The visit of Minister of Education Stark-Watzinger to Taiwan is a double concern for us today in the aftermath. Speaking with Fabian Peltsch, Taiwan’s former Minister of Culture, Lung Ying-tai, expresses skepticism about whether such visits even serve a purpose. She sees such visits as part of a big play in which the USA and China play the leading roles. “Taiwan doesn’t have much to say in it,” Lung fears.
The interview with Lung does not directly refer to the German minister and was conducted before her visit. However, regarding political tourism in general, she complains that when now “foreign delegations and correspondents swarm in only because all of a sudden our home has become the ‘front line,’” they fail to realize that Taiwan has already been threatened for the past 70 years.
In today’s guest article, Sinologist Bjoern Alpermann opposes another misinterpretation of Stark-Watzinger’s trip. According to Alpermann, the minister had no intention whatsoever of dissuading German sinology from supposedly cozying up to the People’s Republic by establishing closer contacts with Taiwan. Behind this is an ongoing debate about the independence of German China researchers. Alpermann clarifies that the majority of researchers are not dependent on Chinese funding and continue to act independently.
Meanwhile, travel diplomacy continues. Brazilian President Lula has canceled his planned trip to Beijing. But now, after Spain’s Prime Minister Sánchez, France’s President Macron and EU Commission President von der Leyen have also announced their intention to meet with Xi Jinping. The high frequency of presidents is no coincidence, analyzes Fabian Kretschmer. Xi has successfully broken the diplomatic isolation into which he had temporarily maneuvered his country. While the representatives of the EU are courting Xi for their positions, the latter is scoring all the more bountiful in the Global South. The message of an alternative to the arrogant West is more welcome than ever.
Your books and essays have been popular for more than 40 years in the Chinese-speaking world. In mainland China, you are one of the most well-known writers as well. In 2019 your books have been banned there. What happened?
Before 2019, only some particular books of mine were banned, for instance, Big River Big Sea: Untold Stories of 1949, a book on the Chinese civil war, a war which still lives on today. I wrote a short piece in defense of Hong Kong in 2019 and that caused all my books to be taken off the shelves in bookstores and in some school libraries, which was what I had expected. But yes, I still get emails and letters from readers in China. They use VPNs and send me messages on Facebook, for example. Compared with before 2019, of course, it’s a lot less.
In many of your books, you have tried to give a voice to Taiwanese people. How do you feel about the current geopolitical spotlight on Taiwan? Are foreign delegations who want to shake hands with President Tsai Ing-wen more of a curse or a blessing for the island’s security?
It is ironic. Because of political contentions with China, Taiwan has been isolated by the international community for 50 years. And now foreign delegations and correspondents swarm in, only because all of a sudden our home has become the ‘front line,’ what the Economist called “the most dangerous place in the world.” Is that a fortune or a misfortune?
The visit of Nancy Pelosi was just one act in a larger theater play. The main actors in this play are the USA and China. Taiwan doesn’t have much to say. Yes, the danger of an invasion is real. It hasn’t been this real since the 1950s, but how close it really is no one can predict. There are too many factors at play. We don’t know how the China-US relations will move forward. We also don’t know what the outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian war will be. How the Russian-Ukrainian war unfolds is going to have a huge impact on the fate of Taiwan.
Do the people of Taiwan feel more threatened today than ever?
The world is just wakening up to discover Taiwan is the front line and many people are surprised at how calm and relaxed the Taiwanese appear. Outsiders are not aware that Taiwan has been the front line for over 70 years. We grew up with the sense that war could break out at any time. Especially my generation – I was born in the 1950s – grew up with a siege mentality. Look at the ocean in front of us: Taiwan is surrounded by the ocean, but many Taiwanese do not swim. Do you know why? As children, we didn’t dare to play on the beach, let alone jump into the ocean. The 1200 km-long coastline was a military zone guarded by soldiers with rifles and bayonets. We grew up in fear of the ocean. Children were told to stay away from the beach because frogmen from China would swim across the strait and sneak up the beaches with a knife between their teeth. Even today, many waterfronts are not open to the public; you see traces of the siege mentality.
Do people feel the danger more than before? Yes and no. Several generations of us have lived with the possibility of war for so long that we become “numb” to the reality of it. How can you be on the alert for 70 years? Taiwan has been a peaceful and prosperous society for so long that it is difficult to imagine war. Yes, people are aware of the danger, but it feels unreal.
The government wants to extend military conscription. Meanwhile, civilian defense groups such as the Forward Alliance are forming to better prepare Taiwan’s citizens for a potential assault from the Mainland.
