15. May 16, 2023

On the road with Taiwan on my mind. The United Nations, New York. The Alliance for Peace, Peace Conference, DC. The Cannes Film Festival.

On the road

I’ve been on the road since my last post and it’s been a productive, intensely packed, fortuitous feeling trip, spending time with friends and family and on work. But I miss writing and look forward to returning to routine in another week.

I have much to follow-up on. I will continue doing my best to layer and interweave international relations, diplomacy, foreign policy, peace, national security, war, gender, history, my identity as a filmmaker, my experiences in Taiwan, China, the US, the interconnected challenges these countries face domestically and pose to each other and why Taiwan matters. As one friend put it, “the only ‘Taiwan question’ is asking the 23 million people of Taiwan what kind of future they want in Taiwan for themselves and their families.” I agree and I’ve been asking.

I’m planning to post shorter pieces and eventually, to add video links, without giving away the film on Taiwan I’m building toward sharing. Here are some quick, initial thoughts on what has transpired in the world over the last couple of weeks, and what I’ve been working on that’s relevant to Taiwan.

The Cannes Film Festival

Hello from day one of the Cannes Film Festival. I’ve been consistently practicing French to reclaim and renew my use of the language, only to discover that when in France and wanting to speak, Chinese still comes to mind first and gets mixed in. The power of Chinese language colonization is clearly very strong, at least for me.

It does maybe help me understand more when the Chinese Ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, says in interview with Swiss journalist Darius Rochebin on La Chaine Info (LCI), as he did on April 21st, that it is the Chinese people, rather than the Taiwanese, who decide Taiwan’s fate, or calls for the “reeducation” of Taiwanese people after Chinese annexation of Taiwan by peaceful or “other” means. When shown a video created by China, in which Taiwan can be seen bombarded by China in all directions, Lu said, “It is not us who menace. It is us who are menaced.” (!)

Finally, to top off Lu’s twisted wish list of fabrications, when asked by Rochebin whether he thought Crimea was a part of Ukraine which it is according to international law, Lu replied, “Under international law, even the post-Soviet states don’t have effective status … there isn’t an international consensus that solidifies their status as sovereign states.” (!) Chinese backed Russian imperialism and Russia backed Chinese imperialism are on the rise, democracy is under threat, and the question remains who in the US and Taiwan are backing China and Russia and why?

Shortly before Lu Shaye’s performance, on April 18th, former Minister of Culture Lung Yingtai from the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party under former president, Ma Ying-jeou, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, “In Taiwan, Friends Are Starting to Turn Against Each Other,” that provoked a great deal of backlash for attempting to appear neutral and anti-war, especially by using interviews with “common folk,” farmers and fishermen to “best” represent Taiwan’s character, while actually representing her own views which lean toward accommodating China.

Our character is perhaps best exemplified away from the political noise of Taipei, in rural farming areas and fishing villages where people are prone to laughter, giving generous gifts of their produce and issuing spontaneous dinner invitations. Even here, opinions on China differ, but there is a common denominator of down-to-earth realism that I hope, for all our sakes, will prevail over the long run. It’s not that the common folk believe resisting China is futile but that Taiwan will always be within China’s immense gravitational pull and that pragmatism, even accommodation with China, might be preferable to war….

Taiwan is set to hold a pivotal presidential election in January, and the question of whether to confront China or pursue conciliation will have significant implications for us all in the months ahead. If the K.M.T. wins, tension with China might ease; if the D.P.P. retains power, who knows?

Mr. Chen says it won’t matter anyway: The United States and China decide our fate.

Who would he blame if war broke out? I asked.

“Whoever fires the first shot.”

Lung Yingtai is someone who an early consultant on the Taiwan film, Ruby Chen, of CNEX Foundation, who lives in China, had suggested I interview. She’d also recommended I interview Chen Chu, the former mayor of Kaohsiung, who is in the film, and television journalist, Sisy Chen, who I interviewed, found interesting, could not fit in the film and may share more on.

