Tag: Taiwan

Too Many Tiananmens

tiananmen, protest, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan,

Chinese students suddenly occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for seven beautiful weeks in the Spring of 1989.

Millions more from all walks of life joined them.

Protesting tyranny, they demanded democracy and freedom of speech.

Then, 31 years ago to this very day, the Chinese government sent in tanks and soldiers, opening fire on citizens outside the square, killing thousands. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) followed up the massacre with arrests and lengthy prison terms for those committing the unspeakable crime of speaking out for freedom.

Fast-forward three decades and the ChiNazis in Beijing are currently engaged in snuffing out the civil liberties and democratic aspirations of the people in Hong Kong.*

In mainland China, the CCP has always squelched any mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre, but every year Hongkongers have held a vigil. Not this year. It has been banned.

The world should have learned two obvious lessons: (1) the Chinese people want freedom and democracy, and (2) the ‘Butchers of Beijing’ will brutalize to prevent it.

Far more powerful than in 1989, CCP tyrants now wield a much more effective police state against Chinese citizens.

Now is the time to honor the Tiananmen demonstrators, but clearing Lafayette Park of protesters so President Trump can walk to a church seems … disquieting.

Not a memorial.

And suggesting he might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to engage the military in domestic policing? Trump’s defense secretary rightly opposes.

Comparisons to Tiananmen Square have not unreasonably been drawn.

The difference? Americans can revolt … peacefully, which our government cannot put down.

For the sake of the free world and all those — including 1.4 billion Chinese — in the unfree world, now is no time to abandon peaceful protest and political action for insurrection, riot, and military suppression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This is brazen violation of the 1997 turnover agreement made with Britain, of course.

Additional Reading:

What It Means

What Tiananmen Inspired

Tiananmen & Term Limits

All the Tyranny in China

I Am Hong Kong

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Trumping China?

“You may not like Donald Trump,” argues Dr34mLucid in his latest video on YouTube and Facebook, “but he is the most vocal and has taken the most action in containing China. That is a fact.”

Dr34mLucid is Christopher Raymond Hall, who claims to be “made in Britain, schooled in the U.S., assembled in Taiwan, hardened by China, currently broadcasting from London.” His video, “Trump or China, unite or fall,” created with Dr. Lai from the Sci-tadel channel, is full of worries … about “attitudes to China in the West.”

The two YouTubers are troubled that “the West has done its best to ignore” the library of crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese Communist Party. Recognizing that “China has very real ambitions to become THE world superpower,” they ask, “What kind of world would that look like?”

“China invading Taiwan is a very real risk,” insists Dr34mLucid. “The weaker the West becomes the higher the chance of Xi Jinping making a move on Taiwan.… with the riots in the US … now is an excellent time for Xi to invade.”

“If you think Hong Kong looks bad,” he offers, “wait until they get to Taiwan.”

“We shouldn’t be waiting until they get to Taiwan,” replies Dr. Lai.

Dr34mLucid and Dr. Lai applaud President Trump for standing up to China and for Taiwan. But they fret about his unpopularity.

“I doubt many people would support Trump if he decided to defend Taiwan,” notes Dr34mLucid. “I doubt they would miss the chance to call him interfering or an imperialist.”

Opposition to totalitarian China and support for free and democratic Taiwan should unite the free world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: In the video, Dr. Lai recounts that President Trump called Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen after his 2016 victory. It was actually Pres. Tsai who phoned to congratulate Mr. Trump.

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

Friends & Enemies

China, Taiwan, freedom, corona virus, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarian,

When times get tough, you learn who your friends are.

Take the United States’ relationships with Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. The island nation sports a population roughly the size of Australia’s, about 24 million; just across the Taiwan Strait, what we used to call “Red China” holds the world’s largest number of people.

Like the United States, Taiwan has a democratically elected government that recognizes basic human rights such as freedom of speech. What do the Taiwanese want from us? They’re hoping for a military ally, one capable of deterring the free-speech-squelching, democracy-detesting Chinese communist state from making war on them.

In this pandemic, already nearly 24,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over half a million have tested positive for the virus that appears to have originated in Wuhan, China. Worldwide, nearly 2 million souls have contracted it and, by the time you read this, more than 120,000 of them will have perished.

Excluded from the World Health Organization (WHO) at China’s insistence, Taiwanese medical professionals nevertheless managed to warn the international community on December 31, reports the Financial Times, that “its doctors had heard from mainland [Chinese] colleagues that medical staff were getting ill — a sign of human-to-human transmission.”

Yet, on January 14, the WHO tweeted that “Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Six days later China publicly informed the world that this virus could be spread from human contact.

“A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did,” notes Axios, “the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.”

Thanks for the warning, Taiwan. Thanks for nothing, China.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Taiwan has also generously provided N95 face masks to the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, even while facing continued military provocations from China.

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general freedom

Tough Time for Tyrants

How much longer does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have to put up with freedom-loving loudmouths?