The extension of the compulsive military service occurred probably more due to the pressure of the US than to the wishes of the Taiwanese people. There are several civil defense organizations springing up recently, such as the so-called Black Bear Academy, founded by a businessman who believes that Taiwan should fight the Chinese with all means. They are teaching whoever wants to be prepared for battles. For most people, however, peace is still the main goal and war is hard to imagine. And that probably even applies to the Taiwanese government. How prepared are we for war? Look at our Ministry of National Defence. In 2022 the Ministry finally published a guideline for national emergencies such as a breakout of war. In case of a power outage, the guideline says to call the service line of Taiwan power. It became a joke.
Do you think the Taiwanese would be as united against a Chinese invasion as the Ukrainians against the Russian invaders?
If you are talking about taking up arms, I doubt it. There is a shared consensus among the Taiwanese, that is, a belief in the democratic system and the way of life in Taiwan, but how to safeguard this faith and maintain our way of life, people are divided.
The Taiwanese are still very much divided because of memories defined by history. You have people who feel totally alienated from China and devote themselves to the cause of Taiwan’s independence ‘at any cost’. You have also people who think that the Taiwanese and the Chinese are brothers and sisters despite ideological differences and that war should be avoided at all costs. You have people who promote mutual understanding across the Taiwan Straits and hold the current government responsible for having brought Taiwan to the brink of war, and then you have people who believe that it’s the US who is the culprit for the crisis and Taiwan is a victim of the game of hegemony. Then you have the farmers and fishermen. To many of them, the only thing that matters is whether their produce and fish can sell on the Chinese markets. They don’t think it’s important whose flag is flying over their heads. They want their livelihood and their children safe.
So, I’d say yes, the Taiwanese are very united in their faith in democracy, but if you ask whether they are united in war, I am not sure.
On which side do you see yourself?
I am anti-war. No matter what. And for that position, I have received massive verbal abuse online. I believe it is important that Taiwan arms itself to create effective deterrence, but we should never forget that deterrence is only part of a larger and genuine effort to avoid war. At the moment only military build-up as deterrence is talked about; little or no attention is given to how to avoid war.
Would you prefer the role of the USA to be more critically discussed?
The US position is that Taiwan has to arm itself to the teeth. Therefore Taiwan is buying a lot of weapons from the US. And the US wants to sell a lot of weapons to Taiwan. My position is simple: To arm yourself is the right thing to do only when it is part of a larger effort to avoid war. If you only concentrate on building up your military without other efforts like negotiating – under a different administration Taiwan used to have a working relationship with China on law enforcement, trade agreement and many other areas – you are on a very dangerous path. But the way it has been going and is still going on is the idea to turn Taiwan into a porcupine. That bothers me very much.
What are your hopes for negotiations with China?
Life is not all politics. What about opening ports or setting up direct flights? There are over 1 million Taiwanese living in China. When you count in their family members, it would mean there are 4-5 million Taiwanese – and the total population is 23 million – who have their loved ones residing and working in China. How about opening up more airports to make their home journey easier? How about allowing more Chinese students to come to Taiwan to study? How about welcoming tourists to come? How about letting Chinese writers and artists come for cultural exchanges? Of course, this goes both ways. Many of the barriers are built from the Chinese side. But my point is, both China and Taiwan should try hard not to fall into the spiral trap of hostility. Goodwill and soft communication can prevent war.
How did you feel about the protests of young people in Hong Kong in 2019 and in China at the end of last year? Should younger generations in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China try to connect more, since many obviously share the same ideals, like freedom of speech?
There was widespread and robust networking between the young people in Taiwan and Hong Kong during the protest movement in Hong Kong. Many of the Hong Kongers who took part in the protest went to exile in Taiwan after the crackdown, although not all of them were welcomed by the Taiwanese government. But the sentiment for Hong Kong lives on in Taiwan. With China, it’s different. There are many young people in China who are critical of their own government, but there is no public sphere to speak up. As Hanna Arendt said, the first thing an authoritarian government does is make you feel lonely. They silence you and separate you from your peers so that you never know how many like-minded people are out there, and you are deprived of the opportunity to share your ideas or to be inspired by others. The Chinese government has been doing this very effectively with the help of hi-tech. I think Chinese intellectuals are among the loneliest people in the world today.
Lung Ying-tai 龍應台 has been shaping social and political debates in the Chinese-speaking world as a writer for over 40 years. Her books “Wild Fire” and “Big River, Big Sea” are considered milestones on the road to Taiwanese self-awareness. From 1987, she lived for several years in Germany, where she taught Taiwanese literature at Heidelberg University. From 2012 to 2014 she served under President Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s first Minister of Culture. Today, Lung Ying-tai lives on the southeastern coast of Taiwan.
This winter, the leadership in Beijing woke up from a self-imposed, nearly three-year “zero covid” slumber with incredible speed – and is now trying with all its might to break out of international isolation. The success has been remarkable so far. Dignitaries from all over the world arrive in Beijing’s government district every week: Lula was expected to visit Beijing on Monday. The Brazilian President had to cancel his visit for health reasons but plans to make up for it soon.
