Friday, September 25, 2015

對寫作說幾句話

台灣年輕人經常不惜花費幾萬塊錢學習怎麼寫作。但這完全是在浪費你的時間和金錢。

自從十年前定居台灣到現在,我已經再也數不清究竟有多少個台灣人問過我能不能教他/她寫作了。台灣人對於莎士比亞的語言似乎有一種愛恨交織的情感,但有不少人還是真的想學好英文,這當然是為了實用所需。在台灣的補習班文化裡,人們看來都相信只要你(或你的父母)花的錢夠多,就可以自動習得一種語言技能。

潑大家冷水真是不好意思,但語言不是這樣學的,寫作更不能靠這樣學會。許多台灣人都情願付出800元甚至1000元的時薪,每周一兩次請一個不知道夠不夠格教別人甚麼的外國人來上課。對於大多數人來說,他們挑選「老師」的最重要標準是一個人的膚色,而不是他的學歷和成長背景。這種習性帶來的後果則完全不出所料:台灣人的英文讀寫能力一塌糊塗。

會話是一回事,要是一個人能夠藉由反覆練習而更有信心說一種外語,這樣的投資或許是值得的。可是當有人告訴我寫作的藝術可以教給別人,我卻不得不強烈存疑。因為這麼做就是行不通。

我剛到台灣幾個星期,一位有志於出國留學的朋友的朋友就要求我教他寫作。於是我教了他一陣子,直到他入伍服役,課程也隨之結束。我不喜歡這樣。但這段短暫的教學經驗也讓我明白寫作是教不來的。這也讓如今成為寫作者的我,開始回想自己當初是怎麼學習英文寫作的(法文才是我的母語)。

在我的經驗裡,寫作是主動學會的,而不是被別人給教會的。我開始學英文是因為我小時候想玩「龍與地下城」(Dungeons & Dragons),卻不想花大錢跟遊戲店買法文版的說明書。隨後不久我就對文學有了興趣,那時多半是看恐怖小說;洛夫克拉夫特(H.P. Lovecraft)是我最愛的作者,而我很快就感覺到,讀法文譯本是件愚蠢的事,要是能從原文讀他的超自然恐怖短篇或中篇,必定會感到更加痛快。

差不多在這個時候,我開始有了寫作的志向。那時還只是小朋友的我,是用我爸媽的Olivetti打字機寫短篇故事的(通常是冒險或科幻),但我那時還太小,不明白總有一天這會為我將來想做的事情定性。上了高中之後我開始用英文寫短篇,多半是彆腳的愛情故事,其實不過是在模仿洛夫克拉夫特、穆爾柯克(Michael Moorcock)等作家的風格。我明白了如果我想要好好寫作的話,首先就必須熟練英文的文法原理,像母語一樣。所以我報考了魁北克市唯一一所英語教學的預科學校聖羅倫斯學院(St. Lawrence College),主修文學藝術課程。

我一開始表現得不好,一部分是由於語言障礙,我永遠記得教授對我說,要是我的英文無法在短期間內突飛猛進,他不太相信我有辦法讀完學期。這當然讓我提高警覺,採取了一切必要措施確保這種結果不會發生。失敗絕對不是選項。我一直都是個貪婪的讀者,但現在我是有所為而讀,自覺地決定讀經典。我想,還有甚麼方法比閱讀大師們的文章更有益於學習語言呢?葉慈(W.B. Yeats)、康拉德(Joseph Conrad)、史坦貝克(John Steinbeck)、格林(Graham Greene)、吳爾芙(Virginia Woolf)、狄更斯(Charles Dickens),當然還有我一開始完全摸不著頭緒的莎士比亞,他們都成了我的老師。經由我的閱讀課程,我學會了欣賞風格、語氣、音調、論點、架構,以及好的敘事方式。每讀一本書我就把看不懂的字抄下來查字典,再把字義記下來,讓自己牢牢記住。沒有人教我這麼做,是我自己學會的。

