Taiwan, China, and other things. Recovered from the defunct TypePad platform.
Guess they don't approve of the Chinese Communist Party tearing down their crosses and blowing up their churches.
In an online campaign, church leaders in the eastern province of Zhejiang have called on Christians to craft hundreds of small wooden crosses, paint them red, and display them at home or on their cars.
The CCP's persecution of Falun Gong started in much the same manner, if I recall correctly.
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Say, when will Taiwan's China Post publish paeans to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's wisdom? Because he's clearly emulating the wise and farsighted policies of the Post's beloved President Xi Xinping.
Not to mention Joseph Stalin. Let us not forget Comrade Joe Stalin.
Big cathedral go boom.
"…autocracy can work, sometimes, under wise leadership."
— The China Post. Democracy and autocracy each have their merits. July 25, 2015
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The aura of Loserdom is strong with this one:
Taiwan's China Post declares that autocracy works under "wise" leadership
The paper's argument rests upon three examples: Singapore, China and South Korea.
With regards to the first country, it must be asked: If autocracy in Singapore works so well, why do over half its citizens wish to emigrate? Is it possible there's something Singaporeans know about Singapore that the China Post does not?
Perish the thought. The people can NEVER know more than their would-be masters.
As for China, it's telling that the Post omitted any defense of the wisdom of the Chinese Communist Party's Nazi-like policy of exterminating religious minorities for the purpose of organ harvesting. (But how splendid though, that the Butchers of Beijing make the cattle cars to their ghoulish death camps run on time.)
Lastly, we come to South Korea, which represents a full third of the author's defense of autocracy:
South Korea is another case in point…The free economic zones promulgated by the government have won support from the public majority, and are en route to attracting more foreign investment.
That would be an admirable achievement for autocracy…if indeed it was an autocracy that had conceived and implemented it!
(The facts however, show that the first of South Korea's economic zones was set up in 2003. At which time, Korea was a democracy…)
Welcome back from your operation, Joe Hung. It's good to see the quality of your columns has not suffered despite your convalescence: rest assured, they are as error-riddled and badly-argued when their author ingests mind-altering pain medication as when he does not.
With us, as always, is eminent historian Joe Hung of Taiwan's China Post, to explain the complex constitutional rationale behind China's exploitation and genocide of Tibetans, Uighurs and Falun Gong adherents:
Sounds legit.
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I swear, this sounds like a satire from the People's Cube:
A follower of a Chinese religious leader who has reportedly been persecuted for more than a decade and recently incriminated by the Chinese government for undertaking “illegal acts of goodwill” has come to Taiwan seeking assistance…
…Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.
But the Communist Party's totalitarian impulses are never far from view:
"They want the pastor to preach in a Communist way. They want to train people to practice in a Communist way," said the house-church preacher, who said state churches often shunned potentially subversive sections of the Bible. The Old Testament book in which the exiled Daniel refuses to obey orders to worship the king rather than his own god is seen as "very dangerous", the preacher added. [empasis added]
UPDATE (Apr 22 / 2014): A Christian refugee from China predicts more religious persecution in the land of his birth. Safe bet there.
UPDATE (Apr 28 / 2014): Chinese government demolishes church after promising not to. We've seen what Chinese assurances have been worth in the past.
Chinese tourists to Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan are being treated to disturbing evidence of their government's persecution of Falun Gong. And there are objections aplenty:
Tseng Kuo-chi (曾國基), director of administration, told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview that the protests by Falun Gong members were directed at Chinese tourists, who normally visit Sun Moon Lake, Alishan, the National Palace Museum and other popular tourist attractions.
Chinese tourists may have been the targets, but a Canadian visitor to the lake was found to be unhappy as well:
The Taipei Times contacted Tseng after it ran a letter on Monday from Canadian Paul Gallien, a high school teacher who visited Sun Moon Lake last week and was disturbed by a Falun Gong display he saw at one of the shoreline temples.