On Wednesday, the Spanish Head of Government Pedro Sánchez and Emmanuel Macron from France will miss each other by a narrow margin. Macron will presumably travel with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. All of this only a few days after Xi Jinping
That China is striving for a lively exchange on the international stage is not new. But the assertive tone with which Xi postulates a global alternative completes the break with the doctrine of reserved diplomacy that prevailed before he took office. Economic reformer Deng Xiaoping famously once advised to hide China’s strengths and wait for the time to be ripe to assume global power.
That time has now come. Covid has covered this trend for two years. Now it is apparent that the second-largest economy is finally having a stronger say on the international stage – for example, by filling positions at the United Nations.
However, what few observers expected: How aggressively China’s President is diplomatically positioning the once risk-averse country. Despite international criticism, Xi stoically introduced nationwide repression against Hong Kong; in the South China Sea, he ignored all territorial borders; and shortly after the Ukraine war, he demonstratively sided with Russia, to the shock of Europe.
Moreover, Xi is now openly raging against the hated West. There is no longer any mention of the fact that the United States and Europe once benevolently paved the way for the People’s Republic to join the World Trade Organization – and thus massively accelerated its economic rise. Instead, Xi only reminds his people that Washington and its allies want to contain China.
In large parts of the Global South Xi’s global vision is falling on fertile ground. The decades in which Washington acted as the world’s police have left deep animosities in their wake. In addition, there is the colonial legacy of the Europeans. The People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, stands for value-free pragmatism and an economic development model that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of deep poverty.
Xi Jinping’s growing influence is most visibly reflected in the new Silk Road, which stretches from Central Asia to Latin America. More than 150 countries have now signed the memorandum of the Belt and Road Initiative.
In his recent speeches, Xi repeatedly emphasized: China provides historical proof that modernization does not mean Westernization. The autocrat presents his country as a “peace nation” that does not strive for hegemony, does not interfere in the affairs of other countries, and does not exploit developing countries.
That this idealized self-description is primarily propaganda may well be the prevailing opinion in Europe and the USA. In many parts of Africa and South America, however, China is perceived as a welcome trading partner and responsible mediator.
And yet, as Xi’s role of responsibility increases, he will also become increasingly entangled in the same contradictions and double standards that he publicly blames on the West. This could be observed quite openly in the Chinese peace plan for the Ukraine war. In the first paragraph of the document, Beijing recalls the territorial sovereignty of all countries. At the same time, it does not criticize the Russian invasion in a single syllable. Fabian Kretschmer
Ding Xuexiang, one of China’s new Vice-Premiers, pledged at the China Development Forum on Sunday that “dual circulation” will continue to include market access for foreign firms. “China’s new development pattern is not based on isolated domestic circulation, but more open, dual circulation connecting domestic and external markets,” Ding said, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
The China Development Forum is a high-level business conference held annually in Beijing. The German economy was also well represented again this year. Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte gave a speech. The Heads of BMW and Siemens, Oliver Zipse and Roland Busch, along with Bäte, will be given access to the new Head of Government Li Qiang at the conference on Monday, Handelsblatt reports.
At the event, the Head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, warned of rising risks in the financial system worldwide. The stability of growth in China is a “ray of hope” here, she said. The present business elite echoed this assessment. Mood-wise, they tended towards continued and even deepened involvement in the Chinese market. fin
For some time now, a battle of opinions over the position of sinology and its relationship to the People’s Republic has been raging. Long regarded as an exotic subject, the discipline has struggled in some quarters to come to terms with the political significance that is now attributed to it. However, the impression that sinology, as a whole, has allowed itself to be bought off by the increasingly authoritarian ruling Communist Party is fundamentally wrong.
On the contrary, more and more sinologists are speaking out publicly and taking an active part in the necessary debate on the reorientation of German and European policy towards China. Nevertheless, the insinuation that the discipline is hopelessly entangled in dependencies vis-à-vis China persists. This was recently demonstrated by a commentary in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on the visit of the Federal Minister of Education of Taiwan.
Here, the author made it sound as if Bettina Stark-Watzinger traveled there primarily to enable “alternative information and teaching content in the field of sinology in the interest of her own higher education landscape […].” Because, he goes on to write, “China expertise, chairs and institutes in this country are now so steeped in money and interests of the People’s Republic that more scholarly distance is called for.”
Evidence of the alleged infiltration of German sinology by money and influence from the authoritarian People’s Republic is lacking. Nevertheless, an entire discipline is denounced. The reality, however, looks different: Like any university subject, sinology and its employees are financed by public funds – state budgets, DFG, BMBF, and EU, among other third-party donors. The repeatedly mentioned Confucius Institutes and two language professorships co-financed by China play a negligible role and have partly expired or are in the process of being wound up. There is no evidence of financial dependence. And by the way, all Chinese scholars working in the public sector have taken an oath of office on the free democratic basic order. To insinuate that they serve the “interests of the People’s Republic” is tantamount to defamation.
