The Gullible Believers in Taiwan's Democracy

           She had her face on TV speaking in English at some U.S. event clearly saying Taiwan supports the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong and, by the way, Taiwan is a place with its own government; not the Chinese one. Tsai Ying-wen's DPP is not going to lose the chance to curry favor with the U.S., co-opt the youth of Taiwan again, and win an election to keep Taiwan nation-less.  
     "Taiwan stands behind Hong Kong Pro-democracy protesters," says the new banner on Foreigners in Taiwan's Facebook page with anti-China propaganda posted below. Pretty soon, we will see demonstrations materialize rallying Taiwan's youthful voters, in lieu of and adhered to a domestic Sunflower Movement, to be manipulated, for the mainstream media DPP to propagate. Let the 28% of immigrants come from Hong Kong, the one's that didn't leave for the U.S. with their stash before the turn of the century, the stragglers; the new exodus of those who can leave. China is coming to Hong Kong, sooner than expected thanks to the opportunity presented them. 

Killing the chicken to scare the monkeys is how the DPP
 with U.S. controls support for independence or reunification  

       The Trojan Horse of China - Hong Kong - is now being used to create more distance between China and Taiwan as Taiwan's DPP begins using the chaos to deflect reunification, win the presidential election later this year, and preserve the U.S. overlord; try to encircle China to stunt its growth and deter its ability to defend itself from capitalist imperialism. A parade in Taipei was organized for Sunday, Sept. 29 by DPP sources to show support for the Hong Kong anti-China chaos. Not as many people showed up as they hoped in part because of the rainy wind of a passing typhoon but also because it was not a realistic cause; it was manufactured as was the Sunflower Movement to rally opposition to reunification. In some mostly disused pedestrian underpasses in Taichung and Taipei, 'democracy walls' have propped up and students caught in the whirlwind adding notes and posters showing solidarity with the demonstrators in Hong Kong in another over-the-top effort for the DPP to widen the gap in the upcoming presidential election, this besides the truth that most young adults see the chaos in Hong Kong as a threat to their peaceful Taiwan existence. How much public support exists is a case of the tail wagging the dog. 

     Passing through the pedestrian underpass of Taiwan Blvd. heading to sushi lunch, I was confronted by ball to wall Post-its and flyers some college students were led to display supporting the ‘pro-democracy’ demonstrations and riots in Hong Kong. These gullible impressionable youth aren’t educated to know the democracy they cherish in Taiwan is a sham; that Taiwan is under the thumb of United States against their best interests of independence or reunification with their cultural cohort. The rift is being widened and they are fodder. What a disgusting walk through the underground so over-the-top with clandestine subterfuge on their lives with no full-time jobs awaiting them after graduation; only further exploitation by small businesses in the wake of the great economic miracle up in smoke. What fools they are. How they will be tossed like leaves in the wind by a Taiwan ruling class only out to preserve its power base, at any cost to its real freedom from imperialism.

Lai Ching-Da really supports independence
but has folded back into the DPP

      With Taiwan independence off the table, we have to avoid talking about Hong Kong. I cannot make comments when we watch the propaganda about it on TV without her getting upset, perhaps that I am taking it seriously and getting upset by it. She knows the truth better than I do but she is under the sway of the most “Deep Green” independence supporters, like Lai Ching-Da and the 103 year-old socialist that had given her support before he passed away, that have fallen behind Tsai Ying-Wen’s laissez-faire semi-colonial U.S. occupation.

    The 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China wasn't broadcast in Taiwan. China has done everything they can to keep their communist mission alive, no matter how it detoured; capitalism is what happens to revolutions while they're busy making other plans. Fellow expat carpetbaggers and corrupt politicians, you are the fascist turned neoliberal Republic of China that lost the civil war against the people on the mainland; you are an obstruction to workers' progress. Your circus clowns and peanut gallery make me laugh. Each candidate gets 30 Taiwan Dollars ($1.00 U.S.) per vote after the election, win or lose. It is a good business with meaningless promises, vague references, and a lot of hoopla. The TV news is full of faces and spin doctors. The primary consisted of phone calls made to land lines, of which young people have few, and a flash poll to decide. Actually the decision is made within each party and any primary is a show.  

