I'm just amazed at the success that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has had at convincing the majority of Taiwanese that the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China government IN CHINA is something worth celebrating here in Taiwan. Forty years of murder of all the nay-sayers, beginning with he 228 Massacre, and 60 years of cultural brainwashing by the KMT's Leninist organizational structure has really paid off handsomely. Or maybe after 40 years of military occupation and martial law in support of the KMT's sinocization efforts and nation-building schemes in Taiwan (not to mention China's threat to murder Taiwanese wholesale if they dare try to improve things), most Taiwanese have just given up trying to conceive of anything else better or more honest. This passive, lazy, and nihilistic mei ban fa (沒辦法) attitude (translation: It can not be changed. So accept it.) can only begin to address the average Taiwanese's unconcerned attitude towards the contradictions inherent in celebrating the ROC's founding in China 100 years ago.
As if the 100-year anniversary of overthrow of the Qing Empire in China has anything to do with Taiwan, which was a legal and internationally recognized territory of Japan in 1911. The ROC government became a government-in-exile when it fled Nanjing, China, to the military occupied island of Taiwan (whose sovereignty 60 years after Japan relinquished it is still officially and legally "undecided") . The ROC government (and the constitution, flag, and other national symbols) were imported to Taiwan in 1949 without the democratic consent of the inhabitants of Taiwan. International law does not recognize any procedures, actions, or methods whereby a government-in-exile can become "the legally recognized government of its current locality of residence." This is why the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government-in-exile does not exercise sovereignty over its location in Dharamsala, in the state of Himachal Pradesh in northern India. Similarly, the Jan. 12, 1946 military order, which authorized a "mass naturalization" of native Taiwanese people as ROC citizens, was and is illegal under international law.
To steal a line from the excellent Letters from Taiwan: the ROC Centennial is the celebration of 38 years of corrupt and murderous governance in China, followed by 62 years of murderous and corrupt occupation and colonization of Taiwan by the failed state of the R.O.C in exile and its various cronies, gangsters, and hangers-on.
Could Stockholm Syndrome, on a mass scale, explain such mass public acquiescence and general positive receptions over such an a-historical non-event? Left untouched in this backward-looking "celebration" are the myriad unaddressed issues and unfinished business of transition from the ROC occupation and colonization to a truer, and more honest democratically determined government that can actually represent the multi-ethnic and historically complex makeup of the modern Taiwanese.
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2 comments:
Sorry, Shang Chien. I accidentally deleted your comment, which was this:
And hopefully we have all these enlightened foreigners to tell us what is good or wrong or how we should see how things goes in our country, right?
To which I must respond: Right!!! It's obvious, from your POV, that you are OK with the KMT telling you how to think and what is good or wrong, else why would you be attacking me with your sarcasm instead of them? So you ought to be used to it, by now.
And I'm still waiting for you to actually provide any FACTS or LOGICAL REASONING to dispute the facts I've laid out in my post as to why the centennial celebration of the founding of the ROC is illegitimate and nonsensical. But I imagine you don't have any facts on your side to back up your blind, ideological faith in the ROC, so you have to resort to ad hominem attacks on me for being a foreigner. Typical pro-blue troll behavior, from what I've seen.
No matter how much you probably miss the good old days in Taiwan, when people like me were either blacklisted by the KMT dictatorship and prevented from living in Taiwan, or better yet to you, shipped off to KMT political prisons on Green Island, I still am entitled to my own opinion, which is what this blog is. Don't like it? Don't read it. Taiwan is still a free country, despite the best efforts of the KMT to make it otherwise. And I am entitled to state my opinions, which I think are bolstered by plenty of historically true facts.
And yes, some Enlightenment values and Aristotelian critical thinking skills are exactly what is missing in Taiwan's educational system. Until Confucian thinking and blind obedience to authority are consigned to the dustbin of history, where they belong, people like you will continue to spout off nonsense and believe whatever the powers-that-be tell you to believe, including the preposterous notion that "this is Taiwan's 100th birthday" or whatever other stupid ideas that continue to benefit the KMT's power and their a-historical interpretations they've foisted on Taiwan.
Good luck to you in your epistemically enclosed universe. There's really nothing I can say that will pop that bubble...
I agree with this article 100% and intend to write about this one as well somewhere down the line.
This is a cruel joke for Taiwan and a sad state of affairs for justice and humanity in the world.
I have read historical reports that the KMT killed some 20 million inside their own beloved China and a couple hundred-thousand inside Taiwan. I would like to verify the numbers that I have here from inside China, but I believe the figures from inside Taiwan seem correct given the vast killings from 228, White Terror and the decades-long Martial Law period.
Celebrate what???
This is a celebration of tears, shame and everything dark, cold and wrong that is going on in the world today.
Taiwan deserves so much better than this!!!
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