The danger raised in Lung Yingtai’s oped lies in the question of whether and how Taiwan can negotiate with China without sacrificing Taiwan’s democracy, identity and way of life as happened for Hong Kong, especially when China refuses to allow Taiwan to negotiate from a place of equal standing and not enough countries or international organizations are stepping up to support Taiwan’s equal negotiating status.

Fang-Yu Chen, Wen Liu, and Brian Hioe wrote a response to Lung Yingtai’s piece in The Diplomat titled “In the Face of War, the Dangers of Pro-China Rhetoric in Taiwan, A subset of pro-China intellectuals and political elites in Taiwan are trying to convince the public that bolstering self-defense is somehow recklessly provocative.” They highlight how:

…there are also “anti-war” sentiments in Taiwan that desire closer ties with China (about 30 percent, according to academic polls). Those holding such views argue for the strategy of “dialogue” rather than deterrence. Lung Yingtai, the former culture minister in Taiwan, may exemplify the pro-China viewpoint…

Lung’s article highlights some common rhetorical strategies from the pro-China camp. First off, they tend to conflate self-defense and “confrontation.” China’s leaders have reiterated countless times that they will never abandon the use of force as an option. For Taiwan, self-defense is the basic way to deter a potential armed conflict and resist annexation…

This “anti-war” rhetoric has been used, mostly by pro-China intellectuals and political elites, to accuse the ruling DPP of encouraging war. However, it is completely wrong to frame self-defense as “war.” The argument that “China has not yet fired any bullets so we do not have to treat them as an enemy” not only misplaces the roles of invader and defender but also ignores the fact that China has already prepared for war, as Chinese leaders explicitly state themselves.

Second, the pro-China side tends to privilege economic concerns over national security as a strategy to appear “politically neutral,” as if these were two mutually exclusive issues. Indeed, the overreliance on China’s economy is a real concern to Taiwan’s security. Surveys from the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, show that regarding cross-strait affairs, people’s national security concerns became higher than their economic concerns after 2018 – the first time economics and security had swapped places as the top cross-strait issue. In short, Taiwanese do care about national security in response to threats.

People who are dissatisfied with the current administration, including Lung, purposely paint a picture of a “divided Taiwan” that is unwilling to have dialogues across the political spectrum. In fact, the “division” that Lung implies is not a recent phenomenon, but a long-standing tension between a small percentage of people who primarily identify as Chinese and others.

Hong Kong

Journalist and author Louisa Lim wrote a beautiful piece about Hong Kong on April 25th, “Hong Kong’s Memory Is Being Erased”.

(Chinese) authorities aren’t merely choking off future protest; they are attempting to rewrite Hong Kong’s history.

Revisionism — with its ancillary altering or obliteration of memory — is an act of repression. It’s the same playbook China used after violently crushing the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing. Then, state-induced amnesia was imposed gradually. At first the government churned out propaganda that labeled those protests as a counterrevolutionary rebellion that had to be suppressed. But over the years, the state slowly excised all public memory of its killings.

In Hong Kong the silence has set in much more quickly. The gagging of dissenting voices and editing of the past has happened at warp speed, mirroring the blink-and-you-miss-it modern news cycle. This has its own logic; the faster the blanket of silence is thrown over Hong Kong, the less time there is for criticism to take root, and the faster the next phase of transformation — whatever that may be — can be introduced. The cycle of unmaking accelerates.

I worked in Hong Kong’s once-cacophonous newsrooms and covered its boisterous protest rallies. Now most Hong Kong journalists I know have fallen silent. Some are in jail, some are in exile, and some no longer write, as no publications are left that will publish them. After a draconian national security law was imposed on Hong Kong in 2020, at least 12 news outlets closed down, including the popular, pro-democracy Apple Daily. Its founder, Jimmy Lai, could face life in prison on national security charges, and six of its executives have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces, a vague charge introduced with the new security law. Some of the shuttered outlets pulled their archives from the internet. This is how history is erased, both virtually and literally.