This demigod from Kaohsiung using his mayoral victory to run for president
 would be a puppet of the KMT the way The Republican Party used Trump. 

           My Taiwanese wife talks about Taiwan while watching the news on TV and I counter what she says. She laughs and says the mayor from Kaohsiung said he graduated from Beijing University and  criticizes ‘deep green’ independence leaders that say Tsai Ying-Wen didn’t graduate from a reputable school in the U.S.; they do not like her, either, because she abandoned hope.

      Let the U.S. have its way dictating their policy to Taiwan; we live here and benefit from their stability, anyway. When young people are scared I know just why. I say the U.S. is trying to destabilize Hong Kong for the purpose of scaring young voters in Taiwan  to help Tsai Ying-Wen and keep it this way.  I live here and have to go along with it, that’s all she wrote. I watched some October 1 parade from Beijing instead of “Dead File” on TV. She watched some Double Ten coverage between innings of a playoff baseball I left on. 

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved 

Happy Double Ten Day?

The Sacred Tree of Taiwan's Alishan Mountain; long fallen hope for independence

     The Republic of China, established January 1, 1912 after the October 10, 1911 uprising against the Qing Dynasty, should have ended when the People's Republic of China, established October 1, 1949, defeated the corrupt, fascist KMT, but the U.S.  make Taiwan available for their retreat, ignoring the will of the Taiwanese people. The U.S. perpetuate the lie, embargoed China for thirty years, and kept U.S. power in Asia with Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea; the spoils of WW II. In 1947 Taiwanese leaders were murdered by Chiang Kai-Shek in the 228 Massacre. Then, expelled from the U.N. in  1979 in favor of the PRC, Chiang's son, the new family dictator, refused to be an independent Taiwan,  A happy Double Ten Day? More like  a sad double loss for independence for the good Taiwanese people.  

     We have to get U.S. military and intelligence off foreign territory and spend those tax dollars improving Staters living standard, but China is doing well despite the obstacles, even with an infiltrated Hong Kong added to the list. China has to keep up its policy of a great firewall to keep western subterfuge out. They have to continue raising the living standard of their people and connecting the world with fair trade; the Silk Road initiative is great. They have to continue leading the world with environmental measures like Three Gorges Dam hydroelectricity and cutting fossil fuel emissions.

      This "Replica of China" in Taiwan with its sham democracy, stagnant economy, dwindling birth rate, elderly population, cannot survive as the behest of the U.S. Taiwan deserves nationhood; a voice in the world, and since the dream of independence has been squandered and denied since martial law ended, China beckons. Why is Taiwan still celebrating Double Ten today? Why have they come up with some gimmicky "Taiwan Forward" campaign when Taiwan is going nowhere? China can wait. 

     Taiwanese will continue to suffer in its pleasant chaos and political circus until someone starts a grassroots movement for reunification; until a critical mass realizes the U.S. presence is more harmful than good. Until then, all China has in Taiwan is White Wolf, a unification mafia head, a bumbling ex-president, and a clown in Kaohsiung voted mayor, but, most of all, Taiwan perpetuates Chinese culture, classic writing, food, music, and customs.  Pity Taiwan or blame Taiwan; it doesn't matter. But love Taiwan, as I have done for forty years, because it is a beautiful place, great place for an expat to start an ESL teaching career, to live in, and to retire.   

Hong Kong’s Great Leap Backward

 It is a great leap backwards for the future as Hong Kong's elite embraces colonialism and falls for the American dream. Who has the audacity to call it “Chinese Mainlander colonialism” in Hong Kong that brings no benefit to any of the forcibly absorbed”? Last I looked, Hong Kong has been part of China forever until stolen by the British in the Opium Wars until 1997, but not before the British had poisoned the populace with elitist sensibilities over their own Chinese cultural cohort. 