A cursory glance at curricula and cooperation partners of German sinology institutes is sufficient to realize that Taiwan has long been taken into account, not just in teaching and research, but also that close cooperation with Taiwanese institutions is commonplace. They employ language teachers from there, maintain exchange programs and conduct joint research with Taiwanese colleagues.
Stark-Watzinger did not travel to Taiwan because the local sinology needs help in this regard, but to negotiate concrete agreements on research cooperation, especially in the field of high technology. Instead of distrusting “sinology,” the Federal Ministry of Education is currently setting up a series of projects in which sinological chairs and other centers of China expertise are to provide the rest of the scientific landscape in Germany with China competence. After all, who has a better understanding of the risks in working with China than the reviled sinologists?
The discussion about sinology is only a small part of the larger China debate. But it exemplifies the larger picture. Because it shows how difficult it is to combat distorted images that have become entrenched in many minds due to constant repetition. Only resolute opposition can help against this. Instead of blanket judgments, we need a differentiated debate on China – and this will not be possible without the qualified contributions of sinologists.
However, anyone confronted with prejudice will think twice before actively seeking publicity. But a “silence of the sinologists” would be fatal. Just imagine how Germany would have made it through the Covid pandemic if all virologists had not participated in public discourse, education, and policy advice because of the general prejudice that they were all bought by the pharmaceutical industry anyway.
As we all know, there is plenty of hogwash on the Internet. But you should be especially careful not to be butchered by a pig scammer. At least that’s what you would be advised to do in China. Meaning: Don’t be fooled by a love scammer. Because scammers looking to squeeze every last yuan out of love-starved singles on the Internet is known as “Pig Butchering Scam” (杀猪盘 shāzhūpán) in China.
The word is a combination of the characters 杀 shā “kill”, 猪 zhū “pig” and 盘 pán, which actually means “plate” or “dish”, but can also be a counting word for attacks, matches and actions in sports. For example, 盘 pán also appears in terms such as 一 盘棋 yī pán qí “a game of chess” or 开盘 kāipán “to make an opening move”.
The pieces of this perfidious pig game are not bishops, knights and rooks, but naïve singles. The origin of the metaphor is not entirely clear. In Chinese zodiac mythology, at least, the pig is not only considered particularly hard-working, but also compassionate, generous and kind. The perfect prey for mating scammers.
Just like in the West, they usually lie in wait for potential victims on online portals such as singles or friendship exchanges (婚恋交友网站 hūnliàn jiāoyǒu wǎngzhàn). The butchers themselves sarcastically call these platforms their hunting ground 猪圈 zhūjuàn, meaning “pigsty”.
The typical love or romance scam follows a similar pattern in both East and West. The sacrificial pigs (called 猪 zhū) are usually desperate single people (单身 dānshēn) of an older age. The first step is not to throw pearls before swine, but instead to whip up an appealing profile (人设 rénshè). It serves to attract emotionally needy bristles and to present oneself as a supposedly perfect partner (完美恋人 wánměi liànrén).
The type of pig food (猪饲料 zhū sìliào), i.e. deceitful bait, that tastes or lures best depends, of course, on whether the cattle breeder is dealing with a “sow” or a “boar”. Female victims are said to be most attracted to sensitive and humorous mates. Ideally, they should also have a bachelor’s degree or higher (高学历 gāo xuélì “high education”) and have a lot of financial fat on their ribs (高收入 gāo shōurù “high income”).
Boars, on the other hand, are looking for the perfect Baifumei (白富美 báifùměi), the Chinese synonym for “dream woman”, i.e. a beauty (美 měi “beautiful”) with a fair complexion (白 bái “white, pale”) and a large bank account (富 fù “rich, wealthy”). The perfect match is then best spiced with clever brains (高知女性 gāozhī nǚxìng “intellectual lady”) and a good pinch of joie de vivre (热爱生活 rè’ài shēnghuó).
Once the prey has taken the bait, they are thoroughly fattened up. In other words, a relationship of trust is gradually built up to tame them. In Chinese pig scam slang, this is called 养猪 yǎng zhū “breeding pigs”. Once the pigs have put on enough weight, the scam knife is sharpened and drawn to exploit the built-up trust by every trick in the book and turn the feigned romance into profit.
The pig breeders then really go all-in with every lie to gut their victims down to the last yuan. They lure their lovestruck victims, for example, to gambling platforms, seduce them into making supposedly lucrative investments or ask for large sums of money to get out of an alleged financial predicament. By the time their victims realize they have been slaughtered, the butchers have long since disappeared, along with their money.