“Part of the display included very graphic images of dead bodies, including a pregnant woman with parts of her skin and flesh removed revealing an unborn child within the womb,” Gallien wrote.
[…]
Traveling with his two-year-old daughter and her five-year-old cousin, Gallien said he doubted the two youngsters “have necessary faculties to avoid being traumatized by such photographs.”
Even though I don't have children, I know where he's coming from. On the other hand, the Canadian government requires cigarette makers to print gruesome images on cigarette packs, in an effort to discourage people from smoking. 51 billion cigarettes sold yearly in Canada works out to . . . oh, I don't know HOW many packs. But it's a good bet Mr. Gallien's kids will come across at least some of these at grandpa's house or the neighbor's living room or even as litter on the side of the road.
(You oughtta see the anti-smoking warnings the Aussie government requires. Hope you're not eating when you take a gander at the gangrened foot.)
If governments mandate the printing of nasty photos to educate people on societal ills, they have absolutely no room to object when private individuals or organizations do likewise.
POSTSCRIPT: Personally, I'm of the notion that "The Lake of the Sun and the Moon" is whole lot more poetic than the Chinglishy "Sun Moon Lake."
UPDATE: Now, I guess I can't object if the Taiwanese government tries to REASON with the Falun Gong group about this. Certainly, if I was a member of that religion, I would have concerns that distasteful images might turn some observers against my cause. But if Falun Gong wants to run that risk, then that's their business.
UPDATE #2: Falun Gong displays grisly photos outside a provincial legislature in Mr. Gallien's home country. A few kids may have walked by, I dunno.
UPDATE #3: Falun Gong displays similar pictures on a shanty outside a Chinese consulate in Vancouver, B.C. for 7 or 8 years. On a public sidewalk.
(The mayor, under pressure from China, eventually got his way and had the hut dismantled. While the fate of the structure is being appealed, Falun Gong adherents are nonetheless still at liberty to protest AND DISPLAY THEIR PICTURES outside the consulate, minus their makeshift hut.)
All this is not to pick on Mr. Gallien, whom I sympathize with. I simply point out that Falun Gong is free to use graphic images in public places within Gallien's home country to protest China's ill treatment of their co-religionists.
So why should they not have that very same right in Taiwan as well?
UPDATE #4: Now that Taiwan's opened the door to the Chinese, we can probably expect opponents of the regime to be attacked by hired goons or mobsters, as was done in this case.
UPDATE (Apr 23/09): Wednesday's Taipei Times' editorial on the issue.
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Guess there's not enough Falun Gong members in Taiwan to fit the bill. From Friday's China Post:
Hard to figure out exactly what the author means by "China" here. First of all, if he means the Republic of China (Taiwan), then he's surely in error, because Taiwan was a colony of Japan a hundred years ago. Any "meddling" that might have taken place a hundred years ago would therefore have been in Japanese imperial affairs, not in China's domestic politics.
On the other hand, if by "China" the author is referring to the People's Republic of China, then again he's wrong, because Mao expelled all Western churches back in '49.
I'll assume then, that by "China" the writer means "Taiwan", and by "nearly a century", he means 60 years. That would suggest that the editorialist bears a grudge regarding the Presbyterians' opposition to human rights abuses by Taiwan's former dictators.
Such complaints by KMT apologists are a bit rich, however:
In 1975, after the KMT confiscated romanized Bibles and prohibited the printing of romanized texts, the [Presbyterian Church of Taiwan] issued "Our Appeal — Concerning the Bible, the Church and the Nation" which asked that the government respect religious freedom and carry out political reform.
Talk about meddling! In the 1970s the KMT dictatorship in Taiwan OUTLAWED Bibles written in the Taiwanese vernacular. In doing so, it violated two fundamental principles held by all modern democratic states: that of religious freedom and that of separation of Church and State. (Which should come as no surprise, because Taiwan in the '70s was no democracy.)
As for any "wedge" that has been driven between the Taiwanese and the Chinese, the writer conveniently forgets to mention any possible role that decades of Chinese belligerence and threats of war might have played in fostering anti-Chinese sentiment — or that KMT anti-communist propaganda might have played a role as well.
