On Thursday night, a close friend of ours invited us to see Invisible Nation at Stanford University. It was an opportunity to meet up with an ancient friend and accept the invitation to the organizers’ light breakfast. All of the backpacks had been consumed by the time we arrived. On a list of failures, it came first. & nbsp,
The video Invisible Nation, which is being screened all over the US, is billed as being about Taiwan. A documentary film is expected to inform and instruct audiences by providing unadulterated details and allowing them to reach their own conclusions in accordance with conventional media standards. The name” video” is mocked by Invisible Nation. It is an outright confirmation of Taiwan as a design democracy and an unrestrained adoration of Tsai Ing-wen.
InvisibleNation has several flaws, most of which are caused by deliberate omissions of personal data and background.
The movie claims that the only period one government had control over both mainland China and Taiwan was from 1945 to 1949 and that Taiwan’s story began with the French conquest of the area. After World War II, Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang( KMT ) reclaimed Taiwan, and their brief rule came to an end when he was forced to flee to Taiwan from the mainland.
This is deceptive as best and blatantly false at worst.
Koxinga, Taiwan’s conqueror, is not mentioned in the story.
Koxinga, also known as Zheng Chenggong, the later Ming Dynasty ruler who resisted the Manchus’ seizure of mainland China and fled to Taiwan by driving the Dutch off the island, is not mentioned in the movie. The grandson of Zheng gradually gave himself up to Beijing’s Qing imperial court. Taiwan remained a part of China for many centuries after that, but in 1895, the Beijing government was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan after losing the lake battle to that country.
The Potsdam Declaration, drafted by the Allies and containing the conditions of Japan’s absolute yielding to China during World War II, is also not mentioned by InvisibleNation.
The United States insisted on recognizing Taiwan as a part of China throughout the battle. Jimmy Carter and every other American president since then have reiterated this acknowledgment, which persisted when Richard Nixon visited China in 1972.
The movie did effectively credit Lee Teng-hui‘s actions for the social turn away from the oppressive rule of the Republican government. The child of Chiang Kai-shek, who oversaw the retreat from the island to Taiwan in 1949, was succeeded by Lee in 1988. In 1978, the child assumed leadership and started liberalizing and loosening the island’s grip. Lee was a Taiwanese native, so he chose Lee to get his vice president.
Lee even went by the Japanese name Iwasato Masao, which Chiang was probably aware of. In fact, Lee / Iwasato, a native Japanese speaker, was known to confide in visiting Japanese dignitaries that his allegiance was more to Japan than to China.
In truth, his older brother was a part of the Imperial Japanese Army who died in battle during World War II. His name is listed among other combat dead, including some convicted war criminals, in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
Some Japanese people remained in Taiwan after World War II. They adopted Foreign names and assimilated into the neighborhood culture. There hasn’t been much research done on the issue of divided loyalty and the impact of an estimated 100,000 Japanese who stayed with their posterity on Taiwan’s government.
Chen even failed to notice
In the case of Lee, after taking over as the head of the Taiwanese state, he gradually weakened and undermined the KMT firm, which allowed Taiwan to choose the Democratic Progressive Party as its first president and put an end to its 55-year rule.
However, Invisible Nation made no mention of Chen Shui-bian at all, despite the fact that he should have been prominently featured in the video.
In addition to becoming the first leader from the DPP, Chen also deftly divided and manipulated the opposition to become the only president to get with less than 40 % of the voting. Additionally, he was the first president of Taiwan to get imprisoned right away for willful problem at the end of his term in office.
One can hardly chastise the documentary’s director, Vanessa Hope, for omitting Chen from her narrative because he was the kind of leader who had discredit any democracy.
Chen ordered the revision of past books for students in addition to being a stain on Taiwan’s contemporary history. Any mention of Taiwan’s ties to China in terms of its history, culture, and cultural nature was eliminated in the revised books.
Fresh Chinese people grew up unaware that their grandparents did not appear out of thin air but rather traveled from southeastern Fujian across the Taiwan Strait for many years.
They were unaware that the Minnan accent of southern Fujian and the Taiwan slang sound nearly identical. They would be aware that the island was aware of the island abroad as early as the Han Dynasty, which began around 200 BCE, if they had the opportunity to study Chinese history.
It is understandable why the young hotheads who led the Sunflower rally in 2014 cried out for freedom but failed to recognize Taiwan’s reliance on trade with the mainland. Taiwan’s annual trade deficit with the island more than makes up for its global trade gap. That is a result of Beijing’s intentional decision to favor Taiwan over other countries.
Even though the Sunflower protesters weren’t as harsh as the Hong Kong ones in 2019, they still invaded the congress, insulted officially elected officials, and destroyed public property. All of this was documented in the mockery. What’s the big deal about breaking a few rules along the way, though, given that it was done in the name of defending politics?
Of course, not all young people in Taiwan are idiots. The smart great achievers are aware that the rapidly expanding island economy holds the key to their future. Some people work for Taiwanese businesses in China and reside on the island. Some people also work for Chinese businesses that are geographically owned.
It’s possible that the Sunflower kids don’t give a damn about careers, work, or the business. However, the serious-minded youth do.
a forward-thinking depiction of DPP
Obviously, Tsai Ing-wen, the current president of Taiwan, makes numerous comments and statements in the movie. Another influential people include her supporters and enthusiasts, as well as transgender government ministers. The movie boasts that Taiwan was the first country in Asia to identify same-sex marriage and defend LGBTQ right, demonstrating a progressive outlook that is even ahead of the US.
The movie also features a picture of former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s unexpected trip to Taiwan, which she made against all odds but to Tsai and the DPP’tortion. The meeting between Taiwan’s first sexual president and the most powerful person in Washington could not have gone any better.
Thank god InvisibleNation omitted the picture of Tsai giving Pelosi a beauty pageant sash. There was also no discussion of how Pelosi’s actions, which put Beijing on the defensive, significantly heightened cross-Strait conflicts and led to PLR challenges.
However, there were many people the directors could have spoken with but chose not to. On their perception of cross-Strit relations, they may have conducted interviews with Taiwanese who lived and worked on the mainland. The vast majority of Taiwanese people who favor the status quo, neither for union nor independence, could have been questioned. & nbsp,
Will the US actually come to fight alongside Taiwanese troops? was a question they may include posed to passersby about their opinions of Uncle Sam’s relationship. How do they think about Washington compel the Tsai government to purchase antiquated, archaic weapons?
What are their thoughts on being compelled to purchase contaminated meat from farmers in America? What do they think about President Joe Biden’s powerful Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company moving its cutting-edge chip factories to Arizona only to experience unavoidable labor issues, cost overruns, and building difficulties? Has Biden ever expressed any regard for Taiwan’s” reign”?
Taiwan is referred to as an” invisible nation” for a straightforward reason. Taiwan is a province of China, not at all an independent state. as easy as that
George Koo left a multinational consulting services company where he provided advice on business activities and China strategies for clients. He founded and previously served as managing chairman of International Strategic Alliances after receiving his education at MIT, Stevens Institute, and Santa Clara University. He currently serves on the board of Freschfield’s, a cutting-edge clean building program.