Hopefully, you will have better luck when looking for love and will not be led like a pig to the slaughter. Neither in China nor anywhere else.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
The visit of Minister of Education Stark-Watzinger to Taiwan is a double concern for us today in the aftermath. Speaking with Fabian Peltsch, Taiwan’s former Minister of Culture, Lung Ying-tai, expresses skepticism about whether such visits even serve a purpose. She sees such visits as part of a big play in which the USA and China play the leading roles. “Taiwan doesn’t have much to say in it,” Lung fears.
The interview with Lung does not directly refer to the German minister and was conducted before her visit. However, regarding political tourism in general, she complains that when now “foreign delegations and correspondents swarm in only because all of a sudden our home has become the ‘front line,’” they fail to realize that Taiwan has already been threatened for the past 70 years.
In today’s guest article, Sinologist Bjoern Alpermann opposes another misinterpretation of Stark-Watzinger’s trip. According to Alpermann, the minister had no intention whatsoever of dissuading German sinology from supposedly cozying up to the People’s Republic by establishing closer contacts with Taiwan. Behind this is an ongoing debate about the independence of German China researchers. Alpermann clarifies that the majority of researchers are not dependent on Chinese funding and continue to act independently.
Meanwhile, travel diplomacy continues. Brazilian President Lula has canceled his planned trip to Beijing. But now, after Spain’s Prime Minister Sánchez, France’s President Macron and EU Commission President von der Leyen have also announced their intention to meet with Xi Jinping. The high frequency of presidents is no coincidence, analyzes Fabian Kretschmer. Xi has successfully broken the diplomatic isolation into which he had temporarily maneuvered his country. While the representatives of the EU are courting Xi for their positions, the latter is scoring all the more bountiful in the Global South. The message of an alternative to the arrogant West is more welcome than ever.
Your books and essays have been popular for more than 40 years in the Chinese-speaking world. In mainland China, you are one of the most well-known writers as well. In 2019 your books have been banned there. What happened?
Before 2019, only some particular books of mine were banned, for instance, Big River Big Sea: Untold Stories of 1949, a book on the Chinese civil war, a war which still lives on today. I wrote a short piece in defense of Hong Kong in 2019 and that caused all my books to be taken off the shelves in bookstores and in some school libraries, which was what I had expected. But yes, I still get emails and letters from readers in China. They use VPNs and send me messages on Facebook, for example. Compared with before 2019, of course, it’s a lot less.
In many of your books, you have tried to give a voice to Taiwanese people. How do you feel about the current geopolitical spotlight on Taiwan? Are foreign delegations who want to shake hands with President Tsai Ing-wen more of a curse or a blessing for the island’s security?
It is ironic. Because of political contentions with China, Taiwan has been isolated by the international community for 50 years. And now foreign delegations and correspondents swarm in, only because all of a sudden our home has become the ‘front line,’ what the Economist called “the most dangerous place in the world.” Is that a fortune or a misfortune?
The visit of Nancy Pelosi was just one act in a larger theater play. The main actors in this play are the USA and China. Taiwan doesn’t have much to say. Yes, the danger of an invasion is real. It hasn’t been this real since the 1950s, but how close it really is no one can predict. There are too many factors at play. We don’t know how the China-US relations will move forward. We also don’t know what the outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian war will be. How the Russian-Ukrainian war unfolds is going to have a huge impact on the fate of Taiwan.
Do the people of Taiwan feel more threatened today than ever?
The world is just wakening up to discover Taiwan is the front line and many people are surprised at how calm and relaxed the Taiwanese appear. Outsiders are not aware that Taiwan has been the front line for over 70 years. We grew up with the sense that war could break out at any time. Especially my generation – I was born in the 1950s – grew up with a siege mentality. Look at the ocean in front of us: Taiwan is surrounded by the ocean, but many Taiwanese do not swim. Do you know why? As children, we didn’t dare to play on the beach, let alone jump into the ocean. The 1200 km-long coastline was a military zone guarded by soldiers with rifles and bayonets. We grew up in fear of the ocean. Children were told to stay away from the beach because frogmen from China would swim across the strait and sneak up the beaches with a knife between their teeth. Even today, many waterfronts are not open to the public; you see traces of the siege mentality.
Do people feel the danger more than before? Yes and no. Several generations of us have lived with the possibility of war for so long that we become “numb” to the reality of it. How can you be on the alert for 70 years? Taiwan has been a peaceful and prosperous society for so long that it is difficult to imagine war. Yes, people are aware of the danger, but it feels unreal.
The government wants to extend military conscription. Meanwhile, civilian defense groups such as the Forward Alliance are forming to better prepare Taiwan’s citizens for a potential assault from the Mainland.
