The Foreigner in Formosa

Christians Launch Civil Disobedience Campaign In China

Guess they don't approve of the Chinese Communist Party tearing down their crosses and blowing up their churches.

In an online campaign, church leaders in the eastern province of Zhejiang have called on Christians to craft hundreds of small wooden crosses, paint them red, and display them at home or on their cars.

The CCP's persecution of Falun Gong started in much the same manner, if I recall correctly.

Hey Kids! Can You Spot The Difference Between ISIS Islamofascists And Chinese Communists?

Trick question.

Say, when will Taiwan's China Post publish paeans to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's wisdom? Because he's clearly emulating the wise and farsighted policies of the Post's beloved President Xi Xinping.

Not to mention Joseph Stalin. Let us not forget Comrade Joe Stalin.

Big cathedral go boom.

"...autocracy can work, sometimes, under wise leadership."
— The China Post. Democracy and autocracy each have their merits. July 25, 2015

With KMT Poised For Defeat In Taiwan's Next Presidential Election, Its Supporters Extol The "Virtues" Of Dictatorship Once Again

The aura of Loserdom is strong with this one:

Taiwan's China Post declares that autocracy works under "wise" leadership

The paper's argument rests upon three examples: Singapore, China and South Korea.

With regards to the first country, it must be asked: If autocracy in Singapore works so well, why do over half its citizens wish to emigrate? Is it possible there's something Singaporeans know about Singapore that the China Post does not?

Perish the thought. The people can NEVER know more than their would-be masters.

As for China, it's telling that the Post omitted any defense of the wisdom of the Chinese Communist Party's Nazi-like policy of exterminating religious minorities for the purpose of organ harvesting. (But how splendid though, that the Butchers of Beijing make the cattle cars to their ghoulish death camps run on time.)

Lastly, we come to South Korea, which represents a full third of the author's defense of autocracy:

South Korea is another case in point...The free economic zones promulgated by the government have won support from the public majority, and are en route to attracting more foreign investment.

That would be an admirable achievement for autocracy...if indeed it was an autocracy that had conceived and implemented it!

(The facts however, show that the first of South Korea's economic zones was set up in 2003. At which time, Korea was a democracy...)

Welcome back from your operation, Joe Hung. It's good to see the quality of your columns has not suffered despite your convalescence: rest assured, they are as error-riddled and badly-argued when their author ingests mind-altering pain medication as when he does not.

"China Has NEVER Mistreated Religious Minorities...And We'll Stop Harvesting Their Organs As Soon As We Possibly Can!"

In a splendid display of benevolence, justice and morality, the Chinese Communist Party presents yet another empty promise to be a little less Nazi-like.

With us, as always, is eminent historian Joe Hung of Taiwan's China Post, to explain the complex constitutional rationale behind China's exploitation and genocide of Tibetans, Uighurs and Falun Gong adherents:

Sounds legit.

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Communist Party Of China Outlaws Good Deeds

I swear, this sounds like a satire from the People's Cube:

A follower of a Chinese religious leader who has reportedly been persecuted for more than a decade and recently incriminated by the Chinese government for undertaking “illegal acts of goodwill” has come to Taiwan seeking assistance...

Chinese Anti-Christian Pogroms Continue

Church steeples removed in another Maoist attack upon freedom of religion.

China To Have Largest Christian Population By 2030

Change is afoot:

...Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.

But the Communist Party's totalitarian impulses are never far from view:

"They want the pastor to preach in a Communist way. They want to train people to practice in a Communist way," said the house-church preacher, who said state churches often shunned potentially subversive sections of the Bible. The Old Testament book in which the exiled Daniel refuses to obey orders to worship the king rather than his own god is seen as "very dangerous", the preacher added. [empasis added]

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UPDATE (Apr 22 / 2014): A Christian refugee from China predicts more religious persecution in the land of his birth. Safe bet there.

UPDATE (Apr 28 / 2014): Chinese government demolishes church after promising not to. We've seen what Chinese assurances have been worth in the past.

