You don't read every history book for history: a review of Su Beng's "Taiwan's 400-Year History"

I bought the anniversary edition of Taiwan's 400-Year History at Su Beng's 100th birthday celebration on Ketagalan Boulevard a few years ago, but having already read up on Taiwanese history, I hadn't actually read it. I knew Su Beng's life story - the whole Taiwan-Japan-China-Taiwan-Japan-Taiwan saga of it. I knew that he was not only beloved almost universally among active supporters of Taiwanese independence, but that he'd been much 'redder' in his youth (that is, Marxist/leftist, not pro-CCP).

So, of course I knew the story of the writing of this book: penning it after work in his Tokyo noodle shop, with the sense that Taiwanese should know their history. They should have access to a historical narrative that the KMT was trying to eradicate in Taiwan itself.  I was aware copies were banned in Taiwan itself, and it had to be smuggled in (I had not known, however, that Nylon Deng had been the one to do the smuggling, according to one of the prefaces of the book).

When he died earlier this year, I regretted not reading it earlier, and picked it up as a tribute to one of the greats. The English edition is heavily abridged from the Chinese - one slim volume instead of several fat ones - so it didn't take long.

Having finished it, I'm not sure what to say exactly. I guess I'd say this: this may be a history book, but these days, you don't read it to learn history. You read it to understand Su Beng's perspective on Taiwan's history.

That wasn't always true: when the text first became available to Taiwanese, it was so different from the China-centric narratives peddled by the KMT that it must have felt like after years of gaslighting, Taiwan was finally charged with electricity.

For those who felt no connection to China and had been bored in school learning about "other provinces", learning about their national history as one of colonialism - including calling the current regime "colonizers" - I cannot imagine how empowering and enlightening it must have been. Even though 'Taiwanese history' is more broadly accessible now and covered from a range of perspectives, we still read it now to understand more deeply what that initial rush of Aha! This is who we are! would have been like. 

A few things stand out in this book: the first is that Su Beng structures his narrative not strictly linearly (though the sections are ordered in a broadly linear way), but rather telling history as a way to make points about class warfare: the KMT and other colonial oppressors such as Japan, the Qing, the Zhengs and the Dutch and the wealthy Taiwanese who backed them, and the oppressed. That is, the proletariat, or working Taiwanese, with a focus on Hoklo Taiwanese. Although indigenous people are mentioned and, to put it charitably, Hakka people are not 'excluded' so much as not differentiated from Hoklo. Hey, I told you he'd been more Marxist in his youth. 

That's why you read it, to be honest. Using words like "vile" and "evil" to describe the oppressors (and I agree, they were oppressors and in many cases still are), and "hardworking" and "from their blood and sweat" to describe the indigenous and working-class Taiwanese farmers, you aren't reading straight history so much as an extended editorial on Su Beng's particular perspective on it.

Is that such a bad thing, though? While it's perhaps not ideal for the first 'history of Taiwan' that Taiwanese might read to 'know their own history' to be so ideological, is anything non-ideological? Would a straight history, without emotionality and strongly connotative adjectives, have been as engaging as Su Beng's editorial style? Would a text that aimed to be more objective have simply hidden its ideological bias better? At least Su Beng didn't pretend to believe anything other than what he truly believed in order to seem 'neutral'. That sort of honest critical perspective is actually kind of refreshing. 

The second, to me, is a bigger problem: the English edition is so abridged as to make you wonder what was left out. This is exacerbated by the fact that several parts are highly repetitive. Thanks to the semi-non-linear structure, sometimes that repetition occurs across chapters. I understand that this is a stylistic feature of Mandarin and was surely present in the Mandarin edition (I think the Japanese edition, however, was the original), but for an abridged English edition, it might have been smart to cut it in favor of more content.

Here's an example. Towards the beginning, the chapter on Dutch colonialism in Taiwan includes several paragraphs that state, in different ways, that the wealth the Dutch extracted from Taiwan was created by the hard work of Taiwanese laborers. That theme is repeated - with the same wording - in the chapter on Qing colonialism, when discussing how it was hard-working Taiwanese farmers who opened the land to agriculture. Then, later in the book, there's a throwaway line about how Lin Shaomao "gave his life for his nation", with absolutely no backstory. Now, I know who Lin Shaomao was, but someone who didn't wouldn't learn his story from this book.

In several places, this or that specific person, or group, is accused of being evil, thieving, bourgeois...whatever. Some names were familiar to me; others I had to look up. They probably were, and I love that Su Beng pointed fingers and named names, but no background is provided. No buttressing of the argument. No support. They're evil, these other people are good, and that's it. I don't know if those details are present in the longer original, but the academic in me wants to scream at its absence in English.

Of course, early Taiwanese readers would probably already know who those people were, and reading the names of people who had probably been portrayed as wealthy community leaders and scions of industry being called thieving  compradore collaborators and oppressors must have felt like the surge of a new zeitgeist.

This makes me wonder - why was it cut down so much? Was the original so repetitive that you basically get the point from the abridged English edition, or do they think foreigners don't care and don't need the details? I'm not sure. It doesn't help that the English has several typos and at least one wrong fact (saying Magellan died in Manila, when in fact he died in Cebu) that I hope are corrected in a future edition.

This leads to the deepest problem of all: sometimes Su Beng's ideology gets in the way of good history. I'm sorry, you old hero, but it's true (and I think Su Beng as an older man who was more pink than red might actually have agreed).

Towards the beginning, though the theme also echoes later in the book, Su Beng characterizes the class struggle as indigenous Taiwanese and Hoklo (and Hakka) farmers and laborers as 'the oppressed', who struggled against consecutive foreign governments and wealthy local 'oppressors'. Without using these words explicitly, he implied strongly that these oppressed groups made common cause in fighting against their aristocratic and bourgeois oppressors.

And I'm sorry, Su Beng, I don't care how 'Marxist' or 'revolutionary' such a reading of history sounds. It's just not true. Hoklo farmers and laborers treated indigenous Taiwanese just as badly as the wealthy ruling classes and landlords. They were just as oppressive and, frankly, racist. What those wealthy oppressors said about indigenous people, laboring Hoklo bought and upheld. They weren't very kind to the Hakka either.

It does no favors to anyone to pretend that wasn't the case.

Later in the book, he goes so far as to say that wealthy Taiwanese 'compradore' families could not be considered 'Taiwanese', as they were in the pockets of the wealthy KMT diaspora. While the latter is true, the accusation of not being Taiwanese reeks of a 'No True Scotsman' fallacy. If you decide that Taiwanese bad guys aren't Taiwanese, implying that all Taiwanese are noble-hearted and support a certain vision of Taiwanese identity, you take away the chance for Taiwan to reckon with the fact that as a nation and society, it has assholes just like everywhere else. And if you don't reckon with it, you can't do anything about it.

That's not to say that the book is a total failure. I appreciated that unlike Ong Iok-tek in Taiwan: A History of Agonies, Su Beng never uses derogatory language to describe indigenous people. Understanding the mid-life thinking of one of the greatest Taiwan independence activists is a worthwhile activity, and it does help one understand how Taiwanese identity has such a strong leftist/Marxist component (when you'd think those who support a free and independent Taiwan would be wary of anything that had even a whiff of Communism about it). The prefaces and postscripts are interesting as well.

In other words, do read it. But don't think you're reading it to "learn history" - anyone who has a general concept of Taiwanese history already isn't going to learn anything new from it, and in any case it's not so much a history as a very long op-ed. As a narrative of the past 400 years, it leaves a lot to be desired, and yet it was a powerful touchstone at the time - a piece of literature more than an academic work. As a cultural artifact, it's fascinating.