上了大學搬到蒙特婁,主修英語文學之後,我對英語文學的愛好變得更強烈。那時我第一次和那些後來一直影響著我的語言藝術家結緣,像是歐威爾(George Orwell)、納博可夫(Vladimir Nabokov)、奈波爾(J.S. Naipaul)、魯西迪(Salman Rushdie)、石黑一雄、渥伍(Evelyn Waugh) 、艾利森(Ralph Ellison)、勒卡雷(John Le Carre)等人。我也經由閱讀世界文學開拓了自己的眼界(通常讀英文或法文譯本),也因此認識了杜斯妥也夫斯基(Fyodor Dostoevsky)、契訶夫(Anton Chekhov)、索忍尼辛(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)、馬哈福茲(Nagib Mahfouz)、巴爾加斯‧略薩(Mario Vargas Llosa)、馬奎斯(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)、米蘭‧昆德拉(Milan Kundera)、克里瑪(Ivan Klima)、湯瑪斯‧曼(Thomas Mann)、卡達萊(Ismael Kadare)、卡繆(Albert Camus)、法拉赫(Nuruddin Farah),還有三島由紀夫、谷崎潤一郎、村上春樹等作家。也是從那時開始,我飢渴地閱讀報紙和雜誌,從《紐約時報》到《科學人》,從《經濟學人》到《自然》。我也閱讀威爾遜(Edward O. Wilson)、薩根(Carl Sagan),以及最近不幸過世的薩克斯(Oliver Sacks)等等大師寫下的探討人類進化、流行病學、天文學及生命科學的科普著作。後來,當我對政治有了興趣,我也開始閱讀傳記、歷史研究,以及一些政治學著作(那時,麥基爾大學(McGill University)書店的政治學部門還有著十分豐富的選書)。我讀希欽斯(Christopher Hitchens)、伊格納蒂夫(Michael Ignatieff)、薩依德(Edward Said)、哈伯斯坦(David Halberstam)、卡普欽斯基(Ryszard Kapuscinski)、卡普蘭(Robert Kaplan)等人的著作,而且絕不錯過任何一期《外交政策》和《外交》雜誌。到了1996年大學畢業時,我已經讀過幾百本,沒錯,好幾百本書了。

進了研究所之後,我對書寫文字的熱情還是繼續保持,即使我後來進了加拿大政府部門工作,每天都得寫威脅評估、情報目標檔案之類枯燥無味的報告,我還是繼續讀小說和紀實文學。2005年搬來台灣的時候,我帶了2000本書來,十年下來,數目差不多增加了一倍。我倒不是認為任何有志寫作的人都應該拿這麼多書壓在自己身上(何況現在還有了Kindle電子書,雖然我這個保守派對這種媒介深惡痛絕),可是無庸置疑,我所認識的,並且啟發我走上寫作之路的每一位偉大作家都是熱愛閱讀的人,希欽斯、歐威爾、略薩、納博可夫,他們每一個人都盡可能的閱讀,而且絕不自限於舒適的母國文學傳統。

所以,與其付出大筆金錢被那些多半只想輕鬆獲利的外國人「教」寫作,我更建議這麼做:

第一課:閱讀、閱讀、閱讀,然後繼續讀更多。選你喜歡的主題,但不要侷限於單一類型。把小說和紀實文學搭配著讀,閱讀外國著作,讓自己向不同的文化敞開,就算讀翻譯書也不要緊。除了本地暢銷書榜上常見的(何其悲哀!)商場生存教戰書籍之外,還有一整個宇宙等著你去發掘。去探索不同的敘事傳統,很快你就會明白《哈利波特》和《卡拉馬助夫兄弟們》差別在哪、又為何不同,以及兩者何以各自有所成就。感受觀點切換與非線性敘事是怎麼影響我們理解一個故事的。閱讀你喜愛的作家傳記,看看他們是怎麼學會寫作的(我跟你保證,他們沒有一個寫作老師)。認識紀實作品之中同樣具備的敘事方法,以及薩根、古爾德(Stephen Gould)、霍金(Stephen Hawking)和薩克斯等等廣受大眾喜愛的科普作家,是怎麼把故事說得動聽的。寫作者要能夠分辨行得通和行不通的方式,才能真正長進,最好的學習方法則是親身體驗。不要忘記寫作是心智的映射,若是心智漫無章法、缺乏訓練,就不可能產生有價值的成果。必須先充實心智,然後才能將心智貢獻於宇宙。把你付給寫作老師的錢省下來,拿去多買幾本書。最後要知道,閱讀可以很有趣,而且獲益極大(我早就嗜讀成癮了)。