UPDATE: Noticed a few similarities between this 2004 Bevin Chu blog post from a few years back and the piece in Friday's China Post.
Technically, it's not plagiarism, since I believe Mr. Chu wrote the Post's editorial as well. But it's still quite a long passage to simply CUT-AND-PASTE, however:
As part of his election campaign, Chen Shui-bian ordered Chen Yu-hao, former chairman of the Tuntex Group and a fugitive exiled to the US, placed on Taiwan's "Ten Most Wanted" list. Chen Shui-bian was desperate to cast himself as a squeaky clean political reformer at Chen Yu-hao's expense.
A furious Chen Yu-hao responded by appearing on television and revealing the ugly truth. Chen Shui-bian had eagerly pocketed a fortune in political contributions from Chen Yu-hao over the past decade.
When Chen Shui-bian tried to deny the charges, Chen Yu-hao revealed that ROC legislator Shen Fu-hsiung, a DPP "elder" with a reputation for honesty within DPP circles was an eyewitness who saw Chen Yu-hao hand First Lady Wu Shu-chen a bag full of cash.
Considering Shen was also Chen Shui-bian's campaign manager, Chen Yu-hao's revelation put Shen in a somewhat awkward position. Rather than lie, Shen went into hiding for the following week.
What happened next was like a scene out of a black comedy by Stanley Kubrick.
A delegation of ministers from the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, a long time abettor of Taiwan independence, paid an emergency visit to Shen. What textual truth did these supposedly devout Christians share with him? They solemnly assured Shen that it was not a sin to lie as long as it was in a good cause. In other words, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, unless of course it advances Taiwan independence."
Be that as it may, I cannot find any corroboration for Chu's story about Taiwan's Presbyterian Church. I can only speculate that Church leaders may have said something about "forgiveness" at the time (as Christians often do), and that Chu has misinterpreted — or, to be less kind, twisted — their statements to suggest the Church advocates the telling of deliberate falsehoods.
UPDATE (Dec 13/08): Mr. Chu's account of the Chen Yu-hao story appears a bit one-sided. From AsiaTimes Online:
In early February [of 2004] Chen Yu-hao faxed three letters to opposition legislators claiming that he had made donations to the election campaign of President Chen Shui-bian. At first he tried to claim that Chen Shui-bian had simply pocketed the money, a claim that was refuted by officials from Chen Shui-bian's own DPP, who produced photocopies of the receipts.
[…]
The DPP also pointed out that Chen Yu-hao had given donations 10 times as large to both the other rival candidates for the 2000 presidential election; Lien Chan of the Kuomintang (KMT) and James Soong, then running as an independent candidate got NT$100 million each.
On top of this Chen Yu-hao had given another NT$100 million to the KMT in the early 1990s, which somehow never made its way into party coffers but ended up in the private bank accounts of Soong's family members.
[…]
There is no doubt that Soong transferred NT$248 million of KMT funds into the bank accounts of his family members in the Chung Hsing Bills Finance Corp, of which NT$100 million came from Chen Yu-hao and another NT$80 million from construction company boss Liang Po-hsun. Liang is also a fugitive from Taiwanese justice, accused of embezzling money from the Overseas Chinese Bank. And while Soong claims the money was to be used for party purposes, there is no evidence that it was so used, and Soong never attempted to return the money – neither when he left the KMT secretary-general's post nor when he left the party itself in late 1999.
1999: China trashes the Falun Gong sect, calling it, "An evil cult."
2000: Beijing vilifies Taiwanese Vice-President Annette Lu as, "The scum of the nation."
2006: The PRC blasts Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian as, "A destroyer of peace."
2008: The Chinese government labels the Dalai Lama, "A wolf in monk’s robes. A devil with a human face, but the heart of a beast."
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But the icing on the cake? A headline on the front page of Monday’s Taipei Times: "Media ‘demonizes’ China, Beijing’s UK envoy says"
LOL