Read it so you can get a sense, even if it's hard to recapture in 2019, that sense of the first lamps of Taiwanese consciousness being lit. 

Tsai (or Han's) popularity is not a measure of support for unification

I want to clarify something from my Sunday night rant about the misconception that, if not for Hong Kong, China would have still had a chance to win over Taiwan. 

Of course it's silly to say that the events in Hong Kong haven't played any role in Tsai's popularity resurgence. They've obviously had an effect, though I'd still disagree that they are "singlehandedly" responsible for reasons I discussed on Sunday. Tsai's improved marketing, Lai's primary loss, Han acting like more and more of a racist idiot who doesn't do his job, the passage of same-sex marriage and other domestic events have also played a role.

The bigger point is this, however. Election results in Taiwan aren't the best way to measure how open Taiwan is to unification. Polls of Tsai or Han's popularity aren't either. 

Despite this, people looking for some sort of 'in' to say that China is 'hurting its chances' of winning over Taiwan, which implies China had a chance to begin with, tend to look at electoral politics to support their arguments. That's exactly what happened in the Bloomberg piece that annoyed me so much on Sunday.

The way to measure whether China has a chance of 'convincing' Taiwan is to look at more stable long-term data regarding how Taiwanese view themselves and their country.

That is, Taiwanese identity and Taiwanese independence (de facto or status quo, regardless of name). Regardless of who they vote for, if a sense of Taiwanese identity and nationhood is strong, you can be sure that China could hire all the free candy vans in the world, and Taiwan would not budge.

And that's exactly what we've seen. Sure, pro-unification half-burnt department store mannequin former president Ma Ying-jeou won in 2008 and 2012, but Taiwanese identity only grew, and attempts at pushing Taiwan closer to China were met with massive protests that destroyed his legacy. Even when Taiwanese are open to closer economic cooperation, thinking it's not a big threat, they're still not interested in unification.

Similarly, Tsai's popularity could be in the gutter and it wouldn't change the fact that Taiwanese identity recovered quickly from its hiccup, starting in around 2018. Even when that number began to dip, it never came close to being overtaken by "Chinese" (or even "both Taiwanese and Chinese"). 

In fact, Han could win in 2020, and it still wouldn't change that. It makes the landscape more dangerous, as he and his CCP/KMT handlers would probably take that as a mandate to head in that direction. But there's no reason to believe that Taiwanese identity will take a hit any more than it did either time Ma won, which means there's no reason to believe that China's 'chances' of convincing Taiwan to move toward unification will improve either.

It's just deeply simplistic to think of Taiwanese politics as two boxes voters can tick: "the KMT/unification/Chinese identity" on one side, and "the DPP/independence/Taiwanese identity" on the other. There are strong correlations, with China being the biggest cleavage (heheh, cleavage), but to assume that a vote for the DPP is a vote for independence and a vote for the KMT is a vote for unification is such a jejune way of looking at it. 

So why do people believe otherwise? I have no idea, but I suspect they think it just makes for a clickable lede.

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why who wins in 2020 isn't a good measure of support for independence or unification, so please allow me to opinionate in your general direction about them. 

The first is that not every independence supporter sees China as the biggest threat to Taiwan's sovereignty, as Frozen Garlic so insightfully pointed out. I won't summarize his post as it's not that long - go read it. I'd characterize the voters I'm about to describe a little differently, though. While his 'fundamentalists' might feel angry at the DPP for promising nationhood and failing to deliver, there's a subset that is willing to vote for the KMT if they are convinced unification is off the table. During the Ma years, I knew a few of these: generally green, had voted for and grown disappointed with Chen, and then voted for Ma to 'punish' the DPP while at the same time assuming that, as Ma was the US's preferred candidate, that the US would have Taiwan's back.

And yet, these voters clearly don't see the KMT or the ROC military as potent symbols of the old regime, being more like the pragmatists Frozen Garlic describes. A part of why they were willing to vote for Ma was that they saw the KMT as a viable political party that had evolved with democratization. 

I am hopeful, at least, that most of this "I'm green but Ma is acceptable" crowd is not going to vote for Han this time around.

Then there are the true fundamentalists - the "Never Tsai" people who do see the KMT and the ROC colonial structure as the biggest threats to Taiwanese statehood and would never vote for them - these are the folks drawn in by people like Annette Lu (so that's like, four people) or William Lai, who don't like Tsai's lack of nationalist hot air. Their refusal to vote (or voting for some last-minute third party candidate - I think James Soong is running for the 456th time) is also a factor.

But then there's another group, the ones who could potentially swing the election to Han, if it can be swung. Those are the born-and-raised deep blues who still think that Taiwan is not a part of China, or at least not the PRC. The old-school KMTers before the KMT turned red, and those who are smart enough to see Taiwan's reality clearly, but not willing to break from the party identity they inherited from their parents.

Don't laugh. I know one of these guys. The older son of a father born in China, he grew up in a military village in Taiwan. He was raised with an "ROC" identity and a sense that the KMT was an above-board political party, but his observations of life in Taiwan made him realize that Taiwan was truly a different place from China. He calls himself Taiwanese. He thinks "retaking the Mainland" is a pipe dream, and supports independence. Although he's 華獨 (a supporter of independence keeping the Republic of China framework), if a peaceful de jure independence were offered with the condition that Taiwan must be "Taiwan" rather than the "Republic of China", he would consider it "a difficult decision" but indicates a willingness to sincerely consider it as a far lesser evil than unifying with the PRC. He supports marriage equality and somewhat begrudgingly concedes that Tsai is handling China well - in fact, he has plenty of views more at home with the DPP than the KMT. He hated Chen's overt Hoklo nationalism.

And yet he intends to vote for Han. Identity is a powerful thing. 

The point is, people like him may vote as though they're pro-China, but they're not. They're anti-unification and anti-PRC (as opposed to "pro-Taiwan"), with views often constructed during their formative years in which the KMT was emphatically not "the natural ally of Beijing" (as Richard McGregor put it in Bloomberg) the way it is today.

In other words, the sort of people who can swing an election in Taiwan and put a KMT president in power are not necessarily people who will support steps toward unification.

Looking at it that way, there is no meaningful support for unification in Taiwan and there hasn't been in some decades, regardless of who wins elections. If that's the case, then events in Hong Kong have not, in fact, "ruined China's chances" with Taiwan, because those chances never existed in the first place. 

To finish this off, that's why things like this piss me off so hard: 

What if Han wins the general election and calls for “peaceful reunification” of the two Chinas [sic sic sic], based on “one country, two systems”?  Solve for the equilibrium!  I see the following options: 

1. They go ahead with the deal, and voila, one China! 

2. The system as a whole knows in advance if this is going to happen, and if it will another candidate runs in the general election, splitting the KMT-friendly vote, and Han never wins. 

2b. Han just doesn’t win anyway, even though his margin in the primary was considerable and larger than expected. 

3. The current president Tsai Ing-wen learns from Taiwanese intelligence that there are Chinese agents in the KMT and she suspends the general election and calls a kind of lukewarm martial law. 

4. Han calls for reunification [sic] and is deposed by his own military, or a civil war within the government ensues. 

5. Han foresees 2-4 and never calls for reunification [sic] in the first place.

What bugs me about this (other than the absolute howler that is #3, lol) is that none of these options includes the most obvious one. 

It allows for government intervention, party intervention and current administration intervention (again, lol) but not the actual intervention likely to occur.

In fact, here's the most likely outcome of that scenario:

Han wins, calls for unification, and faces protests so massive that they make the Sunflowers look like a school trip to learn about government.