Falun Gong At The Lake Of The Sun And The Moon

Chinese tourists to Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan are being treated to disturbing evidence of their government's persecution of Falun Gong.  And there are objections aplenty:

Following complaints from several tourists, the director of the Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area Administration said yesterday it did not know how to deal with the Falun Gong protesters at the nation’s premier scenic spot.

Tseng Kuo-chi (曾國基), director of administration, told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview that the protests by Falun Gong members were directed at Chinese tourists, who normally visit Sun Moon Lake, Alishan, the National Palace Museum and other popular tourist attractions.

Chinese tourists may have been the targets, but a Canadian visitor to the lake was found to be unhappy as well:

The Taipei Times contacted Tseng after it ran a letter on Monday from Canadian Paul Gallien, a high school teacher who visited Sun Moon Lake last week and was disturbed by a Falun Gong display he saw at one of the shoreline temples.

“Part of the display included very graphic images of dead bodies, including a pregnant woman with parts of her skin and flesh removed revealing an unborn child within the womb,” Gallien wrote.

[...]

Traveling with his two-year-old daughter and her five-year-old cousin, Gallien said he doubted the two youngsters “have necessary faculties to avoid being traumatized by such photographs.” 

Even though I don't have children, I know where he's coming from.  On the other hand, the Canadian government requires cigarette makers to print gruesome images on cigarette packs, in an effort to discourage people from smoking.  51 billion cigarettes sold yearly in Canada works out to . . . oh, I don't know HOW many packs.  But it's a good bet Mr. Gallien's kids will come across at least some of these at grandpa's house or the neighbor's living room or even as litter on the side of the road.

(You oughtta see the anti-smoking warnings the Aussie government requires.  Hope you're not eating when you take a gander at the gangrened foot.)

If governments mandate the printing of nasty photos to educate people on societal ills, they have absolutely no room to object when private individuals or organizations do likewise.

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POSTSCRIPT:  Personally, I'm of the notion that "The Lake of the Sun and the Moon" is whole lot more poetic than the Chinglishy "Sun Moon Lake."

(Image from Travel to Taiwan blog)

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UPDATE:  Now, I guess I can't object if the Taiwanese government tries to REASON with the Falun Gong group about this.  Certainly, if I was a member of that religion, I would have concerns that distasteful images might turn some observers against my cause.  But if Falun Gong wants to run that risk, then that's their business.

UPDATE #2:  Falun Gong displays grisly photos outside a provincial legislature in Mr. Gallien's home country.  A few kids may have walked by, I dunno.

UPDATE #3:  Falun Gong displays similar pictures on a shanty outside a Chinese consulate in Vancouver, B.C. for 7 or 8 years.  On a public sidewalk.

(The mayor, under pressure from China, eventually got his way and had the hut dismantled.  While the fate of the structure is being appealed, Falun Gong adherents are nonetheless still at liberty to protest AND DISPLAY THEIR PICTURES outside the consulate, minus their makeshift hut.)

All this is not to pick on Mr. Gallien, whom I sympathize with.  I simply point out that Falun Gong is free to use graphic images in public places within Gallien's home country to protest China's ill treatment of their co-religionists.

So why should they not have that very same right in Taiwan as well?

UPDATE #4:  Now that Taiwan's opened the door to the Chinese, we can probably expect opponents of the regime to be attacked by hired goons or mobsters, as was done in this case.

UPDATE (Apr 23/09):  Wednesday's Taipei Times' editorial on the issue.

Sounds Like Somebody's Hankerin' To Harvest A Few Organs

Guess there's not enough Falun Gong members in Taiwan to fit the bill.  From Friday's China Post:

The Presbyterian Church has been meddling in China's domestic politics for nearly a century.  It has driven a wedge between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan by instilling hatred for mainland Chinese in the hearts and minds of Chinese on Taiwan.

Hard to figure out exactly what the author means by "China" here.  First of all, if he means the Republic of China (Taiwan), then he's surely in error, because Taiwan was a colony of Japan a hundred years ago.  Any "meddling" that might have taken place a hundred years ago would therefore have been in Japanese imperial affairs, not in China's domestic politics. 