Harry Belafonte

On April 25, we lost Harry Belafonte, a legendary man who deeply inspired me. I was lucky to produce a film he was in, directed by Sarah and Emily Kunstler, the daughters of his friend, civil rights lawyer, William Kunstler. In their film, “Disturbing the Universe,” which was Academy award shortlisted, Harry Belafonte shows up in South Dakota to support the leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Dennis Banks and Russell Means. With Belafonte’s presence, sitting in the courtroom, and the support of their lawyer, William Kunstler, AIM successfully defended American Indian sovereignty at Wounded Knee. In a life filled with meaningful activism, Belafonte, with his friend, Martin Luther King Jr, was a major voice in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and in the 1980s, worked to end apartheid in South Africa, coordinating Nelson Mandela’s first visit to the United States.

Charles M. Blow wrote a moving piece called The Harry Belafonte Speech that Changed My Life that has stuck with me, especially these words about the civil rights movement which apply equally well to the women’s movement and democratic movements ignored, abandoned or sacrificed by other democracies:

(Belafonte) chastised Black leaders for the cessation of pressure on the political establishment after the initial successes of the civil rights movement, saying: “We surrendered to greed. We surrendered to our hedonist joys. We destroyed the civil rights movement. Looking at the great harvest of achievements we had, all the young men and women of our communities ran off to the feast of Wall Street and big business and opportunity. And in that distraction, they left the field fallow.”

“Where are the radical thinkers?” he demanded.

He explained that at that stage in his life (86), he spent most of his time “encouraging young people to be more rebellious, to be more angry, to be more aggressive in making those who are comfortable with our oppression uncomfortable.”

The reality seized me that I had been playing much too small as a writer, covering and commenting on society and its systems rather than truly challenging them. I was at peril of being serenaded to sleep by professional vanities. I was squandering an opportunity and a responsibility.

The WGA strike

I am in solidarity with the WGA writers who went on strike on May 2nd against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a body that represents major Hollywood studios and production companies like Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount, Sony, Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney. The corporate state needs the educated and artists to maintain power, yet the moment any begin to demand fair pay, and greater respect for independent, creative work, they are silenced. There’s been a relentless corporate assault on culture, journalism, education, and the arts in America. We all need more courage and solidarity to shine a light on truth and demand justice.

Peace Conference in DC

From May 3 - 5, I attended the Alliance for Peacebuilding’s Peace Conference. I reconnected with many luminaries in the “Women, Peace and Security” community from whom I secured my first grant to make the Taiwan film.

How do you talk about peacebuilding in a way where people will pay attention and feel compelled to take action? In the news media, war gets more headlines than peace, conflict more airtime than reconciliation. And in our polarized world, reporting on conflict in a way that frames conflicts as us vs. them, good vs. evil often serves to dig us in deeper. 

Elizabeth Hume, Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, the umbrella organization for NGOs working on conflict resolution, bridge-building, and reconciliation in the US and around the world, says peacebuilders have been doing a poor job of communicating with the public—too academic, and not connecting with issues that concern everyday Americans. 

I have much more to share on this. Taiwan did come up at the conference in a session on gaming peace.

Filming at the United Nations

Thanks to executive producing a new documentary film from director and Hong Kong CNN journalist, Anna Coren, about Nobel Peace prize nominee and women’s rights activist, Mahbouba Seraj, and the plight of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban, I entered the United Nations for the first time to film.

A tour guide at the U.N. told me in aside when I asked him in the flag room about the flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan) that the most asked questions he gets while giving tours are: What happened to Taiwan? Where is Taiwan? Why is Taiwan not in the U.N.? What is resolution 2758? Why can that not just be said to deal with the status of China and not of Taiwan?

More on that and all of the above soon! Maintenant, je dois aller à une réunion à Cannes!