If Han wins and attempts #1, this is almost certainly what will happen, because a vote for Han is not a vote for unification, just as a vote for Ma wasn't one, either. Forget the legislature as the seat of all the action - entire government ministries are occupied. Traffic at a standstill. Marches every weekend. Graffiti everywhere.

And because this hypothetical President Han is Beijing's toy, and would be quite serious in his attempts to allow a "peaceful" annexation, those protests grow so massive and so angry that in order to assert control (and carry out his Chinese masters' orders) Han very well might tacitly permit more police violence than Taiwanese find palatable, which is any police violence. Remember that a whole song - the other one, not the super famous "Island Sunrise" - was inspired by a few water cannons on a single night in 2014. They fight back, as Hong Kongers have done, and bam. That tsunami I warned about in my last post? That's what it is.

I don't have a conclusion. I just want you to sit there and roll that around in your mind for a bit. 

How To Choose A Side

This is about us against them. 



After yesterday’s horrifying events in Hong Kong, I spent a fair amount of time on my couch bawling. The day before, police had terrorized shopping malls, beating people up randomly - some of whom were just shopping. Yesterday, the police ramped up their campaign of brutality by shooting at unarmed protesters (including hitting one in the abdomen with a live round), trying to mow protesters down on a motorbike and thanking protesters for coming out “so they could shoot at them” and laid siege to the CUHK campus for no discernible reason. 



In addition, protesters themselves had set on fire a man who was arguing with them after an extended dispute. From the video, which you absolutely should not watch, they were not defending themselves as it was one man against several of them. The man is in critical condition (as was the teenager who was shot in the chest by police). 



I cried not only for Hong Kong, but because earlier that day I had walked through my neighborhood in the late afternoon. It was balmy and breezy. Young lovers canoodled on an old bench in my courtyard. Retirees and their care workers and dogs loitered at picnic tables under the broad umbrellas. Outside my complex, a woman helped her elderly father walk slowly down the footpath, under the hanging vines from an old tree in a sidewalk planting patch. Two construction workers joked on break. 

A group of pedestrians tapped their smartphones waiting for the light to change, a decorative cement compass showing the four cardinal directions was embedded in the footpath behind them. An MRT train whizzed by on the tracks overhead. 

And all I could think was "these streets could be on fire in just a few months”. 



Listening to BBC World Service that evening, the reporter interviewed both activist leader Joshua Wong as well as an anti-protest legislator. 

Wong, as with everyone I’ve heard comment on this tragic event (with one unfortunate counter-example) emphasized that neither he nor other activists and organizers approved of what was done to the man who argued with demonstrators. They not only refused to condone such actions, they actively condemned them. And they are right to do so - it was a stupid, useless move that will cost them local and international sympathy and make people question how ‘peaceful’ these protesters really are. There is no benefit in it - it was something done out of pure rage. The rage itself is justified, but the actions taken as a result are not. 

Even as Wong decried police actions yesterday and in previous weeks and months, he was very clear about this. That the man was ‘wrong’ doesn’t matter - it shouldn't have to be said that never acceptable to set someone on fire. 



The thing is, I haven’t really heard anyone on the protesters’ side defend what those individuals did. This is one of the very few times that the protesters attacked without needing to, rather than fighting in self-defense or going after the police who are going after them (which at this point I think might be justified given the widespread police brutality). In each case where this has happened - protesters and their allies have engaged in long public discussions of whether such actions were right or wrong, and even apologized publicly in one case. 



Looking at the other side, they don’t extend the same courtesy. Following Joshua Wong, the pro-China legislator - I didn’t catch her name - spent her entire interview time ranting about the violent, radical “rioters” and really hammered home that they’d set a man on fire. Her criticism is justified, but she refused to do the simple, humane thing that Joshua Wong had done and admit that her ‘side’ had committed numerous brutal acts as well - including being implicated in the death of protester Chan Tsz-lok among the crimes named above. To her, all police action was justifiable; none of it consisted of mindless brutalization. 

Wong acknowledged the humanity of the man attacked by protesters and condemned such treatment of the movement’s opponents. The lawmaker would not do the same - they’re all just mindless rioters and they have what’s coming to them so we can “keep the peace”. One imagines she thinks that Beijing’s oppressive peace is not only preferable to today’s Hong Kong, but that it’s desirable in its own right as well. She cannot see that - or why - so many of her fellow Hong Kongers disagree. 



Carrie Lam’s press conference followed a similar rationale: the protesters are violent, their demands have gone beyond a call for democracy (except they haven’t, because democracy has not been promised), they are the “enemy of the people" and will be “stopped”. Stopped for what? I have to ask. Stopped so Hong Kong can lose what really matters - its freedom? They will destroy this city, she said - as though allowing China to swallow it whole isn't another form of destruction. 



And that is the difference between us and them. 

We make mistakes. We have overly-aggressive and radical elements. We’re not even close to perfect. But we step back, we acknowledge our wrongs, we engage in discussion of our motives and actions, we’re willing to criticize and even condemn our own (which, by the way, is why it's also so hard to organize our own. It’s not that we’re wrong; that’s just the nature of the double-edged sword of self-criticism.) We evaluate our means vis-a-vis our ends. The difference isn’t that we’re angels and they’re demons - it’s that we’re all flawed, but at least our flaws are not systematic and planned, and we admit it and try to do better. 



Them? They engage not in one-off mistakes, but systematic brutalization and murder. Their goal is to deny Hong Kong the rights and freedoms they currently have, let alone any hope for democracy. You can’t look at those videos of police actions and see otherwise, so they must be aware of this, but they won’t admit it. They don't discuss it, and they certainly don’t apologize for it. 



And that’s a big part of why they are wrong and we are right. Period. There are not two sides here. There never have been. 



These events hold some important lessons for Taiwan, too. 



This wave is coming for us. Don’t pretend it isn’t - China is hell-bent on annexation, and while they may not succeed, they will attempt it in some form. It may not be full-scale invasion, but then Hong Kong didn't experience that either and look where they are. There is no such thing as peaceful unification, which means there will be protests. Those protests may turn violent, especially if we have elected a government that is more likely to excuse police violence. 

We need to prepare and organize now. 

We need to clarify our means and our ends now, too. It's imperative to make a commitment to peaceful protest, with fighting in self-defense only. Hong Kong balks at the notion of violent protest; non-participatory Taiwanese are likely to react similarly, if not more conservatively because the fight will seem at a greater distance, with China across the water holding no official sovereignty over Taiwan. Culturally, I also suspect Taiwan is in a place in its history that doesn’t look kindly on violent protests, even though it has a history of rebellions, many of which were violent. As the tsunami rolls in, we need to figuratively seek higher ground. 



It's also important to remember that despite our best efforts, such things may occur. We need to be ready to condemn them even as we stand together. We need to be ready for the ‘other side’ to condemn us even as they refuse to admit their own brutality, even if it is more systemic, more widespread, more hateful, and in the service of a totalitarian, anti-liberty goal. 



Finally, as we accept that this is coming for us, we need to make some hard personal calculations. Do we stay or go? If we stay, do we join the fight? A lot of people are going to have to decide to risk their lives to stay and fight if we have any chance of weathering this. A lot of us are going to have to risk our lives only to be maligned by ‘them’ as ‘violent rioters’. 



We're already at us vs. them, though I’m not always sure who will fall on what side. Hong Kong is learning what makes a side the right one, and what the risks really are. It's learning what it means to dig in and fight. 

Taiwan's going to have to learn that too, and soon. 

