Thursday, August 7, 2008

Surprise Surprise

As if we didn't see it coming, China plans on calling the Taiwanese Aboriginals, "minority peoples from Taiwan." To the keen ears and eyes, this is a subtle attempt at throwing the Taiwanese Aboriginals under the scope of ethnic Chinese.

Hearing that the Taiwanese Aboriginals would be performing some things during the opening ceremonies to showcase their culture, I was pretty sure China was going to attempt to label them as a minority Chinese group, from Taiwan. Their claim to being "Taiwanese" is even more so than me and a large majority of those in Taiwan who came to Taiwan either with the KMT or long before that. They are aboriginals of Taiwan, meaning they've been there forever. If there was ever a more formal definition of Taiwanese, that is the aboriginals.
“We are Taiwanese Aborigines, we are citizens of the Republic of China. We are Taiwanese, but we are not Chinese. And we are not Chinese minorities.”
On the eve of the opening ceremonies, China has already managed to "Chinese" the Taiwanese several times. Just a few, CCTV called Taiwan's team Zhongguo Taipei even after Ma declared "diplomatic victory" for getting China to call Taiwan Zhonghua Taipei- an already agreed upon name that is nothing to be victorious about. Then putting Taiwanese close to the Chinese territories (ok, not that bad of an offense), and now the Taiwanese Aborigines are now minority peoples from Taiwan-- implying Chinese minority peoples from Taiwan.

Boy am I glad that someone like the Communist China can tell me that I'm Chinese. Much more to come in the next 16 days!

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