On the other hand, if by "China" the author is referring to the People's Republic of China, then again he's wrong, because Mao expelled all Western churches back in '49.

I'll assume then, that by "China" the writer means "Taiwan", and by "nearly a century", he means 60 years.  That would suggest that the editorialist bears a grudge regarding the Presbyterians' opposition to human rights abuses by Taiwan's former dictators.

Such complaints by KMT apologists are a bit rich, however:

In 1975, after the KMT confiscated romanized Bibles and prohibited the printing of romanized texts, the [Presbyterian Church of Taiwan] issued "Our Appeal -- Concerning the Bible, the Church and the Nation" which asked that the government respect religious freedom and carry out political reform.

Talk about meddling!  In the 1970s the KMT dictatorship in Taiwan OUTLAWED Bibles written in the Taiwanese vernacular.  In doing so, it violated two fundamental principles held by all modern democratic states:  that of religious freedom and that of separation of Church and State.  (Which should come as no surprise, because Taiwan in the '70s was no democracy.)

As for any "wedge" that has been driven between the Taiwanese and the Chinese, the writer conveniently forgets to mention any possible role that decades of Chinese belligerence and threats of war might have played in fostering anti-Chinese sentiment -- or that KMT anti-communist propaganda might have played a role as well.

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UPDATE:  Noticed a few similarities between this 2004 Bevin Chu blog post from a few years back and the piece in Friday's China Post. 

Technically, it's not plagiarism, since I believe Mr. Chu wrote the Post's editorial as well.  But it's still quite a long passage to simply CUT-AND-PASTE, however:

As part of his election campaign, Chen Shui-bian ordered Chen Yu-hao, former chairman of the Tuntex Group and a fugitive exiled to the US, placed on Taiwan's "Ten Most Wanted" list. Chen Shui-bian was desperate to cast himself as a squeaky clean political reformer at Chen Yu-hao's expense.

A furious Chen Yu-hao responded by appearing on television and revealing the ugly truth. Chen Shui-bian had eagerly pocketed a fortune in political contributions from Chen Yu-hao over the past decade.

When Chen Shui-bian tried to deny the charges, Chen Yu-hao revealed that ROC legislator Shen Fu-hsiung, a DPP "elder" with a reputation for honesty within DPP circles was an eyewitness who saw Chen Yu-hao hand First Lady Wu Shu-chen a bag full of cash.

Considering Shen was also Chen Shui-bian's campaign manager, Chen Yu-hao's revelation put Shen in a somewhat awkward position. Rather than lie, Shen went into hiding for the following week.

What happened next was like a scene out of a black comedy by Stanley Kubrick.

A delegation of ministers from the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, a long time abettor of Taiwan independence, paid an emergency visit to Shen. What textual truth did these supposedly devout Christians share with him? They solemnly assured Shen that it was not a sin to lie as long as it was in a good cause. In other words, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, unless of course it advances Taiwan independence."

Be that as it may, I cannot find any corroboration for Chu's story about Taiwan's Presbyterian Church.  I can only speculate that Church leaders may have said something about "forgiveness" at the time (as Christians often do), and that Chu has misinterpreted -- or, to be less kind, twisted -- their statements to suggest the Church advocates the telling of deliberate falsehoods.

UPDATE (Dec 13/08):  Mr. Chu's account of the Chen Yu-hao story appears a bit one-sided.  From AsiaTimes Online:

In early February [of 2004] Chen Yu-hao faxed three letters to opposition legislators claiming that he had made donations to the election campaign of President Chen Shui-bian. At first he tried to claim that Chen Shui-bian had simply pocketed the money, a claim that was refuted by officials from Chen Shui-bian's own DPP, who produced photocopies of the receipts.

[...]

The DPP also pointed out that Chen Yu-hao had given donations 10 times as large to both the other rival candidates for the 2000 presidential election; Lien Chan of the Kuomintang (KMT) and James Soong, then running as an independent candidate got NT$100 million each.