If bourgeois Hong Kongers are offended by tourists from China, if they don't want their real estate prices to go down, they are showing their real desire: wealth. They have always gloated they were more sophisticated than their cohorts in China; even better than those in Taiwan. They wanted Hong Kong to be Singapore. In New York City, you feel it. Hong Kong expats wouldn’t speak with my Taiwanese wife in Mandarin using Cantonese instead of the national dialect. The arrogance, mercantilism and lack of desire for assimilation with their American neighbors, especially black or Latino, is well known. It spills into the streets of Chinatowns. They are the elite escapees; native New Yorkers are the ‘wai-guo-ren’-foreigners.

There is a healthy hankering for the good old days. I guess British colonialism is better than “Chinese colonialism” to self-effacing white supremacists. The people of Hong Kong have always had a chance to fight for independence or remain a British colony but willingly, and proudly, returned to China. They are cutting off their noses to spite themselves. I too saw the beautiful colonial building China tore down. It is subterfuge that is agitating the Hong Kong scions to cut loose. They have had a chance to fight for independence or remain a colony since the ‘90’s but willingly, and proudly, returned to China. They are cutting off their noses to spite themselves. I too saw the beautiful colonial building China tore down to stamp their own mark on the territory. It was plain and simple sour grapes and subterfuge that was agitating the elite scions to cut loose.

He dug his prejudices deeper saying, “The handover itself was absurd... Britain should have voided the whole process after the Tienanmen Square massacre, if they had any respect for human rights over corporate profits, or making a killing in Canadian real estate.” I had enough of this adhesion to the old company line.

“The U.S., U.K., France and every imperialist liar should have the progress China has made for its billion people. I say let Hong Kong rot. Put a wall between it and Shenzhen. Take away their Chinese passports and leave them nation-less like Taiwan,” I wrote despondently. I had written my most succinct responses to a Facebook share sympathetic to the anti-government demonstrators in Hong Kong. I won't share it on Facebook though because trolls would attack it. 

One fellow wrote that I didn’t sound like a very nice chap for saying that. Then another got personal figuring out I lived in Taiwan and asked, “Why do you live in Taiwan? From your above posts; it seems you should be living in the PRC?”

     It was disturbing to see an old comrade, Liana Foxvog, from Sweatfree Communities in Boston, had joined the China-bashing bandwagon over the Hong Kong riots sharing on Facebook a bumbling Democracy Now report on the riots they called “pro-democracy”. Instead of going to the root of the disturbance, they choose to focus on the long-overdue reaction to the rioting by Hong Kong police. It is amazing that the PLA may not be called in to end the sporadic riots as the U.S. hoped, and that it wasn't done before the PLA birthday on Oct.1 as the Taiwan spin doctors rumored. They both want to make a mockery out of China to the world. China does not want to injure its own people any more than a father wants to hurt an errant child, a child with bad friends urging them on. Liana should be aware, as a defender of workers’ rights, how China has raised its peoples' standard of living. There is no protection for the immigrant workers in Hong Kong or the western businessmen that use Hong Kong and Taiwan as conduits for outsourcing, drugs, and slave trade. Sweatshops have left China for Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and even the United States where there are more opportunities to exploit workers. I will not donate to her organization or Democracy Now as I have before. I am insulted that Liana, knowing I am living in Taiwan and aware of politics here, didn't bother to ask my opinion. Now I see she questioned if I had listened to the video she shared like I know nothing about it.

I almost feel depressed but I know it is only fatigue and disgust for the state of the world, in this instance, the way progressive stateside acquaintances are falling over themselves supporting the anti-China riots in Hong Kong. My only reliable Facebook comrades are at Workers World, Telesur, Mao Zedong Thought Discussion Group, Friends Who like New Afrikan Communist Party, China Daily, and a few China cultural groups. I feel more isolated than usual with a few anarchist and Wobbly groups blaming China for Hong Kong’s chaos. All day long, I had to keep the latest casualty of fog, Liana and her proxy off my mind. She doubted my word after I voiced my disapproval of her sharing propaganda without checking other points-of-view and answered her defender who misconstrued what I meant. I let her save face blaming the person she shared the post from for misleading my anti-sweatshop comrade. I am fed up 

As Taiwan media obliges with news angles designed to “kill the chicken to scare the monkey”, coddled Taiwanese youth sit terrified of the violence in Hong Kong and the DPP co-opts them will calls to ‘support democracy’ and get votes for Tsai Ying-Wen in the upcoming presidential election; democracy in Taiwan is a sham. They take out the play book and throw a “Hail Mary” to anyone that would doubt it. Know that the initial demonstration against an extradition law proposed, and since retracted; that any other demands are for clemency from property destruction and causing bodily harm to police. It has never been about unemployment, minimum wage, austerity, or other elimination of social concerns. 