China will never 'win over' Taiwan: an anatomical discussion of dopey ledes

Another day, another opinion piece about whether the Chinese government's reaction to the Hong Kong protests will hurt their image in Taiwan, and therefore their chances of convincing Taiwanese that closer ties or even eventual unification. This one comes from Bloomberg, a perpetual font of bad writing about Taiwan. It's become so commonplace, though - the well-founded criticism of China, backed up with some nonsense about how the Chinese government could alienate Taiwan and sour any hopes that Taiwan might willingly "return to the fold" - itself an inaccurate description of the situation.

Or, as Richard McGregor puts it in Bloomberg: 

Without a change in its approach, the Communist Party risks making the already difficult task of winning over the self-governing island next to impossible without force.... 

Amid the Hong Kong protests, the last thing the Communist Party should want is a rebuff from voters in Taiwan. Yet Beijing has shown little interest in modifying its stance. The inevitable result is that Taiwan has become even more alienated from China.... 

A decisive victory for Tsai in January’s election might chasten Beijing and cause it to return to a more consensual strategy. But the example of Hong Kong doesn’t so far give much hope that Xi will change course. If China continues to double down, the eventual denouement for Taiwan may be far more dangerous. 

What these sorts of articles universally overlook (or intentionally ignore) is that the CCP's stance and behavior only play a small-to-moderate role in Taiwan's desire for independence and lack of enthusiasm for unification. In fact, it wouldn't matter much if the CCP adopted a more conciliatory stance on Taiwan: there is no "consensual" strategy available to China because it's quite clear that Taiwan wants independence regardless.

That's not just my opinion - it's reflected in the data as well.

Poll after poll shows that deepening Taiwanese identity, which tends to go hand-in-hand with belief that Taiwan simply is independent and should remain that way. Most strikingly, these beliefs have not only blossomed since democratization in 1996, but only grew during the Ma Ying-jeou era, when the CCP was at its most conciliatory.

According to data published here, in 2008 (when China-friendly Ma took office) 64% of poll respondents said that Taiwan, even as the 'Republic of China', was an independent country, though only 22% of people thought China would use economic tools to force political concessions. According to this more detailed account, the number of people who identified as solely Taiwanese and those who identified as both Taiwanese and Chinese were both in the mid 40% range, with solely "Chinese" identification being quite low, at 3% - about the same percentage as non-respondents. This source says the same thing.

Then what happened? It was an era that some people still label as having "warming" or "closer" relations between Taiwan and China. You'd think that it would result in Taiwanese feeling closer to China as well, right?

Wrong.

Look at that data again. Taiwanese identity only increased from 2008 to 2016 - especially after the 2014 Sunflower Movement. The sense that Taiwan/the ROC was independent increased as well. Fear of China's 'conciliatory' economic gestures being guises for political force spiked, because...duh, they were.

It didn't matter how friendly China was to Taiwan. It didn't matter that Chairman Xi and President Ma got cozy in Singapore. Taiwan wasn't having it. If anything, CCP efforts to be 'nice' only exposed the truth: that none of it was sincere, and none of it came for free. All of it created greater economic dependency that would make eventual extrication under 'colder' ties more difficult, and it didn't even benefit Taiwan that much. Economic growth under Ma was not more impressive - and in some ways it was less so - than during other less 'China-friendly' administrations.

Taiwanese identity blossomed not just in response to this realization about China, but also as a part of a natural upward trajectory. That makes sense. Before democratization, it was difficult to freely form, let alone express, a true sense of identity in Taiwan. Taiwanese history was taught as a part of Chinese history in schools and you could face repercussions for expressing a different view. It's only reasonable that once those restrictions were lifted, Taiwanese people would look back at their own history - which was by and large not as a part of China, even if their ancestors came from there - and form a stronger sense of identity, which would increase over time.

It doesn't make sense that a friendlier stance from China would stem this tide, and indeed it did not.

While some of these 'Taiwan identity' numbers dropped again after Tsai assumed office in 2016, note that none of them dropped very much and all of them are on the rise again. Dipping from around 65% in 2016 back to the mid-50th percentile, and "Taiwanese and Chinese" identity experienced a slight bump from about 32% to about 38%. At the time, people worried that the Sunflower effect might be ephemeral and numbers might dip even further, but that didn't happen. Instead, sometime around 2018-2019 numbers began to rise again. The gap between "Chinese and Taiwanese" and "Taiwanese only" identity that began in 2008 - again, during China's "friendly" years! - only widened over the next eight years never came close to closing.

The reason for the change probably has something to do with Hong Kong and China's response - it would be silly to say it's not a factor. But if these poll results were released in the summer of 2019, the actual poll was probably conducted a fair bit earlier, that is, before the protests really got underway, if not entirely so. That was also around the time that Han Kuo-yu started to gain popularity among some segments of the population, and strongly turned off others - reminding them, perhaps, that games with China cannot be won and are best not played at all.

Considering this, I'd put that 2016-2018 blip down to Taiwan's natural tendency to grow critical of its leaders. Tsai was elected, the Sunflower high wore off, and now that "our person" was in office, and it was time to start nitpicking on her inevitable flaws.

It's also worth noting that during this time, "Chinese only" identity - the one most closely tied to openness to unification - did not experience a bump. In addition, if you read that Washington Post article again, you'll see that Taiwanese youth have a huge role to play. The current generation of young adults overwhelmingly considers itself Taiwanese, and those numbers don't seem to have budged much at all. Anecdotally speaking (because I have no data!), that generation was also the most strongly critical of President Tsai during the labor law and marriage equality wars. But it was also quicker to re-embrace her when the terrifying spectre of President Han began to loom, Hong Kong started getting dicey, and marriage equality finally passed.

And if you grow up simply thinking you are Taiwanese and your country is Taiwan, and there's no reason to question that because why would there be?, the chances that China could ever "win you over" are remote indeed.

So why do people still think China has a chance?

Because they're looking at only recent data, not going back to the 1990s, or even 2008. They've also been convinced by an international media that posits every issue facing Taiwan as being related to China in some way because China gets more clicks (even when they clearly not), when in many cases the reasons behind why Taiwan feels the way it does are mostly, if not entirely, domestic.

When you look at it that way and ignore the history of Taiwanese identity, things like this sound more plausible:

Over the past year, Beijing has single-handedly revived the electoral prospects of its political adversary, incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party. At the turn of the year, Tsai’s approval rating was a miserable 24%. Now polls show her with more than 53% support versus about 31% for Han, whose Kuomintang is the natural ally of Beijing. That Nationalist party retains deep ties to the mainland as the former government of China until it lost a civil war to the Communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949.

When, in fact, almost everything about it - and other opinion pieces that use this data point as evidence - is wrong.

It's true that Beijing has helped Tsai to a degree, but "single-handedly" reviving her electoral prospects? I think not. Domestic issues have played just as much of, if not a greater role.

"...the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party"? True, but misleading. It makes it sound as though being pro-independence is a platform of the party and not a common, majority belief in society. That's not the case. The will of Taiwan leans toward independence, and the DPP happens to better match it than the KMT, which often has to hide its closeness to China behind obfuscatory language. Even if Han wins in 2020 and the CCP puts its "the abuser is being charming to win you back" on again, don't expect the general pro-independence sentiment to change much.

Plus, "a miserable 24%"? Rick, do you even follow Taiwanese electoral politics? 24% is pretty normal for Taiwan, and every president who has eventually won re-election (a grand total of two people so far) experienced a huge dip in their first term approval ratings. Taiwanese love to criticize their leaders, so while that wasn't a great number, it also wasn't "miserable" or even out of the ordinary. Besides, that number seems to have come from a KMT poll - unless someone has evidence to the contrary - with another non-KMT-funded poll published around the same time, in May 2019, showing her support at 33.8%. 