The extension of the compulsive military service occurred probably more due to the pressure of the US than to the wishes of the Taiwanese people. There are several civil defense organizations springing up recently, such as the so-called Black Bear Academy, founded by a businessman who believes that Taiwan should fight the Chinese with all means. They are teaching whoever wants to be prepared for battles. For most people, however, peace is still the main goal and war is hard to imagine. And that probably even applies to the Taiwanese government. How prepared are we for war? Look at our Ministry of National Defence. In 2022 the Ministry finally published a guideline for national emergencies such as a breakout of war. In case of a power outage, the guideline says to call the service line of Taiwan power. It became a joke.
Do you think the Taiwanese would be as united against a Chinese invasion as the Ukrainians against the Russian invaders?
If you are talking about taking up arms, I doubt it. There is a shared consensus among the Taiwanese, that is, a belief in the democratic system and the way of life in Taiwan, but how to safeguard this faith and maintain our way of life, people are divided.
The Taiwanese are still very much divided because of memories defined by history. You have people who feel totally alienated from China and devote themselves to the cause of Taiwan’s independence ‘at any cost’. You have also people who think that the Taiwanese and the Chinese are brothers and sisters despite ideological differences and that war should be avoided at all costs. You have people who promote mutual understanding across the Taiwan Straits and hold the current government responsible for having brought Taiwan to the brink of war, and then you have people who believe that it’s the US who is the culprit for the crisis and Taiwan is a victim of the game of hegemony. Then you have the farmers and fishermen. To many of them, the only thing that matters is whether their produce and fish can sell on the Chinese markets. They don’t think it’s important whose flag is flying over their heads. They want their livelihood and their children safe.
So, I’d say yes, the Taiwanese are very united in their faith in democracy, but if you ask whether they are united in war, I am not sure.
On which side do you see yourself?
I am anti-war. No matter what. And for that position, I have received massive verbal abuse online. I believe it is important that Taiwan arms itself to create effective deterrence, but we should never forget that deterrence is only part of a larger and genuine effort to avoid war. At the moment only military build-up as deterrence is talked about; little or no attention is given to how to avoid war.
Would you prefer the role of the USA to be more critically discussed?
The US position is that Taiwan has to arm itself to the teeth. Therefore Taiwan is buying a lot of weapons from the US. And the US wants to sell a lot of weapons to Taiwan. My position is simple: To arm yourself is the right thing to do only when it is part of a larger effort to avoid war. If you only concentrate on building up your military without other efforts like negotiating – under a different administration Taiwan used to have a working relationship with China on law enforcement, trade agreement and many other areas – you are on a very dangerous path. But the way it has been going and is still going on is the idea to turn Taiwan into a porcupine. That bothers me very much.
What are your hopes for negotiations with China?
Life is not all politics. What about opening ports or setting up direct flights? There are over 1 million Taiwanese living in China. When you count in their family members, it would mean there are 4-5 million Taiwanese – and the total population is 23 million – who have their loved ones residing and working in China. How about opening up more airports to make their home journey easier? How about allowing more Chinese students to come to Taiwan to study? How about welcoming tourists to come? How about letting Chinese writers and artists come for cultural exchanges? Of course, this goes both ways. Many of the barriers are built from the Chinese side. But my point is, both China and Taiwan should try hard not to fall into the spiral trap of hostility. Goodwill and soft communication can prevent war.
How did you feel about the protests of young people in Hong Kong in 2019 and in China at the end of last year? Should younger generations in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China try to connect more, since many obviously share the same ideals, like freedom of speech?
There was widespread and robust networking between the young people in Taiwan and Hong Kong during the protest movement in Hong Kong. Many of the Hong Kongers who took part in the protest went to exile in Taiwan after the crackdown, although not all of them were welcomed by the Taiwanese government. But the sentiment for Hong Kong lives on in Taiwan. With China, it’s different. There are many young people in China who are critical of their own government, but there is no public sphere to speak up. As Hanna Arendt said, the first thing an authoritarian government does is make you feel lonely. They silence you and separate you from your peers so that you never know how many like-minded people are out there, and you are deprived of the opportunity to share your ideas or to be inspired by others. The Chinese government has been doing this very effectively with the help of hi-tech. I think Chinese intellectuals are among the loneliest people in the world today.
Lung Ying-tai 龍應台 has been shaping social and political debates in the Chinese-speaking world as a writer for over 40 years. Her books “Wild Fire” and “Big River, Big Sea” are considered milestones on the road to Taiwanese self-awareness. From 1987, she lived for several years in Germany, where she taught Taiwanese literature at Heidelberg University. From 2012 to 2014 she served under President Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s first Minister of Culture. Today, Lung Ying-tai lives on the southeastern coast of Taiwan.
This winter, the leadership in Beijing woke up from a self-imposed, nearly three-year “zero covid” slumber with incredible speed – and is now trying with all its might to break out of international isolation. The success has been remarkable so far. Dignitaries from all over the world arrive in Beijing’s government district every week: Lula was expected to visit Beijing on Monday. The Brazilian President had to cancel his visit for health reasons but plans to make up for it soon.