On top of this Chen Yu-hao had given another NT$100 million to the KMT in the early 1990s, which somehow never made its way into party coffers but ended up in the private bank accounts of Soong's family members.

[...]

There is no doubt that Soong transferred NT$248 million of KMT funds into the bank accounts of his family members in the Chung Hsing Bills Finance Corp, of which NT$100 million came from Chen Yu-hao and another NT$80 million from construction company boss Liang Po-hsun. Liang is also a fugitive from Taiwanese justice, accused of embezzling money from the Overseas Chinese Bank. And while Soong claims the money was to be used for party purposes, there is no evidence that it was so used, and Soong never attempted to return the money - neither when he left the KMT secretary-general's post nor when he left the party itself in late 1999.

** Irony Alert **

1999:  China trashes the Falun Gong sect, calling it, "An evil cult."

2000:  Beijing vilifies Taiwanese Vice-President Annette Lu as, "The scum of the nation."

2006:  The PRC blasts Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian as, "A destroyer of peace."

2008:  The Chinese government labels the Dalai Lama, "A wolf in monk's robes.  A devil with a human face, but the heart of a beast."

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But the icing on the cake?  A headline on the front page of Monday's Taipei Times:  "Media 'demonizes' China, Beijing's UK envoy says"

LOL

Defending Freedom of Religion

C'mon, admit it.  You too, raised an eyebrow when the Dalai Lama proposed that his successor might be democratically chosen from a field of monastic candidates.

In today's paper, Beijing plays the part of reactionary:

"The Chinese government has a policy of religious freedom and respects Tibetan Buddhism's religious rituals and historic conventions," said [Chinese Foreign Ministry] spokesman Liu Jianchao.

"The Dalai Lama's related actions clearly violate established religious rituals and historic conventions and therefore cannot be accepted," he told a regular news conference, without elaborating.

It's a bad thing to violate established religious rituals and historic conventions?  Well then, I'm sure Mr. Liu is outraged by Beijing's recent decision to ban reincarnation without government approval.  Yes sir, any day now we can all expect Mr. Liu to publicly denounce that little violation of "religious rituals and historic conventions", can't we?

Mr. Liu, you say Beijing believes in religious freedom?  THEN BUTT OUT.  If Buddhists want to change their traditions, let 'em hash it out amongst themselves.  The State has many legitimate jobs - but micromanaging religious affairs isn't one of them. 

Government Overstretch

From the TimesOnline (via The Drudge Report):

Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders. The ban is included in new rules intended to assert Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s restive and deeply Buddhist people.  [emphasis added]

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.

Check out some of the fun comments there, too.  As Eugene from Heidelberg says, "Permission to reincarnate, sir!"

I look forward to hearing of further attempts by Beijing to regulate the afterlife.

File under China - Praying Without a License.

Friendship

How does the joke go?  A friend is someone who's always there to help you; a true friend is someone who will stick around afterwards to help bury the bodies.

By that measure, Taiwan's KMT must now be counted as a true friend of the Communist Party of China:

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus [on May 2nd] blocked a legislative resolution that would have asked the UN and international human-rights groups to investigate China's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

[...]

According to the Taiwan Falun Dafa Association, China has stepped up persecution of Falun Gong members, imprisoning them in concentration camps -- including one in Liaoning Province where some are said to have had organs removed for transplant.

I'm SO disillusioned.  The China Post has written countless editorials extolling the KMT's love of sweet veritas.  President Chen beat the KMT in an election after being shot.  Give us the truth, the China Post repeatedly states - we have to know how Chen orchestrated the assassination attempt on his own life in order to win crucial sympathy votes!

But now, despite that kind of idealistic commitment to the truth, the KMT helps the CCP bury corpses.  Say it ain't so!  Someone wants to look into whether the Communists murdered members of a religious minority and harvested their organs?  Why, a trivial little matter like that, and the KMT's appetite for investigations vanishes.  Let's just quietly kill this in committee instead, they whisper.

