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shyshyshilohnot more than a few days ago, xinyu of triples had this to say:
translated to english, the messages read:
it’s not about being precise / macau clearly just belongs to china / the same goes for hong kong and taiwan.
why should i be afraid of being disciplined / was anything i said wrong? / if you don’t recognize [the truth], don’t subscribe to my fromm.
twitter, or at least a certain corner of it, quickly and predictably became a bloodbath. to cancel or not to cancel, to care or not to care. there was disappointment in xinyu, of course, along with its cousins of shock, confusion, and anger, but there was also celebration. support. treatment of the whole thing as one big “gotcha”. jokes about mao and communism and comparing taiwan to israel. and to any disagreement, the arguments, are you even taiwanese? most taiwanese people support unification. open a history textbook, don’t talk about things you don’t know. she’s right, though; she’s right, though. she’s right.
if those are the qualifications to contribute to this dialogue, then so be it. i’ll pretend they’re being created for the sake of veracity and not easy dismissal. yes, i am taiwanese. as a matter of fact i do not support unification, and if you were to reference any opinion poll from the last 20 years, you would find that support for unification struggles to crack 15%. i assure you, i am familiar with the history of taiwan and its sovereignty — more so, no doubt, than the median kpoppie patting themselves on the back for these kinds of rebuttals.
and with that out of the way, let me also make it clear that i am not here to litigate xinyu’s views. i do not agree with her, plain and simple, but i am also not surprised that those are the opinions she holds. she is her own person, and what she does with her fromm account is her own business (until modhaus decides they have something to say about it. but i digress).
i am also not here to discuss the role of celebrity culture in the apparent support for xinyu. it’s a related factor for sure, but it’s also a separate one, and anyone who’s been into kpop for long enough knows that people are always wont to adopt the stances of their “faves” and defend them vehemently, regardless of what they are.
no, xinyu can believe what she believes. what i find much more concerning is the response, to this situation and others.
earlier this year, the (temporary) ban on american tiktok prompted many people to switch over to redbook, or xiaohongshu, whose existing users welcomed them with open arms. on one hand, this was a beautiful demonstration of everything positive about social media. it was humanity and cultural exchange and that marjane sartrapi quote. people swapped photos of lunchboxes, shared videos of cats. life was good.
but on the other, it made overwhelmingly obvious a growing and all the more alluring sentiment, especially for a particular brand of online leftist. the american government is bad, so it goes, and it wants us to hate china. therefore, china must be good. not even just that — but to support china is to be “woke”.
now, i hold no love for the american government. it is seemingly insistent on being either indifferent or actively hostile to everything that i am, now more than ever. i am intimately familiar with its flaws. believe me, i know.
but to turn that into something black-and-white, to take the other side of “us vs. them” simply for the sake of directionless protest, is at best a poor understanding of geopolitics and at worst a complete perversion of what one’s leftist consciousness claims to be.
the term “woke” originates in black political activism. in the past decade and a half or so, it has come to describe awareness of and engagement in racial justice and other human rights issues. and following the fate of every single piece of african american vernacular that has wound up on stan twitter, the meaning has been cheapened until it can be everything from a description of conscious, legitimate work to an indication that someone or something is on the “correct” (aka unproblematic, aka consumable, aka fitting of the performative image) side of the aisle.
it’s “woke” to support trans rights. it’s “woke” to criticize trump. it’s “woke” to follow boycott lists, and to attend protests.
it is, apparently, also “woke” to believe that supporting taiwanese independence is falling for american propaganda, because what better way to hit back at the white house than to leap into the arms of its opposition without so much as a critical thought? remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. remember — if america is bad, then china must be good.
(never mind that the usa’s support of taiwan is, on a good day, utterly spineless. and never mind that marjane sartrapi wrote explicitly about the commonality of people, not their governments. if you see americans buying into the lies of their government, and if you see fit to generalize the american opinion based on that, then remember that chinese people are but human, too. they are not more or less capable of being correct. they are no more or less susceptible to the things they’ve been told. “and our governments,” writes sartrapi, “are very much the same.”)
this is not a problem exclusive to the topic of taiwan-china relations, it should go without saying. but something about countries with political statuses more complicated than a basic yes/no seems to invite the ignorance of otherwise well-intentioned keyboard warriors who, if they are to be believed, call for what the ccp has been asserting for decades: one china, regardless of history, regardless of culture, regardless of the enumerable separations in economy and language and more.
this, from the same people who react with shock and horror at histories of forced assimilation. this, from the same people who look upon american imperialism with disgust. because it is most important to be correct where your friends are watching, not to look into and form your own opinions on the morals of something not yet known. certainly not to consider the feelings of those who might call it home. who might first worry about those they love.
at night, i call my family. it is evening in america, morning in taiwan. sorry about the noise, they say of the low roar in the background. it’s the military flybys. this is the fourth one today. they say this time it might be serious, that china is done bluffing.
i open twitter. an account with all the right flags and all the right hashtags says, you wouldn’t know what it’s like unless you live there. stop speaking for taiwanese people and accept the truth.
that’s right, the tweet reads, i stand with xinyu.
translated to english, the messages read:
it’s not about being precise / macau clearly just belongs to china / the same goes for hong kong and taiwan.
why should i be afraid of being disciplined / was anything i said wrong? / if you don’t recognize [the truth], don’t subscribe to my fromm.
twitter, or at least a certain corner of it, quickly and predictably became a bloodbath. to cancel or not to cancel, to care or not to care. there was disappointment in xinyu, of course, along with its cousins of shock, confusion, and anger, but there was also celebration. support. treatment of the whole thing as one big “gotcha”. jokes about mao and communism and comparing taiwan to israel. and to any disagreement, the arguments, are you even taiwanese? most taiwanese people support unification. open a history textbook, don’t talk about things you don’t know. she’s right, though; she’s right, though. she’s right.
if those are the qualifications to contribute to this dialogue, then so be it. i’ll pretend they’re being created for the sake of veracity and not easy dismissal. yes, i am taiwanese. as a matter of fact i do not support unification, and if you were to reference any opinion poll from the last 20 years, you would find that support for unification struggles to crack 15%. i assure you, i am familiar with the history of taiwan and its sovereignty — more so, no doubt, than the median kpoppie patting themselves on the back for these kinds of rebuttals.
and with that out of the way, let me also make it clear that i am not here to litigate xinyu’s views. i do not agree with her, plain and simple, but i am also not surprised that those are the opinions she holds. she is her own person, and what she does with her fromm account is her own business (until modhaus decides they have something to say about it. but i digress).
i am also not here to discuss the role of celebrity culture in the apparent support for xinyu. it’s a related factor for sure, but it’s also a separate one, and anyone who’s been into kpop for long enough knows that people are always wont to adopt the stances of their “faves” and defend them vehemently, regardless of what they are.
no, xinyu can believe what she believes. what i find much more concerning is the response, to this situation and others.
earlier this year, the (temporary) ban on american tiktok prompted many people to switch over to redbook, or xiaohongshu, whose existing users welcomed them with open arms. on one hand, this was a beautiful demonstration of everything positive about social media. it was humanity and cultural exchange and that marjane sartrapi quote. people swapped photos of lunchboxes, shared videos of cats. life was good.
but on the other, it made overwhelmingly obvious a growing and all the more alluring sentiment, especially for a particular brand of online leftist. the american government is bad, so it goes, and it wants us to hate china. therefore, china must be good. not even just that — but to support china is to be “woke”.
now, i hold no love for the american government. it is seemingly insistent on being either indifferent or actively hostile to everything that i am, now more than ever. i am intimately familiar with its flaws. believe me, i know.
but to turn that into something black-and-white, to take the other side of “us vs. them” simply for the sake of directionless protest, is at best a poor understanding of geopolitics and at worst a complete perversion of what one’s leftist consciousness claims to be.
the term “woke” originates in black political activism. in the past decade and a half or so, it has come to describe awareness of and engagement in racial justice and other human rights issues. and following the fate of every single piece of african american vernacular that has wound up on stan twitter, the meaning has been cheapened until it can be everything from a description of conscious, legitimate work to an indication that someone or something is on the “correct” (aka unproblematic, aka consumable, aka fitting of the performative image) side of the aisle.
it’s “woke” to support trans rights. it’s “woke” to criticize trump. it’s “woke” to follow boycott lists, and to attend protests.
it is, apparently, also “woke” to believe that supporting taiwanese independence is falling for american propaganda, because what better way to hit back at the white house than to leap into the arms of its opposition without so much as a critical thought? remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. remember — if america is bad, then china must be good.
(never mind that the usa’s support of taiwan is, on a good day, utterly spineless. and never mind that marjane sartrapi wrote explicitly about the commonality of people, not their governments. if you see americans buying into the lies of their government, and if you see fit to generalize the american opinion based on that, then remember that chinese people are but human, too. they are not more or less capable of being correct. they are no more or less susceptible to the things they’ve been told. “and our governments,” writes sartrapi, “are very much the same.”)
this is not a problem exclusive to the topic of taiwan-china relations, it should go without saying. but something about countries with political statuses more complicated than a basic yes/no seems to invite the ignorance of otherwise well-intentioned keyboard warriors who, if they are to be believed, call for what the ccp has been asserting for decades: one china, regardless of history, regardless of culture, regardless of the enumerable separations in economy and language and more.
this, from the same people who react with shock and horror at histories of forced assimilation. this, from the same people who look upon american imperialism with disgust. because it is most important to be correct where your friends are watching, not to look into and form your own opinions on the morals of something not yet known. certainly not to consider the feelings of those who might call it home. who might first worry about those they love.
at night, i call my family. it is evening in america, morning in taiwan. sorry about the noise, they say of the low roar in the background. it’s the military flybys. this is the fourth one today. they say this time it might be serious, that china is done bluffing.
i open twitter. an account with all the right flags and all the right hashtags says, you wouldn’t know what it’s like unless you live there. stop speaking for taiwanese people and accept the truth.
that’s right, the tweet reads, i stand with xinyu.