cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/50783981
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As soon as you walk out of Taipei airport you realise you are no longer in China. Taiwan feels lighter, messier - in other words, cosier. Full of Chinese culture, sure, but without The Party looking over your shoulder.
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By the way, I had borrowed the qualifier ‘favourite place’ from Ying, my Chinese colleague from Shanghai. Ying, daughter of a Party family in a provincial capital in China’s interior, was along to Taiwan at the time as an interpreter. She really wanted to look around there.
She enjoyed the country, the food, the people. So free, so friendly, she concluded after a week of curious inspection. You can just walk into a courtroom, and see how justice is done. And in the parliament building, you can enter the public gallery!
On the pavement of parliament, we encountered another protest demonstration, in the form of a flat cart with farmers and banners for more support to the agricultural sector. I teased Ying with it. Kíjk, Chinese democracy in action - without the chaos!
Because that is what you are invariably told as a Chinese citizen back home: democracy is a Western thing that does not suit our culture. The West is slyly trying to impose it to cause chaos in order to bring our proudly resurgent China back to its knees. Whole tribes in China believe it.
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Behold the unique phenomenon called Taiwan: an island of over 23 million people who have been engaged in a pretty successful democratic experiment for decades, in a predominantly Chinese culture.
It is a vital reason why Beijing wants to seize Taiwan: China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping simply wants to control the renegade province, as Taiwan is called. Just as The Party wants to control everything that can threaten its omnipotence, from the Chinese military and civil society organisations to businessmen, scientists, lawyers, journalists and the church.
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[Taiwan is] an independent island that can sustain a strong democracy and a strategic economy. That is why the Lai government is tightening ties with Japan, hoping to buy continued US support by building expensive chip factories in the US, and targeting Taipei for more European connections at every conceivable level.
We ask for support, but we also really have something to offer you, is the Taiwanese government’s motto. This obviously involves state-of-the-art chips (TSMC also sets up vital chip production in Germany) but also drones.
The war in Ukraine has convinced policymakers in Taipei that it needs to quickly set up a large drone industry of its own that is no longer dependent on Chinese parts. Taiwan has a good fine mechanical manufacturing industry that can be used for this purpose.
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Whatever government emerges in 2028, the Taiwanese deserve all the practical support they can get from the Netherlands and Brussels. Also - especially - from politicians and policymakers from progressive, social-democratic circles, for whom Taiwan can sometimes still be a far-off theatre.
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Choosing Taiwan means not being afraid of Chinese intimidation - just ask colleagues from Lithuania and the Czech Republic how they do it there. And also: regularly go and see for yourself in Taiwan, among the nicest Chinese in the world. Let them know you see them.
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Beijing has been trying to pressure European countries in many ways to isolate Taiwan for years. As recently as last February, for instance, the Chinese consulate in Strasbourg tried to prevent the staging of a Taiwanese-German theatre production, by successively approaching the theatre management and the mayor of Strasbourg with the message that the theatre would damage diplomatic relations between France and China.
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