What's remarkable about the entire affair is that even members from the People First Party (a heavily pro-Communist political group) were in favor of the measure.  Their allies in the KMT would have nothing of it, however.  An investigation like that would destroy all of the KMT's hard work to cozy up to the Communists.  An investigation like that would look bad when China makes a grab for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.  An investigation like that would make the Taiwanese reluctant to hitch their wagon to China's star.

Dare I also point out that shining light on the subject might also reduce the available supply of fresh kidneys, hearts and corneas for members of Taiwan's KMT?  Maybe it's just a coincidence that a large number of them happen to be a tad on the geriatric side.

Beleaguered

Poor China.  Under attack from all sides.  First, Taiwan cruelly and heartlessly abolished a defunct council with a $30 a year budget, and now Benedict XVI mistreats China even further by appointing Joseph Zen, a Hong Kong anti-communist bishop, as cardinal.

Imagine that.  Benedict XVI appointed someone cardinal.  Just who does that guy think he is, the pope or something?

But Beijing isn't taking THIS lying down.  No, sir.  The "pontiff" of the Chinese government-directed "Patriotic Catholic Church", Liu Bai Nian, stepped up to the plate and denounced the move as "an act of hostility to China".  Jack Fowler over at the National Review had this to say about the new cardinal, and the basis for the Chinese government's opposition to his appointment:

[Cardinal Zen is] a revered figure on Hong Kong, and increasingly around the world, except in Beijing, [and] is well known for his outspoken defense of religious freedom and the democracy movement.  [He is despised] by the PRC, which banned Zen from the mainland in 2000 when he defended Pope John Paul II for canonizing Chinese martyrs. Nian based his attack on Zen’s appointment on the Bible: “China’s socialist system comes from God. We should all protect it and obey it. This is what the Bible tells us to do.”  Of course, Nian is referring to Paul’s Letter to the Cantonese, 3: 7-11. [emphasis added]

What, you can't remember Paul's Letter to the Cantonese from Sunday school?  Don't be so lazy, then - look it up in your Bible.  It's probably there in the back, somewhere.

Mr. Bush Goes to Church

A Chinese Christian church, that is.  Not one of the underground churches (that is to say, a REAL church), but a state-registered "patriotic" one.  Still, it was a nice show of support for religious freedom in a country that desperately needs more of it.

One story I read had this to say:

"I think we're at a turning point.  In years past, (underground) family churches were mostly in the countryside, but more and more intellectuals are turning to Christianity...We also believe that the churches will play a role in China's democratization."

(From the Nov 21st ed of The Taipei Times, Bush's visit shows plight of underground churches.  Sorry, no link.)

This is markedly different from the West, where it seems that the intelligensia bears open hostility towards Christianity.  Another story I read some time back talked about China's intellectual "Christian sympathizers" - intellectuals who are not Christian but nontheless look favorably upon Christian thinking on morality.  There are currently 40-80 million Christians in China, and it's entirely possible that they could help to reform the country in positive ways.

That is, if the Butchers of Beijing don't come down on them like a ton of bricks, like the North Koreans:

...five (Christian leaders), accused of being "Protestant spies" and who refused to abandon their religious beliefs, were bound hand and foot and made to lie down before being crushed  by a huge steam roller...

Some of their fellow parishioners assembled to watch the execution "cried, screamed out or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steam roller."

US releases sickening testimony from North Korea

Axis of Evil?  What makes you think that?

Spiritual Criminals

The Nov 9th editions of The Taipei Times and The China Post both had a story about 3 people in China who were convicted of the crime of printing Bibles.  The technical crime for which they were found guilty was "illegal business practices"; it is illegal in China to print Bibles without special approval from the "State Bureau of Religious Affairs".  They could each face sentences of up to three years in prison.

Sorry, neither paper had a link on their websites.

China News

The Butchers of Beijing arrest 50 people for praying without a license:

China detains underground church leaders

Strategic partnership, Mr. Clinton?