If Hong Kong leader Lin Zheng-Yue’s move is to "lead the snake out of the hole" and make Hong Kong more chaotic to use more emergency law and let Hong Kong enter a state of martial law, so be it.  The Chinese idioms are flying. Western imperialists bent on destabilizing China have their stooges in impressionable youth led astray as NGO's and Western media feed them justifications for  their self-destruction. The "Forbidden Mask" law won’t mind if the people go to the streets because of anger on weekends and Sundays. The more chaotic, the better, so that Lin Zheng can just use emergency laws and more forcible actions like curfews and martial law.

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved 

What "Detention" Doesn't Mention

     The movie I saw at Taichung's Taroko Mall KBro Theaters, "Detention" is a film based on a video game about the "White Horror" in Taiwan from the time the KMT usurped power in 1947, starting with the "228 Massacre", until neoliberal reforms were made with the ending of martial law in the 80's. The big budget Warner Brothers produced film, with fluent English subtitles,  may not be of interest outside Taiwan, except for Japanese that long for the old days in their model colony, and with the exception of Chinese that will pan and ban the film because it criticizes the KMT, their strange bed fellow, their only option in the game of reunification.
         Know that the film's dialogue is completely in Mandarin except for a short scene in Ming-Nan dialect with a student holding a puppet. A large percentage, though not the majority of "White Horror" victims, were from the Chinese exodus to Taiwan after WW II. All the teachers in the film were first generation Chinese. Interestingly, the video game is also popular in China, though the follow-up game was banned because of a depiction of Xi Jun-Ping. The film was made last year supported by Taichung's film development department at an abandoned technical school in Ping-Tung.

      It is a frightening movie; the monster made out of KMT soldiers and school military guards, guards still present in every school, but without teeth to pull out anyone's teeth. The easing of tension, the pleasant Taiwan chaos, is a cover for domination-shared capitalist ruling class that diffuses and controls its students and citizens with low-paying insecure jobs, no union protection, and no nationhood. The terror is still there when they want to bring it out but now it is a mind-control instead of a physical one. 

     The movie shows how three victims during the "White Horror", when anti-Communism was an excuse for zero-tolerance, breakers of the intellectual law were ratted out by their wives, colleagues, and classmates. It showed the torture and disappearance of innocent people that occurred in every day Taiwan life, the marching squads of soldiers with noisy boot-taps, rifle and white helmeted, patrolling every neighborhood, the screams of youth being tortured in police stations, long-hair being sheered involuntarily, the accused being taken away in the middle of the night never to see their families again; that was Taiwan.

      It is amazing there is a video game, played on smartphones by tens of thousands of Taiwanese youth, based on this horror. It is akin to having a Nazi video game about persecuting and killing Jews; I believe there is one in deep-cover enjoyed by Western youths of fascist leanings. What is one to think: It is okay because it happened in the past and it is over? How lucky we are today in Taiwan that it no longer happens? Revisionist history? Hey, yo, the KMT is still among you, but good guys  sometimes wear black; at least they support reunification with the Chinese Mainland. The U.S. CIA is here in full force, its client the new wave DPP of Tsai Ying-Wen, undercutting any errant thoughts on social media, English or Chinese supporting China or insulting the U.S. and Donald Trump. 

     The moral of the movie is: Live, even if you have to confess to something you did that wasn't wrong. Live, so you can tell those in the future about what happened in the past, the safety of sterility. That has been done. There are numerous books, TV shows, and magazine articles about the atrocities perpetrated with the U.S. supported martial law, but U.S. complicity wasn't mentioned once in the movie. Don't think too much of you'll get something you'll remember. 