第二課:寫作、寫作、寫作。起先,你的寫作必定會去模仿你喜歡的作家。我自己的書寫一開始是近似於洛夫克拉夫特那種神經緊繃,堆砌形容詞的文體,但終究捨棄了這種寫法,如今覺得這種文字難以卒讀;接著我開始模仿康拉德,再來是格林、歐威爾,直到在好幾輪探索之後找到了自己的「聲調」和風格。毫無疑問,我的寫作風格來自於這一切影響,將來也會繼續隨著我現在和以後的閱讀所得而轉變,即使只是微調(比方說,我讀魯西迪獲法國文學的時候,寫下的句型往往更長更繁複;要是這個發展太過火,重讀海明威或歐威爾是有益的修正)。你寫得越多,就會越進步。從2006年進入《台北時報》當文字編輯直到今天,我寫過2000多篇新聞報導、社評或書評,還寫了五本書。進步是隨著時間慢慢累積的,十分幽微,但在你多年之後重讀舊作時就清楚可見了(因此作家幾乎不重讀舊作,以免因此畏縮不敢創作)。說真的,寫作就像舉重,因此也就能夠說明為什麼就連像我這樣多產的寫作者,要是有很長一段時間沒寫,也會很難再寫出值得出版的作品(兩個星期沒寫就足夠讓寫作的肌肉萎縮了)。每天空出一兩個小時寫作,寫甚麼都好:短篇故事、每日例行公事的自傳式改寫、對頁評論、書評,不然就寫信給真實存在或虛擬的朋友。要知道,寫作可以很有趣,而且獲益極大(我也早就嗜寫成癮了)。

就是這麼簡單(卻也可以很複雜)。沒有靈丹妙藥。寫作是要透過模仿和練習,以及向文字的世界敞開心胸並且盡可能融會貫通,才能進步的,這是永無休止的過程,之所以迷人也正因永無止盡。閱讀文學經典(也可以讀些現代文學,但這種機會越來越難得了)是最保險的方法。不要被略薩、杜斯妥也夫斯基這些鼎鼎大名給嚇到,跳下去,盡可能吸收就是了。這是一個在智識上增重的過程:你必須不斷挑戰你的腦袋,就像在長跑或舉重不斷精益求精那樣。我對於年輕人告訴我他們想要學寫作,一年卻讀不完一兩本書這件事,總是感到瞠目結舌。我平均每個月讀完五、六本書和幾十篇文章,而且在小說和紀實、英文和法文之間交替切換,盡可能讓自己的閱讀選擇多樣化。你不一定非得讀這麼多不可,但有件事是肯定的:就算你花了幾萬塊新台幣請外國老師,光是在智慧型手機上玩遊戲絕對不會讓你增廣見聞,更不可能讓你學會寫作的。

中譯:William Tsai
Original article: A Few Words on Writing

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Chinese Propaganda: Coming Soon to a Conference Near You

A few things you should know about the Oct. 5 CEFC US-China colloquium in Washington 

One week after Chinese President Xi Jinping completes his landmark visit to the United States, a Sino-U.S. Colloquium, under the theme “Beyond the Current Distrust,” will be held in Washington, D.C. The eighth in a series since 2012, the colloquium is organized by the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), a Chinese “strategic think tank” which recently established a branch in the Washington area. If you plan on attending the event, here are a few things you need to know about the organizer and some of the panelists. 

Though it advertises itself as a “non-governmental, non-profit civil society organization,” as I demonstrated in an earlier investigation, the Hong Kong-registered CEFC has high-level connections with China’s political warfare apparatus. Funded by the Shanghai-based multibillion-dollar energy logistics company CEFC China Energy Co., Ltd (Huaxin) — the sixth-largest private company in China — the CEFC has sponsored a series of events in recent years, many of them in support of China’s expanding territorial ambitions and claims of sovereignty over Taiwan. (Interesting trivia: Huaxin also recently acquired a majority stake in Slavia Prague, the Czech Republic’s oldest football club.) 

My article, published today in The Diplomat, continues here.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Hung Hsiu-chu’s Crusade Against Populism

Given her tendency to demonize civil society by constantly comparing it to Middle East-style terror organizations, we can only imagine how activists would fare under President Hung 

Seemingly incapable of coming up with a campaign platform that can resonate with the general public, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) has instead turned her rhetorical guns on the very thing that on Jan. 16 will decide who Taiwan’s next president will be: the people. Besides being a stunningly poor decision on the part of her advisers (if Hung listens to them at all), her fixation on “populism” as a supposed cancer eating away at Taiwanese society bespeaks a darker streak in the candidate’s personality — authoritarianism. 