Thoughtful Party rulers can’t even entertain their subjects with NBA basketball or English Premier League soccer without fear that Chinese fans will then discover the tweet of some busybody droning on against Chinese repression in Hong Kong or complaining about a scant million or so Uighurs checked into friendly re-education camps.

Last month, Chen Chia-chin, a Taiwanese YouTuber known as the Potter King, with a “considerable following on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” dared post a video featuring Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. She is the first female president of that island nation, and on the ballot for re-election this Saturday.

Moreover, she has quite ungraciously declined China’s magnanimous offer to take over Taiwan, by force if necessary, under the “One China, Two Systems” banner. And the CCP even offered to toss in tear gas for free!

Back to the vicious attack on Chinese sovereignty by this Potter King fellow, he also referred to President Tsai as … [are you sitting down?] … “president.”

“Chinese media avoids mentioning ‘Taiwan president,’” explains Mothership, a Singapore-based news site, “as it implies that Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country.”*

Bad enough to say something the CCP doesn’t want said, but the Potter King went further — refusing to un-say it. His videos are still watched by half a million subscribers on YouTube.

Of course, China beneficently bans YouTube. And Papitube, the Chinese agency marketing his program, has now nullified his contract.

Chen Chia-chin’s prioritization of freedom mustn’t be allowed. But what if the prioritization of Taiwanese voters tomorrow cannot be stopped?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Not to mention that Taiwan suffers from the twin political ailments, in the CCP’s view, of freedom and democracy.

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Totalitarianized

Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, democracy, freedom,

Legislation introduced last April to allow the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to mainland China motivated millions into the streets in protests that have not yet ended …

… including a major pro-democracy rally scheduled for tomorrow in Causeway Bay.

Traveling to Hong Kong and Taiwan months ago, the glimpse I caught of Hongkongers’ courageous struggle spurs me to applaud George Will’s judgment in Sunday’s Washington Post: “Nothing more momentous happened” in 2019.

The extradition bill has been withdrawn, sure, but Hongkongers know well that without real democracy they have no long-term hope of avoiding the repressive rule of the Chinese Communist Party … which may no longer be “communist,” but remains totally totalitarian.

Ask a million Uighurs.

Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-installed chief executive, has long labeled the protesters “selfish rioters.” But new pro-democracy candidates won nearly 90 percent of seats in last month’s local elections, demonstrating which side the public is on.

This year began with newly un-term-limited Chinese President Xi Jinping threatening military action against Taiwan. The island nation of 24 million, some 100 miles off the coast of the mainland, has been offered the same “one country, two systems” arrangement China has with Hong Kong … what Mr. Will dubbed “a formula for the incremental suffocation of freedom.”

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, is “loathed by Beijing,” reports the South China Morning Post, “because her party refuses to accept the idea that Taiwan is part of the so-called one-China principle which denies the island’s independence.”

Her opponent in the upcoming national election on the 11th, like some in the NBA, “favours much warmer relations with mainland China.”

The Taiwanese, however — like Hongkongers — appear increasingly resistant to being totalitarianized.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

2019 Commentaries on Hong Kong and Taiwan

I Am Hong Kong (June 24)
Protests & Propaganda (August 16)
Is There Hope for Hong Kong & Taiwan? (Sept. 28)
Two-thousand Somethings (Sept. 29)
Tears for Freedom (Sept. 30)
Stand with Hong Kong! (Oct. 5)
Stand By Your Tweet (Oct. 9)
Blizzard Fallout (Oct. 11)
The King’s Air Ball (Oct. 16)
Q&A: Hong Kong Activists in Taiwan (Oct 6)
Thriving Totalitarianism (Oct. 12)

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Two-thousand Somethings

Alex Ko is “exactly the kind of person China is worried about,” informs the BBC.

Described as “soft-spoken” and “bespectacled,” the 23-year-old Ko lives in Taiwan, hundreds of ocean miles away from Hong Kong, where for months the streets have been consumed in protests demanding simple but difficult things: freedom, democracy, government accountability.

What can one person do — especially living far away and in a different country?

You might think: not much.

But Mr. Ko managed to do something. Two-thousand-plus somethings. With help.

Ko launched “a donation drive for gas masks, air filters and helmets at his church,” and has been able to send Hong Kong protesters “more than 2,000 sets of such gear … to protect them against tear gas regularly fired by the police.”

It’s sad such gear is needed but … “[a] new Amnesty International field investigation has documented an alarming pattern of the Hong Kong Police Force deploying reckless and indiscriminate tactics, including while arresting people at protests, as well as exclusive evidence of torture and other ill-treatment in detention.”

“As a Christian,” Ko told the BBC, “when we see people hurt and attacked, I feel we have to help them.” And then he added, “As a Taiwanese, I’m worried we may be next.”

Today I’m flying to Hong Kong in route to Taiwan to address the 2019 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy. Because freedom and democracy must be protected and expanded the world over … so no one is “next.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.