     The KMT has morphed into a legitimate friendly opposition party in an easy solution of a search for ill-gotten gains. But the tongs still run Taiwan, on both sides, from temples, racketeering, pyramid schemes, and both parties have corruption now, though, individual DPP bureaucrats are perhaps more altruistic in civic matters on the local level. The movie never advocates revenge or reparations; only acknowledges what happened and moves on. "Detention" doesn't mention more than it reveals. 

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved 

Labor Notes Regional Conference in Taipei

Dear David,

This Labor Day, I’m feeling inspired, uplifted, and as committed as ever to our common struggle for global labor rights. I’ve just returned from Taipei, Taiwan, where ILRF co-organized the Labor Notes Asia Regional Conference. It was wonderful to be surrounded by over 200 rank-and-file workers, activists, and trade unionists from 17 countries and regions, to listen to their stories and share organizing and campaign skills with each other.

Please join ILRF as a Monthly Sustainer this Labor Day so that we can continue to stand with these organizers in advocating for workers' rights.

Across Asia, multinational corporations are pushing an agenda of outsourcing, subcontracting, and short-term contracts to minimize their responsibility for labor rights violations and to keep out independent, democratic unions. Millions of migrant workers have few legal protections and face precarious employment and unsafe conditions. Despite mass dismissals, the risk of arrest, and increasing restrictions on civil society, workers and grassroots labor organizations continue to fight back.

In this context, conference participants explored challenges to organizing precarious workers in repressive contexts and discussed strategies to cultivate women workers’ leadership and address gender-based violence. Conference participants came together across electronics, apparel, seafood, and other industries for skill-building workshops, panel discussions, and cross-sector networking and strategizing.

The conference featured inspirational speakers, including the organizers of the Taiwanese flight attendants’ union who recently concluded a 17-day strike (the longest strike in several decades in Taiwan), Hong Kong labor and union activists who supported the general strike in Hong Kong, and a report from the frontlines of the new wave of strikes in Myanmar.

It was a rare opportunity for emerging and experienced rank-and-file union and labor activists to share and learn organizing approaches, discuss strategies around defending workers and labor activists under threat, and strengthen existing and build new cross-sector and international solidarity necessary to confront global capitalism.

In a show of international solidarity, more than 70 conference participants joined a demonstration at Foxconn’s headquarters in Taipei in support of Filipino migrant workers dismissed at its subsidiary company in Japan. This action gained media interest in Taiwan, not least because the head of Foxconn, Terry Gou, may run as a presidential candidate in the Taiwanese election. Participants also showed solidarity with labor activists in the Philippines who have been organizing under martial law.

This conference would not have been possible without the generous support of our committed donors. This Labor Day, I hope you will support our work at ILRF by joining as a Monthly Sustainer or with a one-time gift.

Many thanks for your support and please let me know if you plan on joining the 2020 Labor Notes Conference in Chicago and would like to connect there. 

In solidarity,

Kevin Lin
China Program Officer

Jokers to the Left and Right of Me For Hong Kong

     On August 19, 2019, the administrator from Taiwan Writers Facebook page, William Stimson, lost any future writing contributions from me by being unrepentant about sharing a prejudiced post against China in the Hong Kong crisis. Taiwan Writers had not been for political posts in the past. When I protested in a comment, Mr. Stimson dug in deeper by adding Chinese re-education camps in Xinjiang to his condemnation. When I objected to his posting irrelevant shares from western media sources, he implied everyone would support him on the page. Two other Taiwan based Facebook pages that went against their own mission statement have since stopped sharing political posts; that's why I still share my posts with them, but not Mr. Stimson; a joker to the right of me.

         I get so frustrated defending Chinese actions in Hong Kong, especially to progressive people. Why can’t anarchists realize that the protesters are pro-capitalistic opposed to a world of of unions, forget about worker self-management, while China, though a long way to go, is holding its ground and fighting against capitalist imperialism?
      Jon, my former Fellow Worker from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union troubled me the most. He doesn’t know much about the reality of a no-longer cheap China (read End of Cheap China by Shaun Rein), but  I respect Jon. I won’t give up until he realizes China is not the enemy of anarchism; it's in the right direction.  