Hung’s definition of the word “populism” has an irremediably negative connotation: Whoever disagrees with her views and policies is “irrational” (an old KMT trope) and does so because he/she has been influenced by “populist” ideas. Included in that category is anyone who has participated in civic activism to challenge the authorities. In fact, by repeatedly comparing Taiwanese activists to Islamic State and the Red Guards, Hung co-equates “populism” with terrorism and extremism as a not-too-subtle way to further discredit her many opponents. 

My article, published today in Thinking Taiwan, continues here (photo by the author).

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

POLITICAL WARFARE WATCH: Chang Wei-shan’s Troubling Connections

A young employee at the Executive Yuan who supports unification is also involved with organizations that promote the secession of Okinawa from Japan 

Chang Wei-shan (張瑋珊) is innocent-looking enough. She is 24 years old, a native from Yunlin, and currently works at the Executive Yuan as part of its “new media” team, created last year after the Sunflower Movement, when Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) was still premier. At the weekend, the young woman became the object of controversy after it was revealed that she had appeared in a program by the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television on “pro-unification youth in Taiwan,” which aired as part of the commemorations surrounding the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. More troubling are the people she associates with. 

To summarize the interview: Chang grew up believing she was a Taiwanese and that China was a threat. She was raised to unquestionably support Taiwanese independence, and to “venerate the Japanese,” which she blames on the “de-Sinicized” education she received under former presidents Lee and Chen (interestingly, she checks all the boxes listed recently by supporters of the China-centric changes to school curriculum guidelines). Following her “awakening,” which she says occurred after she read various Chinese history books, Chang realized that Taiwan and China’s fates are “inseparable,” that she was “Chinese,” and became a supporter of Taiwan’s unification. 

My article, published today in Thinking Taiwan, continues here.

Monday, September 14, 2015

A Few Words on Writing


Young Taiwanese are often willing to fork out tens of thousands of NT dollars to be taught how to write. That’s a complete waste of your time and money

I’ve lost count of the number of times since I relocated to Taiwan ten years ago where I was asked by a Taiwanese if I could teach him/her how to write. Taiwanese society seems to have a love-hate relationship with Shakespeare’s language, yet many are those who, for pragmatic reasons surely, want to learn it. In this culture of the cram school, the belief seems to be that if you (or your parents) throw enough money at it, a linguistic skill will automatically be acquired.

I am sorry to disappoint, but that’s just not how one learns a language—especially not how to write. Many Taiwanese will pay NT$800, perhaps even NT$1,000 an hour, once or twice a week, on an expatriate who may or may not be qualified to teach anything. For many, one’s skin color, rather than education and background, is the main factor in selecting a “teacher.” This practice has yielded results that should not surprise anyone: English literacy in Taiwan is deplorable.

Conversation is one thing, and if, by dint of practice, one becomes more confident speaking a foreign language, then the investment might be worth it. However, I have strong reservations when someone tells me that the art of writing can be taught. It just doesn’t work that way.

A few weeks after I arrived in Taiwan, a friend of a friend, who had ambitions to study abroad, asked me to do just that. We did that for a while before his military service put an end to our meetings. I hated it. Yet this brief effort made me realize that writing cannot be taught. And it made me think about the manner in which I, now a writer, learned how to write in English in the first place (my mother tongue is French).

In my experience, one learns how to write; one isn’t taught how to do so. I first learned English because, as a child, I wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons but didn’t want to spend the ludicrous amounts of money that the store was charging for the French translations of the rulebooks. Soon after that came my interest in literature, mostly horror at the time. H. P. Lovecraft was my favorite, and I quickly felt that it was silly to be reading French translations, that my experience would be all the more satisfying if I could read his novellas and short stories of supernatural terror in their original language.

It was around that time that my ambitions to become a writer emerged. As a mere toddler I’d written short stories (mostly adventure and science fiction) on my parents’ Olivetti typewriter, but I had been too young to realize that this would one day define what I wanted to be. During high school I wrote my first short stories in English. Those were abysmal affairs, mostly, and mere attempts to copy the styles of Lovecraft, Moorcock and others. I realized that if I wanted to do this properly, I’d first have to master the basics of English, as it were. So I enrolled in the only English-language CEGEP in Quebec City, St Lawrence’s College, in the arts and literature program.