Let me finish by simply re-stating the obvious: articles like these are harmful to Western perceptions of Taiwan, and to Western readers' understanding of the Taiwan-China situation in general. I mean that: a good friend emailed me recently positing that China's harshness with Hong Kong might "turn Taiwanese off" to "reunification" after reading the New York Times. (He got a kind talking-to, don't worry.)

People like Richard McGregor and media outlets like Bloomberg, then, actively peddle untruths and misleading notions. The "denouement" for Taiwan was always going to be dangerous, because China might offer some economic enticements or use friendly language, but it's never going to give up on unification/annexation. It's only possible to envision a violence-free denouement if you believe that Taiwan could possibly be persuaded to embrace unification - but that's highly unlikely.

It's clear from decades of research that the Taiwanese sense of identity and national sovereignty has deep, domestically-grown roots - history, cultural evolution, geography, democracy - that anchor it firmly as a place apart. How China approaches Taiwan is just one tiny tendril of a massive banyan that neither China, nor the international media, nor Bloomberg, nor Mr. McGregor here, seem to understand.

In fact, we've seen this play out recently. When China tried to reach out to Taiwan again in hopes of raising the prospects of its flailing puppet candidate Han Kuo-yu with its "26 measures", the reaction was one of near-universal disgust. It's clear to Taiwan that when China 'buys' you, they're not the ones paying the price.

This isn't just about China's treatment of Hong Kong in particular so much as China's vision for all territories it considers to be "Chinese" in general. The only way not to see this is to assume that China's vision is fungible, and that what it offers Taiwan and Hong Kong could ever be anything other than oppression. In events like the Hong Kong revolt, all China is really doing is showing its true face. Taiwanese people aren't dumb; they see that.

So please quit it with the fearmongering that China is "driving away" Taiwan. It's not, really. Taiwan got in the car and drove its own damn self away decades ago, and it's not coming back. 

Wan-wan: "That's creepy and you're not my mom!"

AAAAHHHH

Most people teach their kids about "stranger danger" - not to go off with people you don't know, or in a more modern sense, "here's how to spot situations that don't feel right".

It seems Taiwan, through its blossoming from a nascent sense of individual identity into a fully mature and independent nation, has learned this lesson well.






So when Haixia, a helmet-haired Chinese anchorwoman and Stern Aunt Who Is Spanking You For Your Own Good, spoke about China's candy "26 measures" using phrasing like "mother is calling you home", pretty much every Taiwanese who watched the video looked into her cold, dead eyes, got goosebumps (with that exact turn of phrase from at least one online commenter) and ran in the other direction. Like you would if you were a kid walking down the street and a guy in a windowless van slowed down to offer you a lollipop.

The creepiest moment was when she said "Wan-wan, come home" (灣灣回家吧), using a made-up and frankly condescending diminutive for Taiwan, in exactly the same tone of voice an abuser uses to try to manipulate their target when they think they can leverage whatever sentimentality exists in the relationship to pull them back into that void. 

I'm not the only one making memes of it - art by A Ray

Speaking of voids, the pan-blue media didn't seem to report on Haixia's Abuser Masquerading As Loving Mother act at all, as far as I can find. TVBS talked about the candy that is definitely spiked with roofies "26 Measures" with some utter bollocks about how "people disagree on what freedom and democracy mean", even referencing the so-called "Green Terror", but not the creepy "Mother" thing. That was about as long as I could stand to watch blue media because there's only so much waterboarding masquerading as "news" that I can take, so I'm not sorry that I didn't look any deeper into that inter-dimensional vortex.

On that side, only somewhat more reputable United Daily News (pan-blue) covered the story, and even they went with a straight report that independent legislator Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) reacted by saying "Taiwan is already home."

In fact, the Taiwanese reaction in general was...not pleased (here's a summary in English). And why shouldn't they feel that way about essentially being nicknamed wayward children?

Given that this reaction was inevitable, who is the CCP trying to reach with Haixia's Creepy Mother spiel? Probably their own people, giving Chinese social media users a chance to watch, share and marvel at how benevolent their government is. It's not like many (or any) people in Taiwan seriously watch CCTV anyway. They don't really care about Taiwan's reaction. It wasn't really intended for Taiwan.

Art by nagee

But other moments caught my attention too: when she talked about how "Taiwan compatriots will be treated the same as Mainland compatriots", my first thought was utter terror and I gather plenty of Taiwanese had the same reaction. Being treated like a citizen by the Chinese government sounds absolutely horrifying. Who would want that? Do they really think they treat their own 'compatriots' well enough that Taiwanese would think "hey that looks great, sign me up for social credit and getting shot in the face for protesting!"?

This prompted Liberty Times to write about Haixia's soapbox whinge by running a picture of an Uighur detention camp and asking, "if you want Taiwan to 'come home', why don't you let [Xinjiang concentration camp detainees] go home first?" 

Of course, Taiwanese wouldn't have to worry about being sent to a Xinjiang detention camp - I'm sure they'll set up plenty of them in Taiwan once we 'come home'. After all, they'd treat Taiwanese 'just like' their own citizens, right?

Haixia went on to say that "we are sincere because we all have Chinese hearts" and "Taiwan's destiny is with the motherland", adding that "some people are not pragmatic and have been spreading strange rumors and slander - if they don't have a Chinese heart, how can they understand our sincerity?"

This part horrified and interested me in equal measure, but also clarified their true beliefs: that identity - Chinese identity in particular - is something that can be assigned and enforced, rather than something that is cultivated naturally through cultural and historical evolution. What it means can also be decided by them. If you are 'Chinese', you must agree. If you don't, either you are a traitor, or you were never Chinese and cannot understand why all Chinese do agree.

It won't work, of course. For it to be true, Taiwanese would have to agree that they are indeed Chinese, and buy into the notion of what it means to have a "Chinese heart". Clearly, they don't. Telling someone what their identity is never works in the long run anyway. Just look at...well, history.

It's also interesting that they're still trying to implicitly push this narrative that the people who "don't have a Chinese heart" are a minority of splittist troublemakers. If you read between the lines, what Haixia is saying only makes sense if the vast majority of Taiwanese agree that they are Chinese, in the sense that the CCP expects. Otherwise the majority of Taiwanese could be said to not have "Chinese hearts", which means of course they "can't understand" China, and if that's true, shouldn't China just give up on them as "not Chinese"?

It's kind of telling that they can't, or won't, give up on that line of reasoning. Not just because do admit the truth is to make it impossible for them to reasonably pursue their annexationist goals, but because it lays bare what's really going on: the CCP has never cared what the Taiwanese actually think in the first place, so it doesn't matter if it's decided for them. You know, kind of like they do with Chinese citizens. Equal treatment!

Finally, in the English media, Reuters noted that the CCP also promised to respect Taiwan's "way of life":

China will “fully respect” Taiwan’s way of life and social system once it has been “peacefully reunified”, as long as national security is protected, the ruling Communist Party said on Tuesday, in another overture to the self-ruled island.... 

“Under the premise of ensuring national sovereignty, security, and development interests, after peaceful reunification, the social system and way of life of Taiwan compatriots will be fully respected,” it said. 

“Private property, religious beliefs, and legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan compatriots will be fully protected.”

Note that among the things to be "respected", democracy is not listed, but property is. The CCP apparently would get to decide what aspects of Taiwan's way of life are "legitimate" - just as they get to decide both who is Chinese and what it means to be Chinese - and you can surely expect that any sort of non-approved belief or attempt at continued democracy or even basic freedom of speech would be construed a threat to "national security" and therefore "not legitimate". "Rights and interests" is too general a phrase both in Chinese and English to mean anything, other than what the CCP wants it to mean when it says those words.