I got upset watching Taiwan TV news shorts about Hong Kong taken from CNN and other corporate media. I don't pay attention to news about the world from Taiwan media; I get my news on the internet from sources I trust but, even so, some anarchists are dazzled by the sea of humanity in Hong Kong and share the excitement; how cool it is that protesters are using lasers to confuse the face-identification cameras!
      The Chinese are not prepared for U.S. crowd control tactics like having thousands of SWAT teams putting up steel barricades, penning people in, not allowing anyone in or back if they leave, noisy helicopters buzzing overhead, sonic sounds sirens upsetting everyone's stomach. The demonstrations in Hong Kong look like the ones I joined in New York City before the 911 clampdown. There are fewer and fewer demonstrations in the U.S. and all are highly controlled, seldom seen in corporate media. 

Most English language Facebook group pages in Taiwan are against China; I leave when they show their real colors and  share no more poems, education or cultural blog articles with them, but the man from Taiwan Writers was getting on my nerves, so I had a plan: He approved my friend request on my  Indydaiwan page but the first post I sent about Hong Kong ("Where the Money Goes") wasn't approved; I piggy-backed comments on a few of his anti-Chinese posts. Wouldn't you know it, Facebook sent me a letter:

Changes to What Group Admins Can See. This message is just for your information. It is not in response to anything you've posted, and does not mean we've removed any of your content. Our Community Standards help keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone. If we find that content in a group goes against the Community Standards, we remove it from Facebook. We may also tell the group's admins which standard the content violated, and in some cases we may allow the group admins to see the removed content for up to 7 days. Ha-ha. 
 How many Facebook and Twitter accounts that don't support the chaos in Hong Kong have been shut down under the premise of them being Chinese cyber-attacks? Look at how my rebuttals on Facebook pages have been treated; ignored, deleted, or argued against by trolls. I am not working for the Chinese secret police. Twitter and Facebook claimed Chinese hackers were filling the internet with pro-Chinese comments and blocked six hundred! Meanwhile, a video being shared by some anarchist Facebook groups of protesters cutting down a pole in Hong Kong  was going viral on Google.

Viral 'Cutting down Surveillance Pole' Video 

     The video of a face recognition surveillance pole being cut down by youthful protesters has been shared by six  progressive-minded Facebook friends, so far; pages that don't realize the irony of such an act; impossible outside H.K. in any U.S. or European city because the cop watching through the monitor would have sent someone to stop it and beat the shit out of them. Go to Google and you will see a dozen references to the video, none supporting Chinese restraint. Corporate western media is the teapot calling the kettle black. 
             I'm not writing any more explanation to Jon, either. I have explained what the problem in Hong Kong; I'm finished. It's time for him to start reading my taIWWan blog and digging deeper. My anarchist professor friend wasn't seeing it my way. "It is a question of organization, mass support and determination - not government tolerance," he wrote. "Our rulers tolerate what they must, biding their time until the balance of forces enables them to crush us. Because our fellow workers in Hong Kong have organized and are putting up a fight, they can do many things of which we can only dream. But if they splinter or slack off, then they will all be herded to the concentration camps China has maintained for decades to control those who it fears might question the regime." I have more tolerance for Jon, an old friend so I replied: 

     "There is a reason sweatshops are moving out of China, some even to Wisconsin in the case of Foxxcon. How many Chinese workers have you worked with, worked for, lived with, or talked to," I asked."Do you know that most Chinese workers intrinsically know all the ways to sabotage their bosses? Every obstruction and tactic you can imagine, and some you can't. Have you read or studied Sun-Tzu Art of War? I can e-mail you a PDF book an expat friend wrote as a primer to direct action that most Chinese apply as second nature when under attack. The Chinese government knows what it's doing in Hong Kong." What I wrote didn't make a dent. Instead he dug deeper, too; a joker to the left of me.  

