents might believe; nevertheless, it's not in quotes -- it's treated as the appropriate term. While overall the authors do take a moderate tone, little things like this worry me.

They spend a lot of time going over China's position, and the US's as well. Taiwan's position doesn't get much space, however. It's limited to Tsai's "refusal" to accept the "1992 Consensus" (which is not called out as fabricated at any point), and this half a paragraph:

In Taiwan, the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University, which has been tracking the unification versus independence stances of the Taiwanese since 1994, reported the smallest pro- unification margin in 2022. In the same year, as much as 73% of Taiwanese explicitly expressed their willingness to fight should the mainland use force.

Cool, but they don't actually say that unificationism enjoys support that is more or less tied with the margin of error, and they don't mention that most Taiwanese identify as solely Taiwanese, not Chinese at all.

Towards the end, the authors imply (although don't outright say) that unification would be a good thing. They do directly state that Taiwan's annexation would be a "return": 

One contribution of our survey is that we move beyond the focus on armed unification. In doing so, we provide a more nuanced understanding of public preferences for a broad range of peaceful and non-peaceful policy options that Beijing could adopt in achieving unification during Tsai’s second term: military coercion short of full-scale war, economic sanctions, and embracing the status quo and waiting patiently for Taiwan’s return.

Okay, but why would anyone outside China want to "achieve unification"? Yes, the point is to see how Chinese feel about these policies the CCP "could adopt", but something about the tone is off. The authors are careful academics who do not say that the less violent but still coercive options might be good choices for China, but it sure reads as though they assume that putting some short-of-war pressure on Taiwan might not necessarily be a bad thing.  

Even where they don't offer a fully China-centric perspective, their word choices give questionable vibes:
 

Furthermore, we find all of these policies receive levels of support similar to that for full-scale war. And quite surprisingly, about one fifth of the respondents even find acceptable the unthinkable option of allowing the two sides to go their separate ways, which is tantamount to de facto independence for Taiwan.

What does "de facto" mean here? Taiwan is already de facto independent; that's a present reality. Why treat it as a future outcome? "Go their separate ways"? China and Taiwan are already governed separately! And sure, Taiwanese independence is "unthinkable" to the Chinese government. But why is Taiwan independence unthinkable in any broader sense that justifies its use without quotation marks? It is indeed very thinkable -- I think about it all the time! 

Although the authors do state a Chinese victory would be "pyrrhic", their choices regarding what background to include, as well as their word choice, indicate to me that they view the somewhat-coercive policy options as part of a potentially reasonable, justifiable endgame.  It all sounds very neutral on the surface, but I have to ask whether the language choices reveal a potential bias.

Of course, there is a difference between gauging what respondents think and what is actually true. For example, a discussion of what Chinese responders might think of the KMT and its ability to "facilitate the peaceful resolution of a cross-strait crisis" might differ markedly from what the KMT could actually do: that is to say, not a lot without general public approval. They might win in 2024, but that does not mean they have a mandate from the Taiwanese people to negotiate away Taiwan's sovereignty. They simply do not.

Also consistent with existing survey findings about Chinese public attitudes towards the western world,53 respondents with better knowledge about PLA development are more likely to prefer the more aggressive policy options. And those who believed that a KMT government could better facilitate the peaceful resolution of a cross-strait crisis in the future were more ambivalent, possibly hoping the KMT will win the 2024 election after Tsai’s second term. 

It's telling, however, that they don't differentiate much. They call it a "peaceful resolution of a cross-strait crisis" as though that's what selling Taiwan to China would actually be; they are not clear that this is how Chinese respondents might view the situation. They do not examine the possibility -- dare I say likelihood -- that a KMT win does not mean that Taiwanese are receptive to unification. There is difference to be explored here, and the authors do not explore it. They seem to equate "cross-strait peace" with the pro-China leanings of the KMT, as though the only obvious way to ensure "peace" is to move toward unification. The opposite is true: a decisive move toward unification is just as likely to precipitate war.

All in all, I do believe the researchers had good intentions. They don't seem to be unificationists even though some of the language employed and assumptions made were at times questionable. There was insufficient differentiation between language used to describe general sentiment in China (not "the truth", but Chinese perspectives), and the actual situation between Taiwan and China. 

Some flaws in the study, e.g. the difficulty if not impossibility in guaranteeing confidentiality, without which controlling social desirability bias is impossible, were not discussed from a methodological perspective. 

While the authors were circumspect and careful in their own interpretation of the findings, SCMP's portrayal of them, at least the lede presented in the 'free' nubbin of text, is highly questionable. I may have questions about the study, but the media is the bigger problem here. Can we really say that 55% of Chinese "favor" full-scale war when the exact same percentage can be said to "favor" the status quo?

Although I have some questions about the study itself, the overall findings don't fill me with concern, and they shouldn't worry you all that much, either. 

Although SCMP may not agree, if Liu and Li's research should keep anyone up at night, it's CCP officials who do need solid, large-majority public support for a full-scale war for Taiwan. Without it, everything from protests to difficulty conscripting soldiers who will fight fiercely for Taiwan will be more difficult and internal governance will be far more challenging. Right now, it seems they don't actually have the support they truly need. 

Perhaps they should heed the 55% who find the status quo acceptable, not the 55% who find war acceptable. If they're not the exact same 55%, it's probably pretty close.

And no one at all should heed the South China Morning Post.