Apparently, the CCP doesn't think that Taiwanese follow the news. If China respected the "way of life" of various groups of citizens, Hong Kong wouldn't be foggy with tear gas (but of course, they can't accept that Hong Kongers don't, by and large, support the CCP or their version of "Chineseness"). If they respected "religious beliefs", Xinjiang wouldn't be death camp central.

But then, do the Taiwanese they are trying to reach actually follow the news? They might, but the sources they read don't report the full extent of what's going on in Hong Kong or Xinjiang. Instead, it's a never-ending stream of Big Uncle Dirk interspersed with calling anyone who isn't KMT complicit in the "Green Terror". And China is aware of that.

By the way, if you ever get tired of the real lefties banging on about how capitalism is evil, remember this. Free markets may not be inherently evil, but if capital and power weren't intertwined, what reason would these political figures and media outlets have to keep their audiences mostly in the dark about the way China treats its own people? Is it because they have "Chinese hearts" or because they personally stand to profit? Hmm.

So, while the whole "Wan-wan, come home" thing was not actually meant to convince Taiwanese people that China is sincere and trustworthy, the "26 measures" do aim at Taiwanese who watch blue-leaning news, which is to say, fake news. The candy might actually look tempting if you've been conditioned not to fear the dude in the van. 

It has nothing to do with "Chinese hearts" and everything to do with candy.

Or, as Reuters put it:

China has not explained how Taiwan’s democracy may be allowed to continue if it takes control of the island.

Yeah, because it won't.

It won't be deemed "legitimate".

China's just hoping we don't notice that they never said otherwise. 

Teachers in Taiwan: Remember, TutorABC is a Chinese company obeying Chinese laws - which could be a problem

Excerpt of an e-mail received by a friend from TutorABC/iTutor

Everyone who lives in Taiwan has heard of TutorABC - it's one of the biggest online English tutoring companies in the country and advertises everywhere. I'll summarize a bit more of what people say about their working experiences there below, but it seems pretty standard for an online tutoring company.

From all this advertising in Taiwan, two mentions of Taiwan on the "About Us" page on their website, and the many Taiwanese companies they advertise as using their platform, you might think it is a Taiwanese company. It's not - it's Chinese. This isn't an exposé, it's just a fact (and if you look closely, you'll see the headquarters are in Shanghai, though apparently they used to be in Taipei[?]).

It's unclear from Internet searches when they were founded - results say 1998, 2002 or 2004, which is a bit odd. I'm not sure if the listed CEO, Eric Yang, is Chinese or Taiwanese, or if he's even still the CEO - there are rumors of a quiet takeover by Chinese company Ping An (from the previous link, in Mandarin).  Bloomberg lists them as Chinese.

What's more, most of the executives seem to be Chinese (though it's not stated clearly and at least one attended a Taiwanese university.) Top-level management, from that page, appears to be exclusively male.

If you want to teach for TutorABC, you don't actually sign up with TutorABC directly - you sign up with a larger online teaching conglomerate called iTutor, which is more explicitly based in China, not Taiwan, and owns more than one 'brand' of online teaching.

This isn't a problem per se, as a company, no matter where it's based, is as good as it treats its employees. If there are no problems with ties to the Chinese government, random enforcement of Chinese law outside Chinese borders, or pushing any sort of "One China" policy on employees, then I wouldn't be writing this post. If those aren't issues, then who cares?

But, of course, I am writing this, so there must be something to report. And of course there is, as the CCP as been tightening control on business located within its borders, as well as making ridiculous demands on international businesses if they want to do any sort of business in China.

A friend of mine recently signed up to work for iTutor and as she was completing the onboarding process, received this email:

(All e-mails are reprinted here with permission of the recipient.)
Nothing from the original text was cut, but I've cropped all photos so the e-mail reads seamlessly. There's a FAQ at the end which is irrelevant to the point and is therefore not included.

Now, there's nothing wrong with most of this. In essence, iTutor (again, the parent company of TutorABC), as a Chinese company, has to obey Chinese laws when it hires consultants to teach students based on China. There's nothing particularly abnormal about that.

The problem is that the tutors are not - and, as per the email, cannot be - located in China, but they too are expected to help iTutor abide by the law of a country they don't live in by giving iTutor their personal information. Some of it is pretty standard: if I were hired by a company anywhere to work remotely, I'd expect that they'd want to see my official ID to verify that I am a real person. I'd expect that the government where they're based might want to see that ID. Showing one's teaching certification isn't that big of a deal either.

The real problem is this:

Government agencies are permitted to check consultants' entry-exit and immigration records in China to ensure compliance with the law. 

Prospective tutors can make their own decision about whether they're comfortable with that - in theory they're just making sure you're not actually in China, as per the (rather strange) law, and it doesn't say they'll look more deeply than that - it's up to you whether you believe that or not. But my friend is not comfortable with it, and I wouldn't be either. Regardless of who is employing her, what right do officials in China have to check her passport to see where she's been, when she does not reside in China, is not at a Chinese border, embassy or consulate requesting entry? 

That is invasive and personally, I wouldn't accept it. It goes without saying that I would not trust the Chinese government in particular with that data (though I wouldn't be very comfortable with any foreign government having such easy access to it, the PRC is on a whole other level of terrifying).

It should be a non-starter that people not working in China, even if they have contact with people in China, are not bound by Chinese law and any legal obligations are the company's problem, not theirs. But, as you know, China considers its laws to reach beyond its borders. You absolutely can be detained in China for engaging in actions that are illegal in China, even if they were undertaken in a place where they are not only legal, but protected human rights, and even if you are not a Chinese citizen. You might even be kidnapped outside of China, or be pressured, surveilled or threatened outside China, especially if you have family in China.

You might think it's overkill to say that this situation amounts to being surveilled by China while outside China, but I honestly don't think it's an exaggeration, even if most prospective online teachers are of no interest to the CCP.

My friend wisely requested that her profile be terminated as she does not wish to hand over that data to the government of a country she doesn't live in, or comply with the laws of a country she doesn't live in. 

This is where enforcing a "One China" policy on employees who are not in China comes in:

And there it is.

"We are a Chinese company, Taiwan is a part of China." 

This could be the personal view of the employee who replied to my friend when she requested termination, but remember, this is a Chinese company and this is the enforced (by the CCP) "viewpoint" of all Chinese companies - not just iTutor - and increasingly of all companies who want to do any business in China.

In any case, that just doesn't make sense. 

If tutors must be located outside of China to work with students in China, and Taiwan is a part of China, then wouldn't all tutors located in Taiwan be barred from working with students in China? 

Regarding the issue raised, then, the response simply doesn't make sense. It's unrelated. This person went out of their way to express an irrelevant opinion in an official company capacity.

Or is Taiwan only a part of China for this purpose, but not others? It seems that way. In a Bloomberg piece that praises iTutor for their success, you'll see this tidbit:

Now, Yang's company runs a host of brands. TutorABC, vipJr and TutorJrform the core of the business, teaching English to students in China, Taiwan and Japan. [Emphasis mine]. 

Doesn't the cognitive dissonance get to be too much sometimes? I don't know. 

Regardless, iTutor hires tutors from all over the world. It would stand to reason that all of them, not just those located in Taiwan, would be asked to comply with this law and submit their passport and travel information to the Chinese authorities just to connect remotely to students in China. So what would it matter if Taiwan were a part of China for this purpose?

Prospective online tutors in Taiwan, you can do whatever you want with this information. Ignore it if you like. I have no personal opinion about TutorABC or iTutor as companies, just an opinion about the enforcement of Chinese law and the ridiculousness of "one China". But be aware that, as a Chinese company, they will ask you to abide by Chinese law - through helping them abide by it - even though you are not located in China, and data you may not want the Chinese government to have might well be handed over to them as an employee of companies like these.