On Wednesday, the Spanish Head of Government Pedro Sánchez and Emmanuel Macron from France will miss each other by a narrow margin. Macron will presumably travel with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. All of this only a few days after Xi Jinping
That China is striving for a lively exchange on the international stage is not new. But the assertive tone with which Xi postulates a global alternative completes the break with the doctrine of reserved diplomacy that prevailed before he took office. Economic reformer Deng Xiaoping famously once advised to hide China’s strengths and wait for the time to be ripe to assume global power.
That time has now come. Covid has covered this trend for two years. Now it is apparent that the second-largest economy is finally having a stronger say on the international stage – for example, by filling positions at the United Nations.
However, what few observers expected: How aggressively China’s President is diplomatically positioning the once risk-averse country. Despite international criticism, Xi stoically introduced nationwide repression against Hong Kong; in the South China Sea, he ignored all territorial borders; and shortly after the Ukraine war, he demonstratively sided with Russia, to the shock of Europe.
Moreover, Xi is now openly raging against the hated West. There is no longer any mention of the fact that the United States and Europe once benevolently paved the way for the People’s Republic to join the World Trade Organization – and thus massively accelerated its economic rise. Instead, Xi only reminds his people that Washington and its allies want to contain China.
In large parts of the Global South Xi’s global vision is falling on fertile ground. The decades in which Washington acted as the world’s police have left deep animosities in their wake. In addition, there is the colonial legacy of the Europeans. The People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, stands for value-free pragmatism and an economic development model that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of deep poverty.
Xi Jinping’s growing influence is most visibly reflected in the new Silk Road, which stretches from Central Asia to Latin America. More than 150 countries have now signed the memorandum of the Belt and Road Initiative.
In his recent speeches, Xi repeatedly emphasized: China provides historical proof that modernization does not mean Westernization. The autocrat presents his country as a “peace nation” that does not strive for hegemony, does not interfere in the affairs of other countries, and does not exploit developing countries.
That this idealized self-description is primarily propaganda may well be the prevailing opinion in Europe and the USA. In many parts of Africa and South America, however, China is perceived as a welcome trading partner and responsible mediator.
And yet, as Xi’s role of responsibility increases, he will also become increasingly entangled in the same contradictions and double standards that he publicly blames on the West. This could be observed quite openly in the Chinese peace plan for the Ukraine war. In the first paragraph of the document, Beijing recalls the territorial sovereignty of all countries. At the same time, it does not criticize the Russian invasion in a single syllable. Fabian Kretschmer
Ding Xuexiang, one of China’s new Vice-Premiers, pledged at the China Development Forum on Sunday that “dual circulation” will continue to include market access for foreign firms. “China’s new development pattern is not based on isolated domestic circulation, but more open, dual circulation connecting domestic and external markets,” Ding said, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
The China Development Forum is a high-level business conference held annually in Beijing. The German economy was also well represented again this year. Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte gave a speech. The Heads of BMW and Siemens, Oliver Zipse and Roland Busch, along with Bäte, will be given access to the new Head of Government Li Qiang at the conference on Monday, Handelsblatt reports.
At the event, the Head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, warned of rising risks in the financial system worldwide. The stability of growth in China is a “ray of hope” here, she said. The present business elite echoed this assessment. Mood-wise, they tended towards continued and even deepened involvement in the Chinese market. fin
For some time now, a battle of opinions over the position of sinology and its relationship to the People’s Republic has been raging. Long regarded as an exotic subject, the discipline has struggled in some quarters to come to terms with the political significance that is now attributed to it. However, the impression that sinology, as a whole, has allowed itself to be bought off by the increasingly authoritarian ruling Communist Party is fundamentally wrong.
On the contrary, more and more sinologists are speaking out publicly and taking an active part in the necessary debate on the reorientation of German and European policy towards China. Nevertheless, the insinuation that the discipline is hopelessly entangled in dependencies vis-à-vis China persists. This was recently demonstrated by a commentary in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on the visit of the Federal Minister of Education of Taiwan.
Here, the author made it sound as if Bettina Stark-Watzinger traveled there primarily to enable “alternative information and teaching content in the field of sinology in the interest of her own higher education landscape […].” Because, he goes on to write, “China expertise, chairs and institutes in this country are now so steeped in money and interests of the People’s Republic that more scholarly distance is called for.”
Evidence of the alleged infiltration of German sinology by money and influence from the authoritarian People’s Republic is lacking. Nevertheless, an entire discipline is denounced. The reality, however, looks different: Like any university subject, sinology and its employees are financed by public funds – state budgets, DFG, BMBF, and EU, among other third-party donors. The repeatedly mentioned Confucius Institutes and two language professorships co-financed by China play a negligible role and have partly expired or are in the process of being wound up. There is no evidence of financial dependence. And by the way, all Chinese scholars working in the public sector have taken an oath of office on the free democratic basic order. To insinuate that they serve the “interests of the People’s Republic” is tantamount to defamation.