I did somewhat poorly at first, partly because of the language barrier, and I will always remember the professor who told me that if my English didn’t improve fast, he had doubts I could complete the program. This certainly caught my attention, and I did the necessary to ensure that such a thing would not happen. Failure was not an option. I had always been an avid reader, but now I had a purpose, and I made the conscious decision to read classics. What better way to learn a language, I thought, than by studying the masters of prose? Yeats, Conrad, Steinbeck, Greene, Woolf, Dickens, and of course Shakespeare, who initially was complete Chinese to me, became my teachers. Through my classes, I learned to appreciate style, tone, voice, point of view, structure, and what makes good storytelling. Whenever I read a book, I’d jot down the words that I didn’t know, would look them up in a dictionary, and commit the meaning to memory by writing it down. Nobody taught me that; I learned it.

My appetite for English literature became even greater after I moved to Montreal to pursue studies in English literature at university. There I was first introduced to wordsmiths who have had a lasting influence on me, writers like Orwell, Nabokov, Naipaul, Rushdie, Ishiguro, Waugh, Ellison, Le Carré and others. I also expanded my horizons by reading world literature (usually translations into English or French). It was thus that I became acquainted with the likes of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, Mahfouz, Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez, Kundera, Klima, Mann, Kadaré, Camus, Farah, Mishima, Tanizaki and Murakami, among many others. It was also around that time that I became an avid reader of newspapers and magazines, from the New York Times to Scientific American, the Economist to Nature. I also read scientific works on human evolution, epidemiology, astronomy, and life sciences by greats like Edward O. Wilson, Carl Sagan, and Oliver Sacks, who unfortunately passed away recently. Later on, when I became interested in politics, I started reading biographies, history, and several books about political science (back then the McGill University bookstore had a very rich selections of books in its political science section). I read Hitchens, Ignatieff, Said, Halberstam, Kapuscinski, Kaplan, and so on, and never missed an issue of Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs. By the time I graduated in 1996, I had read hundreds—several hundreds—of books.

When I entered grad school, my passion for the written word continued, and even though I was now working for the Canadian government and spent days writing dry reports like threat assessments and files on intelligence targets, I made sure to keep reading fiction and non-fiction. When I moved to Taiwan in 2005, I brought with me about 2,000 books, a number that has nearly doubled in the ten years since. I am not suggesting that anyone who wants to become a writer should weigh himself down with such large quantities of books (and yes, there is Kindle now, a medium that, conservative me, I abhor), but there is no doubt that all great writers that I know of and who inspired me to become one, were avid readers. Hitchens, Orwell, Vargas Llosa, Nabokov, all of them read as much as they could, and they never limited themselves to the comfortable literary traditions of their home country.

So, rather than spend huge sums of money being “taught” how to write by foreigners who likely are looking to make easy money, I’d do the following:

Lesson #1: Read, read, read. And read some more. Choose topics that you like, but do not limit yourself to one genre. Mix fiction and non-fiction, and open yourself to different cultures by reading books from abroad, even if they are translations. There’s a whole universe outside books on how to be a successful businessperson, which (sadly) are the usual bestsellers in this part of the world. Explore different traditions of storytelling; soon you will see how and why Harry Potter and The Brothers Karamazov are different, and why both succeed in their own way. Discover why shifting points of view and non-linear storytelling can affect how we respond to a story. Read biographies by your favorite writers, see how they learned the trade (they didn’t have tutors, I can tell you that). Learn how non-fiction also involves storytelling and why popular science writers like Sagan, Gould, Hawking and Sacks, to name a few, were also such successful storytellers. Writers improve by seeing what works and what doesn’t; the best way to learn is by experiencing it for oneself. Remember that writing is a reflection of the mind; if the latter is poorly organized and ill trained, it won’t be able to produce anything of value. It needs to be filled with something first before it can make its own contributions to the world. Set aside the money you would have paid for a tutor and use it instead to buy books. Lastly, know that reading can be fun and extremely rewarding (I’m addicted to it).

Lesson #2: Write, write, write. At first, one’s writing will seek to emulate the works of one’s favorite writers. Mine initially was very similar to Lovecraft’s overwrought and adjective-laden prose, which I eventually outgrew and now find rather unbearable. Then I started mimicking Conrad, then Greene, then Orwell, until, through multiple series of triangulations, I found my own “voice” and style. Undoubtedly my style is the result of all those influences and will continue to shift, ever so slightly, as a consequence of my current and future readings (for example, when I read Rushdie or French literature, my sentences tend to become longer and more complex; a good corrective when I risk going too far in that direction is to pick up Hemingway or Orwell). The more you write, the better you get. Between 2006, when I joined the Taipei Times as a copy editor, and today, I’ve written more than 2,000 news articles, editorials and book reviews, as well as five books. Progress occurs over time; it’s subtle, but it becomes evident years later when you re-read your early work (which is why writers rarely do so, as it makes them cringe). It’s like weightlifting, really, and explains why even someone as prolific as I am will struggle to write anything publishable if I’ve not written for an extended period (a couple of weeks is enough for those muscles to atrophy). Set aside one or two hours every day to write—write anything: short stories, an autobiographical rendition of the day’s events, op-eds, book reviews, letters to friends real or imagined. Know that writing can be fun and extremely rewarding (I’m addicted to it).

It’s that easy (and complex). There is no magic bullet. Writers get good through emulation and practice, and by opening their minds to the world of letters and taking in as much as possible. It’s a process that never ends, which is also what makes it so fascinating. Reading the classics (and contemporary literature in some increasingly rare instances) is your safest bet. Don’t be daunted by names like Vargas Llosa or Dostoyevsky; jump in and learn what you can. It’s like adding intellectual weights: you need to challenge your brain just as you’d push yourself in long-distance running or weightlifting. I’m always shocked when young people tell me they want to learn how to write and yet they don’t read more than 1.2 books annually. I read, on average, five to six books, and several dozen articles, per month, and I try to vary my selections by alternating between fiction and non-fiction, English and French. You don’t necessarily need to read this much, but one thing is certain: you won’t learn a thing, and certainly won’t learn how to write, by playing videogames on your smartphone, even if you pay a foreign tutor tens of thousands of NT dollars. 

Friday, September 11, 2015

VOTE 2016: When Fiction Becomes Reality

Sometimes a deliberately misleading headline is all it takes for disinformation to take flight 

Once again today, Taiwanese media exhibited the kind of politicization and flexibility with the facts that time and again have served to undermine the credibility of the fifth estate with news consumers here and abroad. As the elections approach, those practices will likely become more frequent and increase the great amount of noise that we must already sift through as we try to make sense of political developments in this critical period in the nation’s history. 

Today’s exhibit is an article in the Chinese-language United Daily News about a conference at the Atlantic Council on Wednesday. As is often the case with Taiwan’s media, the problem isn’t the article itself, but rather the headline that was given it, which in most instances is the only part of an article that has “legs.” In other words, what becomes “news” is what the headline says, and this alone determines whether other media will replicate the news or follow up with their own articles. 

My article, published today on Thinking Taiwan, continues here (photo by the author).

Friday, September 04, 2015

As Chen Yunlin Falls From Grace, Beijing Shows It Still Doesn’t Get Taiwan

Beijing is blaming Chen Yunlin for 'losing' Taiwan. If only things were that simple...

According to reports in Taiwanese media on 4 September, China’s former point man on Taiwan affairs, Chen Yunlin, may have become the latest target of President Xi Jinping’s “anti-corruption” campaign. In an odd twist, Chen also appears to be blamed for stalled progress in cross-strait relations and Beijing’s efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese.

In the current political environment in China, there is nothing overly surprising about the former head of the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) and ex-chairman of the semiofficial Association For Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS)—as well as his spouse, Lai Xiaohua—coming under scrutiny by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) for possible misappropriation of funds. The Chinese system is such that virtually any official will at some point have done things that constitute corruption. Under President Xi, such infractions are then investigated and brought to light whenever an official has fallen out of favour, a process rise and fall that is reminiscent of the fate of many an official under the U.S.S.R.’s Joseph Stalin.

My article, published today on the China Policy Institute Blog at the University of Nottingham, continues here.

Thursday, September 03, 2015

China’s ‘Victory Day’ Military Parade: A Worrying Signal

Rather than signal a desire for peace, the parade was an expression of belligerence that can only contribute to future tensions within a region that very much needs healing 

Now that the intermediate-range nuclear missiles, combat aircraft, long-range bombers, rocket launchers, tanks, attack helicopters, 70,000 doves and countless balloons have cleared off from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, we may ask ourselves what today’s display of military strength was all about — and just as importantly, who it was directed at. 

On paper, the parade was to commemorate the end of China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression during World War II and the role played by the Chinese themselves, a not uncontroversial issue given the longstanding disagreement between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over which “side” of China did most of the fighting. What was worrying about the large-scale display of modern armaments was the suggestion that militarism, whose fascist iteration ended with Japan’s defeat in the Pacific theater of operations in 1945, was once again something that is deserving of celebration. 

My article, published today in Thinking Taiwan, continues here.