And this problem isn't going to go away. Be very aware of whom you're working for, where they are based, what they are asking of you and who is going to see that information. 

Otherwise, the set-up for this job is pretty standard for online teaching, especially in Asia, with Asian-style management. It's got all the pros and cons you might expect. I have no personal stake in this or opinion of them as an employer, so I won't really say anything here, except that I recommend you read the reviews on Glassdoor. 

Pay particular attention to who says their interviews were perfunctory (to the point of being just a few minutes long and asking questions that should have been clear from the initial application), to those who say they were difficult or they were treated rudely. Can you spot a potential reason for the different treatment? Look as well at what people are saying about pay and treatment of teachers, and how likely it is that students will leave the positive feedback that leads to higher pay, and the charts that outline what employees say about the overall outlook for the company. Look at how the company publicly responds to these issues. You'll notice a few trends. Have fun!

Little end-note: I bet some of you are thinking "Lao Ren Cha could get sued for this!" Yeah, I considered that. I've been sued before for telling the truth (the case was dismissed before it ever got to trial - I might write about it someday as I saved all the documents). So let me clarify that reporting on what other people have said, with their consent, without malicious intent to hurt the company image, is not illegal in Taiwan. I'm reporting on what my friend said with her consent and with back-up documents and very purposely not expressing an opinion on the company itself (in truth, I don't have one), but rather the policy of complying with Chinese law outside China as it would apply to any company. I want to be quite clear that people can do whatever they want with this information; it is not an attempt to malign, insult or hurt the business of iTutor or TutorABC - it's just the truth of what they ask of their tutors, as reported to me. If you're fine with that, then no problem - I hope you enjoy working for them. 

Armenia, Ilhan Omar's vote, Taiwan and China

Armenian genocide refugees in what I believe is Athens, Greece (probably, though not certainly, Kokkinia) before WWII 

You probably don't think Rep. Ilhan Omar's decision not to vote for the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, which has drawn a media firestorm, could have any relationship to the Taiwan and China issues...and yeah, you'd probably be right. But I'm like that crazy dude with a shed where the inside is covered in newspaper clippings and photos with thumbtacks and red string connecting them in seemingly random ways, so hop aboard, this crazy-string train's about to sail.

But two things before we kick off: first, I'm not writing this to attack Omar as a person or public figure. I'm not even specifically concerned about a donation she received from an Erdogan ally, though obviously I'm not a fan. She as a congressional representative is actually somewhat irrelevant to the point I want to make - it's the flawed logic behind her choice that I want to address. And secondly, I actually do think that a vote on an unrelated issue by a young super-progressive Democrat has a lot to tell us about why the fight for Taiwan is so hard.

My first reaction to Omar's vote was inherently tribalist: Armenians are my people (on one side, anyway) and they've been fighting for international recognition of the genocide perpetrated against them in Turkey for over 100 years now against a Turkish propaganda machine hell-bent on silencing them to save Turkish face. I exist because the genocide happened, so hear that someone I have otherwise supported voted against its recognition for purely political reasons felt like a hard slap. You know, like the way I feel when progressives I would otherwise support make vaguely pro-China sounds.

I had felt - and still feel - that previous attacks on Omar have been disingenuous. "She disrespected 9/11 victims" was fabricated and I see criticism of the Israeli government and lobbyists - including AIPAC - and the massive sums they spend to further their agenda, not anti-Semitism. Media reporting of her comments makes it difficult to separate what she actually said and how it might be interpreted from the truthiness machine that certainly has aimed in the past to smear her, and for this reason I'm generally more likely than not to lean sympathetic to her.

This time, however, her own office's press release disappointed me. Although I believe she attempted to take an ethical stance (and failed), I wonder what the logic of such so-called 'ethical' stands would result in, if used to justify certain positions or votes on issues related to Taiwan and the region where I live. In fact, a lot of them are already being employed this way.

How so? Well...

"This is just a political move designed to embarrass Turkey at the worst possible time"

"Erdogan's not great, but if we anger him and embarrass Turkey with this political move, he might not hold back on the Syrian border" types were the first I encountered after the news broke. I want to be very clear: it's the sort of thing I heard online. Omar's press release indicates that she doesn't believe this, though none of her actual votes seem to back that up.

In any case, Turkey deserves to be embarrassed over its blatant historical revisionism. More importantly, it's just not a great idea to avoid acknowledging certain facts because it could hurt a dictator's feelings, or to play the game beloved by authoritarians of "you back down on this and maybe I won't commit genocide (again)". That's a game we just can't win. The game was designed to be lost and the only way to end it once and for all is to refuse to play.

You don't have to imagine the same logic being applied against Taiwan now, because it's already happening. I feel like "if we recognize the obvious truth that Taiwan isn't and doesn't want to be a part of China, that could anger China, so we'd better not" has been a decades-long game of political make-believe.

In any case, just as Turkey deserves to lose face re: their ret-con of history, China deserves to lose face over its treatment of its neighbor, Taiwan. 

"She agrees with the content of the bill, but not how it's being used as 'a political cudgel'"

A lot of defenders of Omar's choice made this case, I suppose choosing to interpret her statement that "I also believe accountability for human rights violations—especially ethnic cleansing and genocide—is paramount" meant that she did personally recognize the fact of the Armenian genocide, but did not like it being used as "a cudgel in a political fight".

This is a generous interpretation and plausible, but that's not what I see. Nowhere in her statement does Omar actively recognize that the Armenian genocide happened - no words of sympathy for the descendants of refugees, despite being a refugee herself. Her statement goes no further than to say "genocides everywhere are bad". It does not say "I understand that this genocide happened".

Later she clarified that she does understand that the Armenian Genocide happened and it should be recognized:

"My issue was not with the substance of this resolution. Of course we should acknowledge the Genocide,” she tweeted in response to MSNBC host Chris Hayes. “My issue was with the timing and context."

This is super personal for me, and it does matter that she avoided doing so in her press release. And, as a descendant of the diaspora, "gee golly I'd like to recognize your history but it's just not the right timing and context" is just not good enough. Sorry - it's not.

"I'm concerned about the timing and context" is also political, especially when you're using those as reasons not to do the right thing, which you say you actually believe in.

How about this - this is my history regardless of whether it's convenient for you, so screw your "timing" and "context". Okay?

The same thing is done to Taiwan, by the way. It exists whether people like it or not. Yet how often is Taiwan told "we know you're doing great, it's just bad timing. We can't help you right now, because Big Scary China is there"?

Since I joined this fight (by "joined" I mean "started a blog and helped a few people out behind the scenes", but hey), it sure feels as though Taiwanese and Taiwan allies are asked, over and over again, to sympathetically interpret the words and actions of politicians abroad as wanting to support Taiwan or understanding Taiwan is a sovereign state, when their actual words/actions perhaps don't merit such generosity - and to accept and satisfied that they "believe" in our cause without expecting any real action. Why should we, though? It's been decades. Come on.

I remember when Obama was known to personally understand the truth of the Armenian genocide, but what exactly did he do to concretely further the cause of its recognition? Nothing. Personal belief doesn't mean much in the political sphere, as I see it. Stand up to dictators, damn it - don't just talk about how you'd like to.

This "political cudgel" line of thinking is also applied to Taiwan in other ways: have you heard sentiments along the lines of "we shouldn't support this pro-Taiwan initiative because Taiwan is just a political tool to the people sponsoring it"? I have - often. "I care about Taiwan but not in this call to normalize relations because it's just being proposed to anger China, so I won't actually do anything to further the cause of Taiwanese independence" is another common one. I mean, these guys are probably correct - it's not as though any US administration actually cares about Taiwan - but "the guys who take action that helps us are just using us so we can't trust them, and the guys who aren't doing a damn thing for us actually believe in our cause but we can't expect any action" is simply not a great strategy.