     I was not happy about Jon's insult to my comment about the labor-rights reporter that was sentenced to prison and lashes in Iran recently. Of course, I am on her side and resent the obstruction and detention and punishment of workers' voices, but Iran is in an extraordinary situation, under siege from Israel and the U.S., What this woman was doing was good but at the wrong time; it is like treason. It's like if someone called a strike in the U.S. during WWII with the Nazis attacking Europe; a strike during WWI would have been acceptable though. Of course I would condemn the strike, until the Nazis were defeated. The U.S. is the 21 Century Nazis. Jon had the nerve to link my comment with my support for China during the Hong Kong subterfuge and question my worker solidarity. I countered that by writing, typically, anarchists were short-sighted and unpractical. 

       Hong Kong protesters are not 'fellow workers'; most workers and a major union is against them. There is so much more chaos in China and liberty in Hong Kong where selfish impressionable people are drawn into going against their class interests. Their privileges are being challenged; a distinction between their 'sophisticated' British-Americanized selves and rich 'bumpkins' from China raising their property prices out of reach and clogging their streets. It has nothing to do with the right to assemble. They have that right, more so than protesters in the U.S. and NATO demonstrations against austerity and capitalism. And what did my friend say about 'it a question of organization, mass support and determination; does that make Hitlers Nazi rallies right? 

     I have been to H.K. a number of times. As in Taiwan, Hong Kongers are proud of their Western leanings and style. They  think they are better than mainland Chinese; they resent them. However, these protests have no interest raising wages or starting unions; They are are brainwashed that the Honk Kong government is not on their side. But they must understand the H.K. government has a mandate of absorbing and normalizing it into their social system. It won't happen in a day on the fiftieth the anniversary of Chinese administration; it has been twenty-three years already.  China's interest is keeping their threatened borders secure; look  at  the western media subterfuge and misinformation in Hong Kong, Taiwan,  Xinjiang  and Tibet; the threat is real.

     I blocked William Stimson on Facebook from sharing anti-Chinese propaganda with me. I complained to the administrators of the two Taiwan Facebook pages, too. One of them responded and subsequently removed Mr. Stimson's irrelevant share. 
     The riots are not in response to austerity programs, union crackdowns, or anti-racism, in fact they are racist (not including Kong Kong's immigrant workers) anti-union (a major Hong Kong union opposes it) and is being carried out by privileged petite bourgeois capitalists. The biggest shame is seeing 'anarchists' sharing the titillating scenes without understanding the circumstances. When I see it on corporate TV, we switch channels. Of course I don't buy Taipei Times with headlines about Hong Kong daily; the DPP government is using the anti-Chinese riots as a scare tactic for Tsai Ying-Wen to win the election and keep Taiwan in the U.S. camp. 

     China has shown amazing restraint these few months of turbulence. Perhaps it is time they send in the PLA and crack down.  I hope the PLA doesn't have to come to Taiwan, too, but they'd be justified if they did. I hope the next Taiwan government starts a process, like the Koreans, of unification, since independence,with the U.S. pulling the same shit as in Hong Kong, is impossible. 

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved 

Article (in Chinese): My Chat With Teachers in Taipei 2002

Twitter Bans Chinese Accounts Criticizing Hong Kong Protests

Read "Twitter Bans Chinese Accounts..." here.

Hong Kong and Taiwan’s Colonial Legacy

        

Li Peng died a few days ago. He was ninety. With the market reforms of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that reigned in the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and opened a new kettle of worms from the west, Li Peng made hard decisions to declare martial law after out-of-control students, not unlike those in Hong Kong now, could not realize how harmful they were to their nation. How are the protests in Hong Kong related to Taiwan's Sunflower youth?
         At Tienanmen Square in 1989, demonstrators would not go back to school and work; the market was free and so were the fancies. The engine of capitalism is infantile satisfaction in materialism. Its propaganda is used for commercial purposes, to make consumers feel inferior to their competition, indoctrinating us to buy the newest gadgets, co-opting our youth in their rebellious stage of development. China is learning how to deal with this subversion. The Hong Kong protest is anti-socialist. The inciters are non-government organizations (NGO) with the goal of destabilizing Hong Kong and keeping it capitalist. Hong Kong may need a new Li Peng and People's Liberation Army to deal with the subversion.