A cursory glance at curricula and cooperation partners of German sinology institutes is sufficient to realize that Taiwan has long been taken into account, not just in teaching and research, but also that close cooperation with Taiwanese institutions is commonplace. They employ language teachers from there, maintain exchange programs and conduct joint research with Taiwanese colleagues.
Stark-Watzinger did not travel to Taiwan because the local sinology needs help in this regard, but to negotiate concrete agreements on research cooperation, especially in the field of high technology. Instead of distrusting “sinology,” the Federal Ministry of Education is currently setting up a series of projects in which sinological chairs and other centers of China expertise are to provide the rest of the scientific landscape in Germany with China competence. After all, who has a better understanding of the risks in working with China than the reviled sinologists?
The discussion about sinology is only a small part of the larger China debate. But it exemplifies the larger picture. Because it shows how difficult it is to combat distorted images that have become entrenched in many minds due to constant repetition. Only resolute opposition can help against this. Instead of blanket judgments, we need a differentiated debate on China – and this will not be possible without the qualified contributions of sinologists.
However, anyone confronted with prejudice will think twice before actively seeking publicity. But a “silence of the sinologists” would be fatal. Just imagine how Germany would have made it through the Covid pandemic if all virologists had not participated in public discourse, education, and policy advice because of the general prejudice that they were all bought by the pharmaceutical industry anyway.
As we all know, there is plenty of hogwash on the Internet. But you should be especially careful not to be butchered by a pig scammer. At least that’s what you would be advised to do in China. Meaning: Don’t be fooled by a love scammer. Because scammers looking to squeeze every last yuan out of love-starved singles on the Internet is known as “Pig Butchering Scam” (杀猪盘 shāzhūpán) in China.
The word is a combination of the characters 杀 shā “kill”, 猪 zhū “pig” and 盘 pán, which actually means “plate” or “dish”, but can also be a counting word for attacks, matches and actions in sports. For example, 盘 pán also appears in terms such as 一 盘棋 yī pán qí “a game of chess” or 开盘 kāipán “to make an opening move”.
The pieces of this perfidious pig game are not bishops, knights and rooks, but naïve singles. The origin of the metaphor is not entirely clear. In Chinese zodiac mythology, at least, the pig is not only considered particularly hard-working, but also compassionate, generous and kind. The perfect prey for mating scammers.
Just like in the West, they usually lie in wait for potential victims on online portals such as singles or friendship exchanges (婚恋交友网站 hūnliàn jiāoyǒu wǎngzhàn). The butchers themselves sarcastically call these platforms their hunting ground 猪圈 zhūjuàn, meaning “pigsty”.
The typical love or romance scam follows a similar pattern in both East and West. The sacrificial pigs (called 猪 zhū) are usually desperate single people (单身 dānshēn) of an older age. The first step is not to throw pearls before swine, but instead to whip up an appealing profile (人设 rénshè). It serves to attract emotionally needy bristles and to present oneself as a supposedly perfect partner (完美恋人 wánměi liànrén).
The type of pig food (猪饲料 zhū sìliào), i.e. deceitful bait, that tastes or lures best depends, of course, on whether the cattle breeder is dealing with a “sow” or a “boar”. Female victims are said to be most attracted to sensitive and humorous mates. Ideally, they should also have a bachelor’s degree or higher (高学历 gāo xuélì “high education”) and have a lot of financial fat on their ribs (高收入 gāo shōurù “high income”).
Boars, on the other hand, are looking for the perfect Baifumei (白富美 báifùměi), the Chinese synonym for “dream woman”, i.e. a beauty (美 měi “beautiful”) with a fair complexion (白 bái “white, pale”) and a large bank account (富 fù “rich, wealthy”). The perfect match is then best spiced with clever brains (高知女性 gāozhī nǚxìng “intellectual lady”) and a good pinch of joie de vivre (热爱生活 rè’ài shēnghuó).
Once the prey has taken the bait, they are thoroughly fattened up. In other words, a relationship of trust is gradually built up to tame them. In Chinese pig scam slang, this is called 养猪 yǎng zhū “breeding pigs”. Once the pigs have put on enough weight, the scam knife is sharpened and drawn to exploit the built-up trust by every trick in the book and turn the feigned romance into profit.
The pig breeders then really go all-in with every lie to gut their victims down to the last yuan. They lure their lovestruck victims, for example, to gambling platforms, seduce them into making supposedly lucrative investments or ask for large sums of money to get out of an alleged financial predicament. By the time their victims realize they have been slaughtered, the butchers have long since disappeared, along with their money.
Hopefully, you will have better luck when looking for love and will not be led like a pig to the slaughter. Neither in China nor anywhere else.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
