“May you live in interesting times” is a quote with many meanings. Some describe it as a Chinese curse rather than a blessing: life being better and safer during the uninteresting times of peace and tranquillity, rather than the chaos of interesting times.
Which brings me to how I find myself living in interesting times in Taiwan, a place recently described by The Economist as “The most dangerous place on Earth”. This must be news to Ukrainians.
Years working in advertising eventually drove me to drink, so opening a bar seemed a sensible career move. My wife Gemma was born in a rustic Taiwanese fishing village and later moved to Japan to run bars for the Yakuza. We teamed up in Sydney to open the original Mamasan Bondi, before evolving into Bad Mama in Surry Hills.
Our mutual hunger for adventure brought us back to Taiwan three years ago to build a Bad Mama out of an old fishing boat in a 150-year-old derelict building up a dark, skinny, medieval laneway where hookers brawl with gangsters behind a massive temple to the goddess Mazu, the patron saint of seafarers everywhere in the wild port city of Keelung.
Any sensible discussion of contemporary Taiwan requires both context and history. Keelung was inhabited for hundreds of years by the Ketagalan — one of the many tribes of Indigenous Taiwanese peoples who share DNA with Samoans.
They were subsequently raped and pillaged over centuries by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Qing Dynasty Chinese — even the British and French too, before modern Taiwan was created during the Japanese colonial period from 1895 to 1945.
It remains a somewhat inconvenient truth for our neighbourhood bully that the Chinese Communist Party has never governed the island of Taiwan. Ever.
The world’s press has currently whipped itself up into a frothing frenzy about the imminent invasion of Taiwan — but the fact is that nobody I talk to here gives a fat rat’s arse about these turbocharged, titanic tanties. Nobody here fucking cares. Nobody even talks about it.
Because it’s been going on continuously now for nearly 70 years. This bellicose, bellowing brat has been banging on and hanging around like a fart in a spacesuit — all hat and no cattle. It’s like an Angus Taylor press conference: no one is listening. We’d rather just get on with living than live in fear.
Reading the international news coverage of Taiwan makes me feel like a pregnant woman in America — everyone is threatening me and screaming what I should think and how I should act.
The greatest irony of all comes from my friends in America who tell me they fear for my safety here, which is interesting coming from a nation that only has one political party — the other having morphed into a domestic terrorist organisation.
When you own a bar it becomes a magnet for rumours and raconteurs, so I do get to talk to the very few people who actually have an opinion on the current situation. Consensus is China will continue to fart in our general direction but the risk of losing face is far too great to try it on. For now.
Another beer, mate?
“It’s like an Angus Taylor press conference: no one is listening.”
Great line.
I was last in Taiwan in 2010. Relations with China were excellent. Everyone was comfortable with the status quo.There was no sabre rattling. The economy was thriving and two way trade and cultural exchanges was expanding. 100’s of thousands of people were travelling for leisure and working across the straits from both sides. However forces beyond the two entities were starting to stir up trouble and birthing divide and conquer tactics and we all know who they are.
Diego Garcia ring a bell for the supporters of the sainted UK and US? Now heading to the ICC. Assassination of “terrorists” on other countries Sovereign soil? The ROC Constitution also claims mainland China as does the PRC’s Constitution and has done so since 1949. This has been going on since 1949 and should have been completed in the 1950s.
The only significant change has been a certain Chinese president who is trashing China’s impressive rise with his nasty, bellicose attitude to everyone and everything. A real shame this guy has come to power. It’s a really disappointing change of attitude from China, and so unnecessary.
“We haven’t changed, China has changed” is the usual rhetoric that is presented. Standing up for yourself against Western bullying and slander is not being nasty or bellicose. The West interferes constantly in Chinese internal issues and complains bitterly when they get a dose of their own medicine is all. We spout on about “Australian Values” yet apparently China is not permitted to have “Chinese Values”. The China Threat industry in the West has much to answer for.
Yes, there is someone with a nasty attitude here, but it ain’t China.
China didn’t change apart from becoming richer and more powerful economically and politically and we can’t have that, right? The Western attitude to China (which is basically parroting US attitude) is fundamentally racist.
It is extremely racist but also hypocritical in the extreme. The US berates China from a “position of strength” (I note Blinken has stopped trying that on – they don’t have it) yet bitterly complains when China stands up for itself and tells them to mind their own business. We make “requests” to China yet we call their requests “demands”. They try and meet us halfway yet we say we have to defend our “sovereignty” or use “national security” as an excuse (then berate them for doing the same). China is not only a different culture, it is a different civilization. The sad part is that “The West” insists that the other 85% of the world population become like us.