Besides, using a genocide recognition bill as a political cudgel to make a point about not using the recognition of genocide as a political cudgel...doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And I wonder which grandstanding leftie is going to take that stance when it's a bill to normalize relations with Taiwan on the table. 

I don't want Taiwan being used as a political cudgel but I'll take a bill to normalize relations over "we shouldn't use this as a political cudgel" any day.

"Academic consensus, not geopolitics"

If anything, "...accountability and recognition of genocide....should be done based on academic consensus outside the push and pull of geopolitics" reads as a questioning the existence of an academic consensus on the Armenian Genocide, and implying the possibility that it's a manufactured geopolitical narrative rather than a real thing that actually happened. Of course, there is an academic consensus, and it is that the genocide occurred. 

Omar does clearly know that from her comments linked above, but it matters - it really does matter - that her own press release calls it into question.

And how many people have used "this is a geopolitical game, recognizing Taiwan should be based on consensus [implying there's no consensus]" as an excuse not to support Taiwan, resulting in their doing exactly what the CCP wants? More than a few.


"We can't cherry-pick which genocides to recognize for political reasons"

I agree with this. All genocides do in fact matter. We shouldn't choose which ones to recognize and when for political reasons. We should swiftly condemn perpetrators and take action to stop them as well as help victims. For this reason, we should have recognized the Armenian Genocide long ago.

But "we can't recognize this genocide until we recognize all genocides" just doesn't logically work. I'd rather more genocides be recognized, not fewer. I don't want to believe that "politics is the art of the possible" - I understand that while we "patiently" wait for our fellow people to do the right thing and accept half-assed compromises, entire lives are lived and lost in the breach. At the same time, "if we can't have everything right now, we don't want anything" gets us...nothing. Or, as I've written before, the far left wants the world to embrace its "radical" (not so radical) idea of a better world immediately, without compromise with 'the establishment'. I sympathize with that sentiment. But, in the words of a friend, without establishment allies, nothing actually gets done. No, I don't like it either.

Imagine saying that we can't cherry-pick support for Taiwan when we're not also supporting, say, Xinjiang or Hong Kong independence. I agree we need to support all of these, though their political situations are different, but wouldn't support throwing Taiwan under the bus until the entire CCP empire crumbles (which I hope happens, and I hope they're reading this). 

"Democrats are hypocrites"

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, it does smell a bit fishy for Democrats, who have pressured Congress to kill previous resolutions to recognize the genocide under both Clinton -  and Obama (but also George W. Bush, and Hillary Clinton's been no paragon of virtue on the subject, so this goes both ways), to suddenly up and vote for it like so:

Most recently, Newsweek reported that the Trump administration considered threatening Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide if the Turkish army invaded northern Syria following the U.S. military withdrawal. After Turkish forces swept into northern Syria, congressional leaders — incensed by Ankara’s belligerence — announced that a vote on the most recent iteration of the Armenian genocide resolution will be considered this week.

I don't support Omar's choice, but can we all just agree that sucks?

But ultimately, as I noted above, Erdogan deserves to be threatened with something, and we're talking about historical facts here. Even those Armenians who understand that this is all a political game and everything's a tool - including the tool that Omar herself used - seemed to want it to pass. After all, recognition even in this way is better than yet another failed bill. From the same op-ed:

The bipartisan sport of killing Armenian genocide bills and weaponizing the suffering of its victims must end. By passing this resolution, the House can help ensure that the Armenian genocide is acknowledged and commemorated, but no longer exploited.

Think about it this way: once the thing is passed, it can't be used this way in the future, and we'll have done the right thing!

Even Omar probably wanted it, or something like it, to pass, as she chose to grandstand when she knew it would (that's why this is not really about her).

In the context of Taiwan, I don't know anyone who welcomes support from the US who doesn't realize that Taiwan is a poker chip for them, and that few in the US government actually care about Taiwan, or Hong Kong, or any of it. But they - we - welcome US support nonetheless because what other choice have we got, really? And what other choice have the Armenian diaspora got after so many failed attempts?

As I see it, the Democrats might be hypocritical from the perspective of a few decades, but it's better that they are doing the right thing now than keeping up their old anti-recognition bullshit to be more consistent.


Principles should make sense

So, it's unclear to me exactly what Omar was trying to take a principled stand on. The use of good bills as political weapons? Okay, but she also used the same bill as a political weapon. That we shouldn't use this otherwise good bill to threaten an evil strongman? That doesn't make sense, and her own press release said Turkey deserved a rebuking and that Syrians and Kurds were in trouble. That we should refuse to discuss anything until we are ready to discuss everything? Not useful. Hypocritical Democrats? Sure, but so what? How does that actually help the Armenians?

The same question can be raised about Taiwan - if you oppose using Taiwan as a political tool, well, I agree. But how would it help Taiwan to oppose US support for Taiwan, realistically? 

Who wins from these games?

Dictators around the world, in that they get to watch liberals, including US Democrats, tear each other apart. 

But also Republicans. Democrats get to talk big about universal liberal values but when the weakling fancy lad centrists among them waffle on actually promoting those ideas abroad (but are fine with exporting the worst parts of American crony capitalism), and the most progressive among them want to call them out for it by not voting for resolutions that actually espouse their values, what use are they really? Though far from perfect, domestically they at least sort of nod in the right direction, usually. Abroad, they look like a bunch of neoliberal pseudo-realpolitik (yet also spineless) jerks and, to be frank...they are.

And then Republicans get to swoop in with their "we support Taiwan! We support Hong Kong! Look at what China is doing!" and seem like they're the big champions of freedom and human rights, and that looks great.

Except domestically, their party is actively trying, once again, to disenfranchise voters they deem undesirable. They are trying to take bodily autonomy away from women to a degree that not even corpses are subjected to. They consistently fought marriage equality until they couldn't anymore and turned their attention to attacking trans people's rights. They are not the standard-bearers of freedom and human rights in the US, period. 

It's really not about Ilhan Omar

My main point here is this: when we apply the "but you can't do the right thing now, it'd make you a hypocrite!", "I won't vote for this thing I agree with until conditions are absolutely perfect and also I get a unicorn!", "I'm going to use this as a political tool to demonstrate how it's wrong of you to use it as a political tool" and "let's not do the right thing if we're (only) doing it to anger dictators" logic that Omar used in her absolutely stupid decision, it starts to look really scary for Taiwan.

It makes it harder for previously weak-spined liberals to finally do the right thing. It makes it impossible to get anything done. Everything is a political tool whether we like it or not, including Taiwan, and no, we don't get better choices just because we really, really want them. I don't want people like Omar using Taiwan as a cudgel any more than I want anyone else doing it. We should do the right thing to anger dictators, always.

If we want the Armenian genocide recognized, regardless of the extenuating circumstances, we should recognize the Armenian genocide, not...not do that because we don't like the timing. If we want Taiwan to be truly free and independent with the support of the democratic world, we should support a truly free and democratic Taiwan, not do what Democrats seem to love, talking like, aw jeez, y'know, I hear ya, but it's just not a good time, I mean...trade...you know.  iPhones and such. So we'd like to but, oh golly, we can't. So sorry and being absolutely no use whatsoever.

And then when we finally get a real shot, a few defectors weaken us all with "oh but we can't, that's just politicking and we're above that".

No - if you want a thing recognized, whether it's Taiwan or the Armenian Genocide or whatever, recognize it.