I have to admit, the election has grown boring. I don't even feel like bothering to mention all the silly things KMT candidate Hung Hsiu-chu has been saying, because no poll has her above 20% at the moment. PFP candidate Soong, who must get faction politicians to switch to him from the KMT, hasn't gotten many. And Wang Jin-pyng, the heavyweight KMTer and informal leader of the KMT Taiwanese factions, is remaining... silent. Tsai Ing-wen isn't saying much because she doesn't need to. Kinda a lull at the moment... before things start to heat up.
So read
Cole at China Policy Institute on China's propaganda campaign against the DPP in the United States.
Thim at Thinking Taiwan on what the candidates should say about defense. New Bloom with
an interview with a third party leader.
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5 comments:
"I have to admit, the election has grown boring."
Who are you, and what have you done with Michael Turton?
Here is some help 4u:
Hung told a nighttime rally that if she is not elected next year, “Taiwan would be sold to Japan.”
Yes, I was just about to send you the Asahi Shimbun article on "Backlash in Taiwan over Lee's article on war in Japanese magazine" http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/china/AJ201508250009 It has the Hung quote in it. Also this passage doesn't sound right: "Waishengren are keenly aware that they took back Taiwan from Japan in China’s war of resistance against Japan." I thought Japan "renounced" Taiwan, the Pescadores, etc in 1945 but to no specific entity, and CKS took control of Taiwan on behalf of the Allies as a whole. And maybe I don't know the exact definition of Waishengren, but if Waishengren means those who fled from the Mainland then that wasn't until 1949. Some kind of conflation going on here.
There's probably something lost in translation "There are no facts that Taiwan fought Japan (as resistance against Japan).” I think he meant war against Japan. There certainly were resistance against Japan, from armed resistance to non-armed resistance, however ineffectual some of those attempts are. But as a Japanese territory with all treaties in order Taiwan couldn't wage war against Japan back then. But the KMT distortion of history is so successful that even American officials believed that Flying Tigers aided Taiwan.
Anyway, KMTers just latch on this one point and keep biting it, the op-eds in UDN have been going about this one point for days, reducing an entire article to one sentence, ignoring everything else he said. It's just like how they fight against the students' protest against the MOE's illegal practices, they reduce it to comfort women issue and keep biting it. Or the wonkiness of Tsai; they are mistaken about the definition, but it doesn't stop them from attacking Tsai as being described as wonky by a foreign journal.
I think Waishengren also include those that came with Chen Yi in 1945, the guys who said "let's hold a fair bid for the assets left by the Japanese, oops, your money is no good for one year." "Oh, you can't hold this position because you don't speak Mandarin and has no knowledge of the Principle of the Three People, here, I will take over the factory for you even though I know nothing about the trade."
The tricky thing is, Waishengren are generally identified as people who don't speak a sub dialect of Min or Hakka. The problem is, I don't. My teachers said it was vulgar. My parents never spoke it at home until well after Lee came to power and now they are blaming me for not being able to speak it.
I only learned recently that people did still immigrate to Taiwan during Japanese rule, even during the war, contrary to what my education impressed on me. Not sure if those count as Waishengren, too. Probably not.
Thanks Anonymous 8/28 12:01 pm
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