Obama’s military ‘pivot to Asia’ changed everything. The US has 40 bases surrounding China (‘like a noose’ in the words of a US general), two battle fleets and an unknown number of nuclear attack subs off China’s coast. How do you think China would respond to this increased militarisation of its own backyard. How do you think the US would react to a few Chinese bases in Cuba and the Chinese navy sailing around the Gulf of Mexico?
It’s not even lunch time and I have a sudden urge to go to a shady bar. I loved that article. Geopolitics is generally beyond my understanding, but they seem like valid observations. Certainly the most craven conservatives are oportunisticly jumping on this for the most self serving reasons. Conversely, the boy who cried wolf was eventually right.
Yeah, great article which makes me want to go to a bar and drink scotch!
Cheers mate. If you manage to make it to Keelung before the CCP I’ll happily welcome you to my dark & shady bar.
It should also be noted that just as the CCP in Beijing claims absolute sovereignty over Taiwan, the Taiwanese government claims absolute sovereignty over mainland China. I believe it’s even written into Taiwan’s constitution. So it’s really a fight between two governments over which is the true government of all of China. Apart from poking Bejing into all-out invasion, that’s why Taiwan won’t ever just go and declare itself independent. The picture’s a bit more nuanced than the media here make it out to be.
Does anyone remember early this year (January and February) interviews with Ukranians who shrugged at the prospect of a Russian invasion, saying they were just getting on with life and didn’t think an invasion was likely?
I can recall similar episodes with Iranians, prior to…
I had the same thought when reading the article. Not sure that the 2 situations are analogous though. One of the frustrations I have with reporting on China is that I think we tend to get a very biased viewpoint that often seeks to portray China as some sort of evil empire. There’s usually very little nuance. Certainly Peter Dutton and now Andrew Hastie in opposition seem determined to talk up imminent conflict. It’s another reason I’m glad they’re no longer in government.
“Andrew Hastie” ? How about Handy Hastie (needs a little historical research 🙂
Agree, in Europe people are not obsessing about China, nor the UK so much, but it’s US and Australia conservatives mostly; in Oz one assumes it’s electoral rebooting of the ‘yellow peril’ to replace ‘Asian immigration’ as a dog whistle.
Maybe it’s because a powerful China will have a much bigger influence in our region than in Europe.
And that means what? That Asia will finally control its own destiny without Western Interference?
Some sort of “evil empire”?
Maybe it’s the Xinjiang concentration camps being the biggest since WW2?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps
How about China’s trade bullying?
https://www.economist.com/china/2020/12/05/how-chinas-bullying-could-backfire
And forget about Africa-
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/27/africa/zimbabwe-mine-shooting-intl/index.html
I can pick articles showing Australian mistreatment of indigenous people, bullying of Pacific neighbours and murder of innocent civilians by Australian troops to make a case for Australia being an evil empire if you want to go down that track. Like I said, the truth is more nuanced and you need to retain some scepticism about what you read.
Xinjiang – refuted by independent analysis
https://johnmenadue.com/jaq-james-how-reliable-is-the-research-of-amnesty-international-and-human-rights-watch-on-forced-labour-in-xinjiang/
Teaching the ETIM and its supporters why it is wrong to commit acts of terrorism. France also had this approach:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_re-education_camps
Trade Bullying? This is Australia’s record:
1. Blocked more than 100 Chinese imports by using anti-dumping provisions that the Productivity Commission found were inappropriate under WTO rules
2. Led the charge globally to ban Huawei and ZTE from the 5G network,
3. Officially condemned human rights violations in China without shaming neighbouring countries (e.g. India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Pakistan, Myanmar and so on) for their transgressions or taking moral responsibility for our own Pacific Solution for refugees,
4. Condemned China for breaching international law by seizing a disputed coral atoll in the South China Sea while ignoring Trump tearing up international agreements such as the Paris Climate Change Accord, NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Treaty and the Medium Range Missile Treaty,
5. Banned China, but not other nations, from promoting its interests and influence in Australia,
6. Publicly requested the World Health Organisation to investigate the origins of Covid-19 after talking to the Trump administration, but did not give prior notice to, let alone have any dialogue with, China,
7. Have now banned virtually any investment from China or any bilateral cooperation between state governments and universities and their counterparts in China.
Australia urges China to respect the “rules-based order” but do the same conventions apply to Australia when it blocks and revokes Chinese ventures?
Africa
A single boss of Chinese background killed two mine workers! Clear evidence of abuse by an entire country – Not!
If all of these actions by Australia are not racially and politically motivated, I don’t know what is.
Whole bunch of people in Hong Kong felt that they had a first-amongst-equals status as well.