 Second-class Chinese citizens in undemocratic Hong Kong, a British colony, were easily mesmerized by shiny objects in their cradle of capitalist filth. The pride Hong Kongers felt when the British were forced out after 156 years of colonial exploitation has been eroded by fear-mongers alarming the undisciplined about losing privileges. The greater good of being part of a socialist world against racist, anti-worker U.S./NATO led White Angelo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) fascists is lost on them. The People's Republic of China (PRC) leadership is not good at pointing this out, so Hong Kongers who have forgotten the past are destined to repeat it.

“Manifest destiny” of English WASP supremacy makes people of color indebted to their corporate masters’ greed and religious superiority. Li Peng helped Deng Xiao-Ping stop the counter-revolutionary subversion, what would have turned China into a capitalist hell with worker exploitation forever, but who can help the PRC now? Back in 1989, the CCP did the right thing in counter-revolutionary Tienanmen Square protests and they would be justified to put down the riots in Hong Kong now.

Look at what China has achieved in the thirty years since the so-called “democracy movement” that culminated in the showdown at Tienanmen Square. China is on the verge of becoming the largest economy in the world, one that has made great progress in eradicating poverty, as workers in Taiwan, the last U.S. stronghold on Chinese soil, wallow in a neoliberal two-party political circus. Taiwanese workers remain nation-less, unable to gain independence, or reunification, because of U.S. interference, and real wages are stuck at the same rate as twenty years ago, thirty years since the “democracy movement” in China "lost" and “Free China’s” workers “won”. Won what? Taiwanese, in workplaces under thirty employees, have no right to unionize. Women are still oppressed by their male bosses. A legacy of environmental sickness and occupational hazards remains.

In Taiwan, a sham democracy, one party of corrupt politicians, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) kowtows to underworld bosses and steers the election of populist pro-unification clowns while the other party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) keeps Taiwan in the U.S. sphere of influence with media fear-mongering and biased reports of Hong Kong protests. Which party in Taiwan is raising workers out of their doldrums? Neither. A spark for independence in Taiwan existed during Chen Shui-Bian's (陳水扁) presidency. Now Tsai Ying-Wen's (蔡英文) DPP only wants to hold the line for the U.S. at the cost of reunification with China. A populist mayor from Kaohsiung, Han Kuo-Yu (韓國瑜), or arrogant independent from Taipei, Ko Wen-Je (柯文哲) may be the only way to lead the way back. The "Sunflower Movement", anti-Chinese, was promoted and co-opted by the DPP to win their presidential election over the KMT

Read "Sunflower Movement Co-opted by DPP" here

  What Hong Kongers and Taiwanese have in common is a contempt for immigrants and visitors from China "invading" their territory. If you did a demography of the Hong Kong protesters, I bet you would find a majority of them are descendants of long time Hong Kong residents. Their resentment of the new wave is not unlike the European/United Staters contempt for immigrants. They distinguish between the old and new. In the same way, many Taiwanese disliked the influx of Chinese after World War II, being usurped by a interloping ruling class, KMT Chinese replacing Japanese, PRC Chinese replacing British. Rich Chinese have raised the price of housing in Hong Kong while tourists from China are perceived as 'low-class'. Ironically, In Taiwan, Tsai Ying-Wen and the DPP have no problem with an influx of European and United States expats, in fact it is an initiative. Is that the Anglicization of Taiwan  to keep it in the western camp as the anti-extradition protests a smokescreen for the same western tendency? 

          Protesters in Hong Kong have forgotten how lucky they are to be reunited with the mainland, their cultural cohort, and be represented by a government that shields them from U.S. imperialism. Meanwhile Taiwan remains in its colonial past. At least the interlopers that followed Chiang Kai-Shek to Taiwan remember which culture they stem from. Perhaps only a populist from Kaohsiung can rally them back, but China will take whatever it can to end foreign exploitation of its people. Hong Kongers should count their blessings and Taiwanese should see the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved