Dear International Journalism on Taiwan: I fixed all your bullshit headlines for you

I woke up this morning elated for Taiwan, and annoyed at the headlines dominating international news coverage. Editors around the world were clamoring over each other to choose the most asinine angle to introduce the results of the Taiwanese elections. 

If these editors festering behind news desks are to be believed, Taiwan is a recalcitrant teen -- a very naughty boy -- defying the will of stern parental figure China. Taiwanese don't care at all about the threat of looming war and are basically taking a "fuck you, Dad, I do what I want!" approach to international diplomacy. As Taiwan slams the door to its room and blasts goth rock while smoking out the window, all the neighbors tut tut because they're "concerned about that kid's future" -- seemingly not noticing that the parental figures are abusive and cruel. It's a lot harder to help get someone out of an abusive situation than it is to worry that they're provoking their abuser.


                                      


Obviously, this is stupid. China isn't Taiwan's parent, and has no say in what Taiwan does. At worst, you might consider Taiwan an adult that's gone low-contact with abusive stepparents and is fully capable of managing their own affairs.

In other words, if Taiwanese voters, who have front-row seats to the Beijing hissy fit and have the missiles pointed at them (dear editors: do you have missiles pointed at you?) understand that appeasing Beijing simply will not work, why can't these major news outlets see it?

Taiwanese voters showed that they, unlike most of the world, correctly gauge the threat posed by China, and understand that accepting the terms of a country that wants to subjugate them simply does not work. They, unlike these editors, consider their own election to be about their polity, their country and their future -- not one dictated by China. 

They understand that a temporary "peace" attained through telling Beijing what it wants to hear -- essentially, we accept the concept that Taiwan is part of China -- won't work. First of all, it's a lie, and Beijing probably surmises as much. Second, it won't be possible to keep up that charade for long. What do all of these "oh my god, it's so provocative" types think is going to happen when China starts pushing for meaningful steps to integration which the Taiwanese public does not want? 

Because whatever it is, it won't be peace. If Beijing doesn't realize that Taiwanese don't think they're Chinese now, they eventually will. And then what?

The only solution, therefore, is to run their country as they see fit and hold the line with China. There simply isn't another way.

Yes, it's a shame that the opposition is either incoherent (the TPP) or are run by filthy unificationists. I would love to see a healthy opposition to the DPP that wasn't a fully bought and paid-for subsidiary of the CPP, and who also had a cohesive ideology, vision and set of policy proposals. 

It would be fantastic if this were a wake-up call to the KMT that they might continue to dominate locally, but they will struggle to win national elections if they continue to push the narrative that Taiwan is China culturally, historically and/or politically (whether through ROC patriotism or bare-faced unificationism). 

I doubt it though. Their internal philosophy is still heavily dominated by Ma Ying-jeou, and that guy lives in another world. Someone needs to buy him a watercolor set and a nice cardigan. Sit him down in a rocking chair and be like "okay grandpa, yes I know, uh huh, Taiwan bad, okay so why don't you paint a nice picture about it, hmmm? There you go. No no, you sit and relax. Let me get you your pills." 

If the TPP could step up and be a true "beyond blue and green" or "beyond cross-strait tensions" opposition, well, I'd love to see what would happen there. But I doubt it, as long as they're a one-man party run by a misogynist third-rate manfluencer whose only coherent ideology is "ME!" 

Anyway, I'm just ranting now.

Truly, the international media has taken great strides in how it reports on Taiwan. With some fumbles, the Taiwan-based reporters are improving on the work of their predecessors who used to parachute in, write garbage and leave. I don't see "split in 1949" nonsense that often anymore, and I haven't spotted a "renegade province" in some time.

Some pieces are genuinely good, like this one in the Financial Times (as usual, ignore the headline). It's nice to read an article and have no notes.

I'm still disappointed in the majority of think-tank analysis, but I suspect it will always be thus. 

The editors who write these headlines, though? 

They didn't just fumble. They took a Lalique vase, filled it with moonshine, drank the moonshine, barfed the moonshine back up into the vase, then threw the vase against the wall so that the barf and shards spattered everywhere, including on them. Then they shat themselves for good measure. 

Anyway, their work is trash and I hope the good reporters who also get hit with flecks of their barf shards will tell them so. 

Or maybe the gods can give them hangnails for every shitty headline they write. Nothing worse than that, I'm not a monster. Won't kill them but maybe will help them re-think their poor life choices. 

Truly, this is a reverse vision board of terrible ways to lead an article about Taiwan.

 

International reporting on Taiwan: getting better, but still not quite there

The road to democracy is bumpy. So is the road to good media coverage of Taiwanese elections.

I don't have a lot of time today, but I want to take a quick dive into a pre-election piece from the BBC on Taiwanese identity. The BBC is a good news outlet through which to look at what reporting on Taiwan looks like now. It used to be absolutely awful -- I mean, really so stinking bad that it wasn't even worth reading for years. Things have improved slowly as the quality of correspondents improved. Now, I might just cringe once or twice while perusing a BBC article on Taiwan. 

The article in question includes an (unintentionally?) appropriate photo of a woman in an ROC-themed clown wig. It starts out with pull quotes from a KMT rally. I can't get too mad that the piece never actually clarifies the truth in light of those quotes. For example, the implication that the DPP doesn't want peace, or plans to declare independence -- neither are true. There's also the implication that the DPP doesn't want peace, or that Hou Yu-ih is an "honest" man. He aided in the cover-up of a sexual assault case in New Taipei during his mayoral administration. "Honest" is not a word I'd use to describe him. Finally, the notion that "independence means war." Uh huh. So does unification. So what?

In fact, if China tried to force the issue of unification, war would be inevitable. Though difficult, I can imagine a distant future in which Taiwan gains de jure, recognized independence without war, although it probably entails the PRC's collapse from internal factors. I do not envision a future in which Taiwanese people ever want to become part of China.

Regardless, which major party is actually intending to declare independence at any point in the near future? Neither. 

But these are real perspectives from real voters; what everyman would give a quote to a news outlet if they knew the reporter would likely tear it apart?

In general, the piece is better than the usual BBC tripe, including many Taiwanese voices across the political spectrum. It describes what life in Taiwan is actually like, though perhaps with too much focus on Taipei. Writer Rupert Wingfield-Hayes clearly went to great effort to look at a variety of local perspectives rather than just spout the usual "split in 1949 tripe" and collect a paycheck. I commend that. 

I appreciate the activists chosen to discuss the pro-Taiwan perspective; in fact, I know two people who refuse to speak Mandarin unless they absolutely have to. Although Mandarin is one of their native languages, they'd rather use English if Taiwanese is not possible. Only if their interlocutor speaks neither will they speak Mandarin. It's an uncommon but worthwhile perspective.

There are a few criticisms to be made, however. First, this blatant untruth: 

The mainland became the People's Republic of China, and Taiwan has remained the Republic of China. Both claimed the other's territory. Neither Chiang, nor Mao, conceived of Taiwan as a separate place with a separate people. But that is what it has become.

This is false. Chiang never considered Taiwan independent, but Mao actually did (and, for the record, so did "father of the nation" Sun Yat-sen, a belief he never changed as he died long before Taiwan left Japanese control. The quote is in the link above but I'll include part of it here as well: 

A year later, Mao and P'eng Teh-huai manifestly dissociated Taiwan's political movement from China by incorporating it into the anti-imperialist revolution led by the Japanese Communist Party. According to the "Resolution on the Current Political Situation and the Party's Responsibility," passed at a meeting of the CCP Central Political Bureau on 25 December, 1935, and signed by P'eng and Mao: 

Under the powerful leadership of the Japanese Communist Party, the Japanese workers and peasants and the oppressed nationalities (Korea, Taiwan) are preparing great efforts in struggling to defeat Japanese Imperialism and to establish a Soviet Japan. This is to unite the Chinese revolution and Japanese revolution on the basis of the common targets of "defeating Japanese imperialism." The Japanese revolutionary people are a powerful helper of the Chinese revolutionary people." 

Wingfield-Hayes is simply not correct in making the assertion that Mao never saw Taiwan as independent, and I hope it is corrected. 

It's worth pointing out, as well, that notions of Taiwanese identity and the Taiwan home rule movement were well underway when Mao and Chiang were both still in China, and Taiwan wasn't in any way a part of China. What the Taiwanese thought of their own land and identity is surely just as important as what Mao or Chiang thought, if we're discussing identity at all. If mid-twentieth century history must be brought into it, then we need more than what two dictators who were not from Taiwan thought, even if one of them forced his ideas on Taiwan in an extremely bloody way. 

I have two more bones to pick with this article, though neither are quite as severe as the falsehood above. 

The first is the disparity in coverage and quotes. I counted approximately five quotes from KMT supporters (more, if you count repeated quotes from one person). 

Quoted people from the green camp top out at two, though each person is given multiple quotes. The article offers a robust middle section devoted to pan-green voices, but begins and ends at the KMT rally. 

Although I commend Wingfield-Hayes for seeking out thoughtful voices from the pro-DPP side, at no point does he actually seem to have attended a DPP rally. 

I'm not inclined to treat this too harshly, however -- the activists interviewed offer substantive and thoughtful points. The spectators at the KMT rally are soundbites without a lot to them. I'm not sure I would have begun and ended such a piece at the rally, but it's not the worst thing a BBC writer has ever done.

My second point of contention is how polls and identity sentiment are discussed. This issue is quite a bit more serious. Here's the only mention of them:

Not everyone feels Taiwanese, or exclusively Taiwanese, but more and more young people seem to lean this way, polls suggest.

To give the issue proper perspective, it would have been wise to include actual poll numbers. I'm truly not sure why that didn't happen -- it suggests that the split is either quite even, or that Taiwanese identity is some up-and-coming thing and not the majority consensus. 

As a review, here are the numbers: 

As of June 2023, 62.8% of respondents claimed purely Taiwanese identity. 30.5% claimed both Taiwanese and Chinese. Those who claim to be only Chinese are lower than non-respondents and probably lower than the margin of error. 

That's not even getting into polls suggesting that the vast majority of that 30.5% who identify as both Taiwanese and Chinese still prioritize Taiwanese identity (though I haven't seen recent numbers, the difference was pretty stark). 

In other words, it's not actually a both-sides issue, although the article is right to examine other factors at play in this election. Identity alone won't win it for the DPP, but the point stands that when it comes to identity, the DPP actually does reflect the majority consensus. The KMT does not. 

And nowhere in this poll does it say that this is entirely a youth phenomenon, though I grant that Taiwanese identity is indeed more popular among younger voters. 

What's more, the article implies that Taiwanese identity is a fairly new thing, but you can see clearly from the graph that it took over as the majority opinion in the early 2000s, right around the time Ma Ying-jeou was elected (in fact, if anything this proves that identity alone doesn't win elections and the DPP doesn't win simply because it pushes Taiwanese identity). 

I'd also like to point out that people want the status quo and don't want to "declare independence" because most say the status quo is "sufficient qualification" to consider Taiwan independent. This is from 2022, but still: 

It would have been nice to see a bit more representation of the actual, poll-tested beliefs that are most common in Taiwan. I don't expect the BBC to interview only those who claim Taiwanese identity, but I do think this article shortchanges the perspective somewhat. It's the majority opinion. Perhaps we should treat it as such. 

Readers of the BBC piece who don't know Taiwan might well come away from it thinking Taiwanese identity is a 'new' concept, that not being part of China is one perspective but perhaps not the majority, or that strong pro-China sentiment is common or even just as strong as pro-Taiwan sentiment when it manifestly, by the poll numbers, is not. This is the narrative I hope the BBC can render more accurately going forward. 

Asian Boss interviews political party officials in Taiwan and doesn't disclose that fact

KMT official Eric Huang (黃裕鈞) being interviewed by Asian Boss, who didn't disclose his position. But hey, at least he calls Taiwan a country!

After the last debacle with Asian Boss, I was hoping I'd be done forever with them. Vox pop interviews aren't a very good way to gauge public opinion, but I'd hoped they'd learned their lesson after the last time they set up a fake "street interview" with a deep blue Youtuber and got caught immediately. We know they use these tactics because the videographer they tried to hire for that interview talked openly about how Asian Boss approached them and what they were trying to do. 

The next video they released from Taiwan didn't include any set-up interviews that I could find. It wasn't a particularly good video, but as far as anyone can tell it was all above-board and done mostly ethically. The worst I could say about it was that the translations in some cases were a bit off, and didn't wholly accurately express what the people interviewed were trying to say.

This latest video, however, contains a huge disclosure issue. One of the first people to appear on the "vox pop" video about mandatory military service in Taiwan is the KMT Deputy Director for International Affairs Eric Huang (黃裕鈞). You may remember Huang for being tasked recently with reopening a KMT party office in the United States.

Huang posted the video quickly to his Facebook feed and admits he was the person in the video (between the mask and different haircut, it was difficult to tell at first). 

He also insists he was approached randomly on the street near his home in central Taipei, and that he disclosed to them that he worked in politics. 

The fact is, I can't prove that either of these statements is untrue. All I can say is that it seems implausible for a busy party official most well-known for a job that requires him to be in the US frequently to not only be stopped randomly, out of all the other pedestrians they might have picked, and that we already know -- from the link above -- that Asian Boss has created fake street interviews before. 

The question, however, is whether it matters.

The problem with this isn't that Huang appeared in a video. While the difference between seeking someone out and passing them off as a street interview is pertinent, even if it can't be proven beyond a doubt, it's still a major problem on the part of Asian Boss that they interviewed someone who is (was?) slated to be the KMT's deputy representative in Washington (apparently he's only back in Taiwan to get that set up). Rumors are that he might instead run for city councilor in Taipei. It doesn't really matter -- he's a well-known KMT figure in the news and Asian Boss did not disclose that fact.

Whether this was indeed a random meet-up (again, implausible) or a planned interview, Asian Boss certainly knew of Huang's position in the KMT and said not a thing about it. They treated him like an ordinary citizen with a non-political job.

That is wrong. It's unethical. It's presenting a false narrative. 

Asian Boss got caught doing this before, and should have learned that if they're going to make mediocre street interviews in Taiwan, at the very least they have to actually do random vox pops. Apparently they also need to be reminded that they can't interview people they know are political party officials -- again, random or not, Huang says he disclosed this -- and pretend they're just anybody. They're not. Unlike, say, a schoolteacher, software engineer, accountant, designer or fry cook, the job of a political official actually matters in this context. 

From an ethical standpoint, one does need to disclose such things. So why didn't they? Do they want to keep ensuring that they get their desired amount of pan-blue viewpoints? Do they want to push a particular consensus view but can only do that if some interviews are not entirely, honestly disclosed? Why?

Seriously, Asian Boss. Why? If your goal, as you often state, is to platform Asian voices without political bias or agenda, why don't you actually do that?

And why, exactly, does Asian Boss keep doing this with pan-blue people, whether they be Youtubers or party officials, but never even things out and interview pan-green ones? They could easily do both, as long as they disclosed that fact. It's suspicious that this behavior only flows to one side of the political spectrum. Perhaps it tells you something about Asian Boss's own biases.

I have to admit that nothing Huang actually says in the interview is that bad. He calls Taiwan a country and clarifies that it would never do anything to provoke a war. Of course, the KMT's idea of actions that should be avoided lest they "provoke a war" doesn't exactly line up with my opinion, as they often use it as a cudgel to criticize any acknowledgement that Taiwan is already independent -- but that's beside the point. Huang himself has been called somewhat 'better' and 'more enlightened' than the dark blue oldsters that occupy many party positions, and while I am sure there are many things we don't agree on, but they're not on display here.

Frankly, what he says here is reasonable enough that a friend of mine wouldn't have noticed he was in the video at all if he hadn't recognized him, and I wouldn't have recognized him (again, between the mask and the haircut, it's not very obvious) if he hadn't posted about it himself on Facebook. 

Asian Boss, however, needs to do better. Their actions in Taiwan are suspicious enough that their entire global operation should be called into question, and their videos from other countries also checked for these sorts of issues. If they do this in Taiwan, how can they be trusted not to do it elsewhere, too?

They need to disclose who is in their videos, if their job is relevant. Eric Huang's job is relevant to the questions being asked. If they're going to make middle-brow videos in Taiwan, at the very least they have to do so ethically. 

Or they'll just keep getting caught.

This Taiwan "explainer" masters the art of "technically true, but what are you implying?"

Lots of windows, but nothing inside

Recently, the Economist posted a video "explaining" the Taiwan/China situation. While just a 3.5 minutes long, it's astounding how much this short video, backgrounded by creepy History Channel Aliens music, gets so very wrong. 

Taiwan’s sovereignty has been disputed for centuries. Though the island sees itself as independent, China insists it is part of the People’s Republic.

An attempt to take Taiwan by force could ignite war between America and China.

Read more: https://t.co/9oRkEXbbfX pic.twitter.com/2IxBBg0rNx

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 16, 2022

Without preamble, let's take a look.

The video starts with a Chinese perspective, starting listeners who may not know much about the issue with just one side's take. Although it's clear that this is China's view, it introduces the topic with words like "renegade province" and "reunification". The professor (Steve Tsang) delivering it is also quite clear that this is China's perspective, and he's not wrong about that -- but it feels unbalanced to introduce the video with just China's current beliefs, but not Taiwan's. 

Following that short quote with the government position (which is the mainstream general consensus) in Taiwan would have balanced this out. While the video goes on to talk about democratization and a shift in cultural affiliation, it never actually states outright that polling data in Taiwan clearly show most Taiwanese identify as solely Taiwanese, the majority who identify as both Chinese and Taiwanese prioritize Taiwanese identity, and most Taiwanese consider the status quo to sufficiently meet the requirements to be considered an independent country. 

All of these things are true, and ignored in favor of a lengthy discussion on the CCP and KMT positions on the matter. 

Let's dive deeper into a few quotes from the various speakers:

"At the end of the Second World War, Taiwan was handed back to the Republic of China" (emphasis theirs)

How is this possible? The Republic of China did not exist when Taiwan was ceded to Japan. Notably, the entirety of Taiwan had only been controlled by the Qing for about a dozen years; for most of their 200-year "rule" of Taiwan, they only held the western third of the island.

Regardless, you cannot hand "back" a territory to a government that did not exist when the territory was ceded. 

I could add other nitpicks to this -- the fact that the status of Japan in Taiwan wasn't actually settled until the early 1950s, not the end of World War II; the question of whether any legally binding treaties support the legitimacy of the Republic of China on Taiwan; the difference between a government and an occupying force; what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to say about it; that giving Taiwanese ROC citizenship is not the same as naming the ROC as the legitimate government; and that even the KMT at the time recognized that it didn't have great legal standing to actually take Taiwan. 

But they're beside the point -- the simple truth is that you cannot hand something "back" to a government that did not exist when the thing was given away by a different government.

"By 1949, Mao's Red Army had swept to victory, deposing Chiang Kai-shek's military dictatorship, forcing the former leader and about 1.2 million of his anti-communist supporters to retreat to Taiwan."

This is technically correct, but it maintains an iron grip on a Chinese view of Taiwan -- Taiwan from the perspective of a retreating army from China -- and completely ignores what Taiwan itself was going through at this time. 

This take makes it sound like Taiwan didn't have any people, and the Nationalists arrived on a barren island devoid of people to set up a nation. In such a view, the people who already called Taiwan home in 1945 are erased. This video implies that 1.2 million people came to Taiwan and just did, y'know, whatever. It's not like there were any locals to oppose them, nothing happened on February 28, 1947! 

The fact is that 1.2 million people increased Taiwan's population by a great deal, but they were still the minority. The majority of Taiwanese already living here deserve to be considered in historical views like these.

This erasure is common in older literature from Taiwan, by the way. Pai Hsien-yung, Lung Ying-tai and even the beloved Sanmao have engaged in it to some degree.

"Everyone on both sides agreed that there was one country called 'China'. They just disagreed what it was."

They most certainly did not! The only way this is true is if you consider the views of two dictatorships to be the sum total of the views of "everyone" on "both sides". I don't think that way and you shouldn't either: "everyone" includes all people, and in the mid-20th century, nobody asked Taiwanese people what they thought. There is plenty of proof that not all Taiwanese agreed that there was one country called 'China' at that time. Many, but not all.

The view of a recently-landed dictatorship that has no regard at all for the wishes of the people on the island it's retreated to -- and in fact massacres them for asking for even slightly better governance -- does not represent the views of "everyone", period.


"As economic growth surged on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan and China let down their barriers."

These "technically true, but" statements are so interesting. Yes, economic growth surged in both countries but at different rates; China was in the doldrums of Cultural Revolution (and still recovering from the Great Leap Forward) when Taiwan's economic miracle began. China's economic advancement happened later, and far more unequally: eastern China jumped ahead, leaving behind the rest of the country as well as deep wealth inequities. China is now a bigger economy than Taiwan, but Taiwan is the more advanced economy overall, with greater wealth equality, purchasing power and GDP per capita.

The two sides did "let down" some barriers under Ma Ying-jeou, but for China this was a means to an end: unification. Ma was in on that plan, a unificationist to the core (though a closeted one for awhile). Taiwanese were literally sold a bill of goods: the promise of economic benefits without political ramifications. 

The benefits never materialized -- the various agreements didn't do much for the Taiwanese economy, if anything hollowing out the job market as work was siphoned off to China -- and the political ramifications soon became clear. More on that below.

"Cultural divisions between Taiwan and the mainland deepened."

The resulting backlash was far more than a "deepening of cultural divisions". It was a pushback by Taiwanese of what, exactly, the Ma administration was aiming to do to Taiwan: render it economically dependent on China so as to make unification inevitable. 

It's fortunate that this happened, as the economic effects of continuing with the Ma Ying-jeou vision would have been disastrous for Taiwan. 

What does it really mean to say that "cultural divisions deepened"? This makes it sound like Taiwan and China were naturally culturally similar until democratization, at which point they naturally began to diverge. While divergence did accelerate in that time, this is not quite right. When the Nationalists arrived in 1945, unlike commentators today who seem to assume that Taiwan simply was a Chinese society returned to Chinese hands, they understood that centuries of Qing neglect as a "backwater" and a half-century of attentive, albeit repressive, Japanese rule had created in Taiwan a society that was not quite "Chinese" despite the ancestral roots of most of its inhabitants. When Sun Yat-sen visited Taiwan before 1945, he viewed it as Japanese. Even Mao did not initially envision a Communist "liberation" of Taiwan as something that would come from China, but rather something Taiwan should do for itself. 

Given all this, in 1945, the KMT did everything in its power to destroy Japanese cultural memory in Taiwan and replace it with Chinese nationalism. They tore down temples and other structures, defaced buildings and pushed Mandarin Chinese, then a foreign language in Taiwan, on the population. They turned Taiwan culturally Chinese by force. 

Is it really a "deepening of cultural differences" if Taiwan, after decades of this treatment, woke up and realized it had a unique history and heritage that diverged significantly from China's? 

I don't think it's true that cultural differences "deepened". they were merely uncovered. It was a Taiwanese society finally able to speak for itself. 

"Despite claims that it wanted a peaceful reunification with Taiwan, in 2005 China passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of force should Taiwan formally declare independence."

Why the use of "reunification" here? Not only did the ROC not exist when Taiwan was ceded by Japan, but the People's Republic of China has never controlled Taiwan. How is a "reunification" possible between two sides that have never been united? 

This part is not terrible -- it does make it clear that China poses a threat -- but it still centers a Chinese viewpoint and puts some of the responsibility for possible war on "Taiwan independence", where it doesn't belong. Taiwan is already independent; it has everything an independent country needs to govern itself, and it indeed governs itself. It's China that threatens to upend this.

This take also ignores the road the DPP is currently trying to take: one where a formal declaration of independence is not necessary, because Taiwan is already independent. 

The Taiwanese view is offered far later on in the video, with this:

 
"The more that China shows its teeth and shows it's not willing to tolerate even a semi-democracy in a place like Hong Kong, the more that the Taiwanese people think, what kind of promise of autonomy makes any sense of us?" / "They simply will not accept the prospect of being part of a very hard authoritarian Leninist political system, whatever the economic benefits."

It really is interesting how the technically-true parts and the questionable assumptions meld together to weave a problematic narrative. There is nothing incorrect in the statement, but it leaves the listener to assume quite a bit that is not necessarily true. 

First, while it's true that Chinese treatment of Hong Kong has noticeably dampened support for any sort of "unification" agreement that would include "autonomy" (essentially, One Country Two Systems), the fact is that enthusiasm for this model was on the downswing long before the tragedy of Hong Kong took place. People identifying as solely Taiwanese surpassed those who identify as both Taiwanese and Chinese in 2008 -- the year pro-unification Ma Ying-jeou was elected. The 2014 Sunflower Movement gained popular support in Taiwan just before Hong Kong experienced the Umbrella Revolution. President Tsai was elected before the 2019 Hong Kong protests. 

It is safe to say that One Country Two Systems was a dead idea in Taiwan, supported by few, well before Hong Kong's downward spiral. Watching Hong Kong surely hardened or underlined that view, but the consensus already existed.

As for the "economic benefits" of unification with China, the lack of meaningful economic growth under Ma Ying-jeou shows that there likely would not be much. If anything, it would hurt the Taiwanese economy to be joined to China's. Think about it: a manufacturing base that isn't wholly trusted by the world despite so many consumer goods being made there; the CCP's certain desire that Taiwan not be too prosperous so it won't feel able to break free again; the way jobs in Taiwan were suctioned off to China where labor is cheaper after even slightly closer relations; the idea that unifying with a country with more poverty, fewer social services (it's true!), less equality and lower GDP per capital would somehow make Taiwan wealthier.

How could anyone look at all that and say that unification with China would be economically beneficial to Taiwan? 

"It should be impossible to imagine this not ending peacefully, but it is also impossible to imagine this Chinese government allowing Taiwan to drift away."

Admittedly, it took me awhile to parse this statement. I've said before that for every person that asks how Taiwan could possibly become formally independent from China, they should also ask how Taiwan could possibly integrate peacefully and harmoniously into China. It can't. That's not possible. They should ask themselves whether voluntary unification is possible. It's not -- forget "remote chances" -- it's not going to happen. This trend has only pointed one way since democratization and it's not the way that leads to Taiwanese suddenly deciding China is great. 

To his credit, this person does seem to pose the issue as one between a war toward annexation or China releasing its claim on Taiwan. And it's true: China deciding not to start a war is the main (well, only) way to avoid a war. 

It's just a weird way to put it.

"Is America still able to deter China? That's now in real doubt."

Again, this is technically true, but it elides so much and implies that the facts of the issue are not quite what they are. First, it ignores the existence of a Taiwanese military, but Taiwan does indeed have one. It ignores the assertion by President Tsai that Taiwan could hold off the first wave of Chinese attack, which I believe. (She diplomatically avoids the likelihood that assistance would be needed after that first wave).

Yes, US support for Taiwan -- among support from other countries -- helps deter China. But this ignores the fact that Taiwan would fight regardless of US help, and implies that the US is the one stirring up this conflict by angering China. The "see, the US is really the problem here!"  absolutely love this line of reasoning. The video doesn't go quite that far but gives them plenty of fodder for their gish-galloping arguments. 

The opposite is true: China is stirring up this conflict because it wants something it cannot have and does not deserve --  Taiwan.

By the way, I made a video too. I think mine is better:

I made a slightly improved (better timing) version of my Explainer — is #Taiwan part of China?

(No.) pic.twitter.com/YvwbsKlp8K

— Appeasement doesn’t work 🇺🇦🐅 (@laorenchanna) April 17, 2022

Insider testimony: Asian Boss frustrated they couldn't find Taiwanese with their desired viewpoints, causing local video producer to "nope out"

Since my last post regarding the Asian Boss video "What do Taiwanese think of China?", I've been able to speak to someone who almost got involved in the project, only to pull out because he didn't want to be a "propaganda shill" and felt the work was "journalistically unethical". 

Here's a summary: Asian Boss didn't just decide to seek out a pro-KMT viewpoint and present that as a street interview. They did all of the filming but felt that the video had too many "green" (pro-Taiwan, wary of China) viewpoints, so they wanted another blue viewpoint "to give a balanced view". They didn't want just any deep blue perspective: they wanted it to be filmed in an area where young people hang out, and implied he wanted a younger-looking person to deliver this opinion. They did not want to spend any more time filming people that didn't have the opinion they were looking for, but rather to "pre-screen" interviewees and reject anyone who didn't have the desired political views.

In the end, it was too hard to find someone like that, so they went with 柴Sean你說, the Youtuber mentioned in the last post. 

How do I know all of this? I spoke with Christopher K. Young, the independent video producer they originally spoke to about obtaining such footage. He agreed to let me publish his story, with his name, to clarify exactly what happened with that video. 

Christopher is the admin of the Filmmaking: Taiwan Facebook group where one of the founders of Asian Boss first posted the request to film "an interview" on December 2nd. As he films with the requested equipment and can outsource projects to his own people, he also messaged the poster to discuss the project -- a field camera and reporter to "hit the streets for 5-6 hours" to get the desired interview.

 
Talent was suggested and a rate agreed upon, but there were caveats. Much of the rest of the conversation took place on a call. 

"I wasn’t just to hit the streets and take interviews. I was to only accept interviews with pro blue opinions. I told him I felt that was journalistically unethical and was going to put my reporter in the position of having to engage people in needless confrontation," Christopher told me. 

The person from Asian Boss said they already had "a bevy of green interviews and desired some blue interviews to give a balanced viewpoint," in Christopher's words.

Specifically, Christopher -- or the reporter he was going to send -- was being asked to pre-screen interviewees because they didn't want to pay for field time recording interviews they felt they couldn't use.

Christopher then suggested pre-arranged interviews, as asking a reporter to stand on the street asking passerby for interviews but saying they're no longer interested upon hearing the interviewees are green is "asking for a fight". 

Which is indeed true. Could you imagine standing on a street in any Taiwanese city (even Miaoli!) asking for vox pops on Taiwanese views of China but turning away anyone who offered up a viewpoint that wasn't pro-KMT or pro-China enough? 

They were asking for even more trouble given their other desired parameters for this interview. "I told him I could see if I could find such an interview in an oldies park or something," Christopher said, "but he’d heard of 西門 [Ximen, a popular LGBT-friendly area where Taiwanese youth might hang out] and wanted us to go there."

Again, can you imagine going to Young Gay Bar Central and saying 'hey I'd like some street interviews but only if you support the KMT'? Beyond the confrontations that would certainly ensue, could you imagine how bad that would look for you, and how unlikely success would be?

Asian Boss insisted, again in Christopher's words, that it "had to look like a street interview", at which point he turned down the project. 

"I noped out," he said.

"I told him I could tag the videos that have the opinions he was looking for, I can understand that, but that if no blue opinions could be found, that such would be representative of what Taiwan looked like from a political standpoint, especially considering the demographic he wanted me to mine," Christopher continued. 

That said, the decision not to work together was not entirely one-sided. " If I’m being completely fair, the decision to not work with one another was mutual," Christopher said.

"Ahead of the last call that we had, he claimed he was giving thought to his methodology and I therefore was on standby to see if how they were going to approach the video was going to align with my views on a journalistically ethical, or at least conversationally unconfrontational, interview process."

In my opinion, Christopher is exactly correct: if you go out and interview younger people, and what you get are mostly green-leaning opinions, then that's simply what people think. It would still be anecdotal, but without doing methodologically sound research with a sufficient sample size, it would be as close as a street reporter could possibly get to the truth. The consensus. The balance. 

Injecting something different into those results -- something you have to search for, even post on Dcard to beg for -- is manipulative. It's not balance: it's a false narrative positing that these views are more common among younger people than they actually are. 

"He and I were both clear that he was going to have to dig deep to find a young blue opinion and I was to make it look like a street interview, which I wasn’t okay with, so I passed," Christopher added. 

At that point, Asian Boss told him they were going to with the Youtuber they'd found, but would still like to hire his reporter to do the filming. He connected them and then removed himself from the situation.

When discussing this arrangement, Christopher added: "I even expressed to [my reporter] my doubts that things...were going to work out, and wanted to confirm whether or not she wanted to work with them on their own....I didn’t want it to cost her a paycheck based on adherence to my personal principles."

Presumably, that interview took place as 柴Sean你說 was indeed interviewed and the video came out as planned.

It was indeed shot outdoors and perhaps could have passed for an interview of a random pedestrian in a park, but it seems the reporter did their job too well, offering a higher-quality visual product than the other street interviews. 

That said, if something about the Youtuber stood out, it wasn't just that it was a better video, shot in good light at a flattering angle. His views truly are outside the mainstream, and he seemed all too ready to discuss them in eloquent detail. Frankly, I'm surprised he didn't come prepared with a PowerPoint.

Now, you know how it happened. There's even some inkling as to why. What people actually think -- the general consensus among Taiwanese, especially the youth -- isn't "balanced" enough for Asian Boss. Instead, they feel the need to project a false narrative of what views are common or mainstream among this demographic and the populace in general. 

You can tell they were constructing that story themselves by some of their translations. For example,  Daniel Ku notes in his reaction video, they translate "unification" (統一) as "reunification", when that's not actually what the term means. 

In short, they didn't like that the spectrum of views they found in Taiwan leaned greener than they'd like, so they 'added' blueness to create the story they wanted to tell.

The story they wanted to tell. The viewpoint they wanted to disseminate. The spectrum, the range, the balance of views of average Taiwanese? That was all right there on the street for them to find. They rejected it in favor of their preferred narrative.

Asian Boss had two ethical choices here: go for a 'spectrum' regardless of how popular each view is and do clips from pre-arranged interviews, or do a true vox pop, where what you get is what you get. Doing the former would have required finding someone as fringe green as the Youtuber they found was blue. (Notably, they never tried to find such a person.)

Recruiting a dude because a vox pop didn't return your preferred story and presenting him as something he's not? Not cool. It stood out so much that I wonder if the people who ultimately approved the final product were even aware of how outside the mainstream their plant was.

Perhaps when you're getting high on your own supply of feel-good "balance", you don't recognize when you've gone so far off course that you've actually portrayed something inaccurate?

Christopher ended with this: "He sounded a lot like the speaker in the beginning of the video each time. Big platitudes about how balanced they want to be, that they hope their truth-seeking can in some way help avert war between the two countries...in each instance he was, in my opinion, telegraphing how unacceptable he knew their approach was going to sound."

That video was not an "accurate pulse" of what "ordinary people" think. It was not a neutral report of what they found when they "hit the streets of Taipei". 

And it was not the story Taiwanese actually want to tell -- at least not the ones they found by canvassing the streets. It was Asian Boss's sandcastle. 

Their story. Not Taiwan's.

Yes, Asian Boss planted a deep blue Youtuber and pretended he was a 'man on the street' -- and I want to know why.

Indeed they are.

Update 1/12/22: I talked to the person they were going to hire to do this interview, except he "noped out" when it became clear he was being asked to do something journalistically unethical.

Asian Boss, a YouTube channel that mostly does “vox pop” street interviews of people they say they’ve approached in public, recently came to Taiwan to ask what Taiwanese think of China.

Leaving aside the fact that not even Asian Boss seems to care what Taiwanese think outside of their opinions on China, at least this marks their first serious foray into Taiwan. Or rather, Taipei. They apparently don't have the resources to cover multiple cities.

They film across Asia, sometimes tackling difficult subjects such as the Myanmar coup or the Hong Kong protests, and sometimes doing softball man-on-the-street interviews along the lines of what does the ideal Chinese man look like or what’s fashionable in Taiwan right now. They also do occasional sit-down interviews of specific people of interest to viewers: a model from Myanmar, an American porn star in Japan, the inventor of bubble tea in Taiwan, a defected North Korean spy and more.

Other than the Hong Kong interview, their videos in China come across as far 'softer' than their work anywhere else -- it's all very surface-level, and can kind of feel like folksy Propaganda Lite. If you want to know what's happening in Uyghur detention camps, Asian Boss is not the place to look. 

It's important, I suppose, to humanize people who have to live under a dehumanizing regime, but it sure does make the CCP look better than it is, especially when it comes to mass surveillance. Chances are that if they really went for meaty stories, they wouldn't be allowed to film there at all.

This was the third time they've come to Taiwan that I could find: the other two were the bubble tea and fashion videos -- nothing hard-hitting.

I’m not here to body-slam Asian Boss or chase them out of the country. I don't know what their intentions were. However, a few things seemed off to me as I watched. Then, something I consider a bombshell — a huge problem that undermines the credibility of this particular video and Asian Boss’s reporting model in general. 

The short of it? They planted an interview with a fairly well-known deep blue Youtuber and presented it as a “vox pop” interview, just someone they approached on the street. 

For those who don't know, "deep blue" means very pro-KMT, generally favoring Chinese identity, closer ties with China and eventual unification with China. Some say that should be China as the ROC, but red/blues exist too -- people who would accept unification with the PRC. They are quite rare, however. 

"Deep green" means very pro-DPP, though there are a constellation of small parties and independent legislators that formed independently of the DPP who hold similar views. This side generally favors Taiwanese identity, sovereignty and (eventually) independence. They don't hate China, they're just not interested in being part of it. Most want to hold off on declaring formal independence, though some want it immediately and believe the existence of the ROC on Taiwan is a form of colonization. 

I'm far more sympathetic to the greens -- as I see it Taiwan is already independent, so any formal declarations, if they are needed, can wait until peace is assured -- but my personal views don't matter much. 

The video starts out saying that this video takes “the accurate pulse of the public” with the voices of "ordinary people". This can't possibly be true, as they're gathering anecdotes -- fluffy human interest stuff. It's not data. It's not bad in and of itself,  but it's not an accurate pulse of anything. We have actual research for that.





They then stress that they have no political affiliation, and get started. 

I wasn't the only one who noticed that one interviewee stood out. Something was just off about him -- he had extreme views but that wasn't it. His interview seemed...different. Guess which one?

The other interviewees seem to have truly been filmed under ‘street’ conditions, with noise, bad lighting, masks and foggy glasses, passers-by and the occasional sub-optimal angles. 

The Youtuber in question, on the other hand, was interviewed in a tree-lined park, with excellent lighting, at a 'good' angle with no mask. Nobody walked by. It was as though a space had been cleared for him. He sported a tan or light brown jacket and spoke without hesitation.

This man had views that are far outside the mainstream in Taiwan. Of course, there are people who agree with him, but might be quiet about their views because they know they’re not popular. However, his comments about Taiwan being a “province under the Republic of China”, Xi Jinping being a “calm man” can only be described as deep blue, if not fringe. He's also wrong about a lot of things, but that could be a post in itself.

I originally assumed the best. I figured that this is someone they happened to approach in that time and place, he happened to be well-spoken and ready to expound on his views, and he happened to be the living embodiment of a deep-blue eyeroll. Okay. Some people do feel that way. It’s possible. I think he's ridiculous but he has the right to his opinion. 

Then, someone I know did a simple thing: he typed “Asian Boss Taiwan” into Facebook search, and guess what came up?

The guy in the tan jacket, posting on Facebook about his interview. He’s a modestly successful YouTuber named Sean (柴Sean你說) with over 110,000 subscribers, with lovely content like “if Taiwanese want independence, why don’t they join the military?”, “Taiwanese now identify differently because of the way they are educated under the DPP” and “let’s not trash on Yen Ching-piao’s son, the bad stuff is all his father’s doing”. From the comments, he appears to have a lot of viewers in China. Someone on the side is commenting in Simplified Chinese that Mainland viewers don't care about the abuse of DPP legislator Kao Chia-yu:

His Facebook page is also straight cringe, no chaser -- taking swipes at the residents of Wanhua for no good reason, and calling COVID the "Wanhua Virus":

Update: soon after I initially published this, I was sent this link to a post on Dcard, where someone was asking how to find people with "deep blue views" for a "foreign Youtube channel". They'd done the interviews and felt it was pretty balanced -- they were explicitly asked to provide a "balance" of views -- but they asked him to find someone who represented that deep blue cohort. 

There's a link to a Google form from Asian Boss, and some replies saying he should go talk to old people.

That's more than a little suspicious.

It's also very strange because they asked this person to go find someone with deep blue views, but not deep green ones. There's nothing in the entire video that I'd call fringe or far out of the mainstream. Why just one side? Isn't that unbalanced?

There is a deep green fringe: the "declare independence now" types, the ones who wave "End ROC Colonization of Taiwan" flags. Yes, I happen to sympathize with them far more than the deep blue fringe, but I recognize they're not mainstream. If you want a "balanced" video, why would you include only the deep blue fringe, but not the deep green?

They weren't represented anywhere in this video, so in addition to not being a "vox pop" video, it's not actually "balanced", either -- if that's what you're going for.

I had thought he seemed a little suspiciously well-prepared and ready to present, though I wonder if someone as well-spoken and well-presented  -- good lighting, great angles, pleasant backdrop --  on the other end of the spectrum, closer to my own views, would have stood out as much to me. We all have our biases, so perhaps not. But I like to think the differences in how he was taped alone tingled a lot of people's spidey senses.

On his Facebook post, Sean said he thought it was going to be in English but they ended up doing it in Chinese — that’s interesting, as it implies they think using Asian languages makes the interviews more authentic. (It can, if interviewees are more comfortable in those languages, but it’s not a stand-in for authenticity). Then he himself asked if it was truly okay to interview him and pretend he was just someone off the street — no links to his YouTube channel, no introduction of who he was. 

Can they really do that? He mused. 

To be honest, from an ethical perspective, they can’t — or at least, they shouldn’t. If you say you are doing "man on the street" interviews, the only proper way forward is to stick to that -- you can't plant people and pretend you found them randomly.

It's amusing, though, that Sean, a comparatively small-time Youtuber, was handed a platform that reaches millions, including lots of Westerners. He had a golden opportunity to construct a narrative where his voice is closer to the center, represents the views of many Taiwanese, or is otherwise not a fringe perspective. All he had to do was not post about the fact that this interview was obviously set up, and I doubt we ever would have found him. Either he didn't think about that, or he did but figured he'd never be caught by anyone who mattered.

Perhaps that's still true. How many people are going to watch that video compared to those who will read this post?

It's also interesting that he agreed to talk to Asian Boss, allowing them to set up this lie that he represents a common set of viewpoints, and when doing so discussed how the media twists narratives to suit their own goals -- all while helping the media twist a narrative! 

That said, I might disagree with every opinion he has, but at least he pointed out that it's not great to seek out a Youtuber and then pass him off as some random pedestrian. Sean seems to have more of a moral code regarding this than Asian Boss! 

It seemed like he got more airtime than the others, too, but I'd have to go back and count the seconds -- perhaps it just seemed that way because this is so painful to watch.

What Asian Boss did here was wrong. It is a lie to say you approached people on the street to see what ordinary folks think regardless of knowledge level, but then plant someone you sought out in your video, to make it seem like extreme views such as his are more popular than they actually are.

That’s a propaganda tactic. A lie. It’s what you do when you want to push a certain narrative, but want it to seem grassroots. It’s unacceptable. 

If you can't find someone with these views in the wild, by approaching people on the street, then that's a sign they aren't particularly common views.

The world isn't a both-sides deal. In Taiwan there is a general consensus, a mainstream. The 'real' videos depict that, the plant distorts it. People want to think Taiwan conforms to their idea that there are a wide range of equally popular and valid views and perspectives, but that's just not the case: the consensus in Taiwan is that, well, Taiwan is Taiwan.

If you do street interviews, you'll get people who lean a but bluer than that, but ultimately it'll snap back to that consensus. Being honest about that is good reporting. 

Wedging such out-of-the-mainstream beliefs in anyway by seeking someone out and then presenting that person as just some guy you found is not. It's manipulation, bordering on misinformation. At the very least, it misleads the viewers.

I reached out to Asian Boss on Twitter and via their website to see if they’d answer a few questions about this, but received no response. 

As I see it, if you want to interview someone like this, you can, but there’s only one appropriate path: move away from the “ordinary people on the street” interview setup and state plainly that you’ve gathered representatives from all segments of the Taiwanese political spectrum. You have to actually do that, though: in addition to moderate voices, you have to find someone as far-out deep green as Sean is deep blue. The closest person in this video was the young man in glasses, and frankly, his views aren't fringe. They're pretty normal.

Then you show that video without subterfuge: we gathered these people because they represent specific things. We did not find them randomly. 

Doing it as they did not only sells a lie to the audience about how they find these views, but how common each view is in the wild. The fact is, you won’t find many people like Sean on the street, because his views are fairly rare. Presenting him as someone you ran into at the park makes it seem like there are a lot more Seans out there than there really are. Filming him mask less, in fantastic light with great angles and backdrops furthers the lie that he is an authoritative voice for what many Taiwanese think. 

Wrong. Everyone knows that. The thing is, they don't care, and you can't force them to.

It moves away from “we looked around and this is what we found” and turns into a constructed narrative. You cannot ethically create the latter and sell it as the former. 

It also skews where the “center” of Taiwanese views on China truly is. If you interview a deep blue YouTuber but have no deep green balance, the “middle” seems more blue than it really is. The actual center is closer to “we don’t want to be part of the PRC and don’t want a war" -- it's not "in fact Taiwanese are Chinese". However, that’s not what comes across in this video. 

Even his own YouTube subscribers commented on his appearance in Asian Boss: 

It does appear that Sean was the only plant, however. Everyone else truly comes across as a ‘vox pop’, and one of the founders of Asian Boss posted recently in the Working in Taiwan Facebook group, asking for students to help them approach people in the street. That video is supposed to have been filmed today, so I'm curious what they'll come out with.

The post implies that they aren’t a “team” of reporters but instead find local helpers for one-off videos. However, it also means they probably do usually approach people on the street. Sean might have been a one-off. A single plant. 

But if they do, in fact, approach people on the street, why plant Sean in there? Why present him as someone you just 'found' when that's not true? Why try to construct a narrative that his views are part of a spectrum of beliefs in Taiwan that you might find in the wild?

Wrong according to you, buddy. But if the people do choose that one day, it will probably be because they can do so without the threat of war from "calm" Xi Jinping!

I have other questions, too. Why do two videos on anti-feminism in South Korea, but no videos (that I can find) talking to Korean feminists? Why present yourself as a “startup” when you’ve been around for almost a decade? Why delete many of your older videos? (Some of the older ones are pretty bad, such as this drawn-out, unfunny prank asking white people their opinions about untrue facts about Asia. Maybe that’s why they deleted others -- dump the low-quality stuff as you grow your brand.) 

They do try to do good as well, however, and seem to get involved in local or personal causes beyond just reporting on them. 

It would be great if Asian Boss could take a look at how they’re producing content now, with an eye toward any ethical issues that could cause them to lose credibility. Be clear about what you’re doing and what it can accomplish. That you are offering anecdotes, not data. If you are interviewing personalities, you need to say so. You can’t present them as people you found on the street. 

At that point, I would welcome more videos from them about Taiwan. Right now, though, I have a lot of questions and very few answers. What's the deal, Asian Boss? Are you ever going to offer an explanation?

There's a good reaction video, too. Useful for the extra context, as well as a way to see the original if Asian Boss realizes their mistake and deletes the original:

alrighty! I've spent every single day for the past week trying to edit this video on my crappy 2014 PC that lagged just by moving the mouse or reviewing footage that I'm editing lol but here it is. My reaction to @asianbossmedia 's recent video on Taiwan. https://t.co/UYrICFru2k

— Daniel Ku 顧仲文 🇹🇼🇨🇦 (@danzwku) January 9, 2022

 

Well NCCU's Election Study Center says about 70% of them do, and you don't get to be the dictator who tells them they can't.