Advocating for Taiwan on One-China problem with some context
I was in an internet-related conference. The invited speaker was talking about the security of IoT devices, and their research on the customer’s attitude toward those technologies from multiple countries. I was a bit dis-concentrate on the stage, start surfing my phone. All of sudden, one message on Slack caught my eyes:
Taiwan is not part of China
How is the message came up, in the Slack channel of a technical event, seems so randomly? I raise my head, and realize the reason from the stage.
The world map speaker just shown labeling three countries explicit with the national flag as background, and the tiny Taiwan island is also in the red — the color of China’s national flag.
I can now understand why my friends are reacting in such way. I feel the same anger. Taiwan is NOT part of PRC, definitely. But another feeling came to my mind in seconds— will this be in-understandable aggressive to the other people in the channel, especially without any context?
So I had tried send the following message out, as soon as possible (and editing a few times to completed it):
I can imaging that not many people knowing the difference or details about the Taiwan problem, and why people is reacting, but take this as example for difference from us (to China):
We don’t have mass surveillance on street, no censorship nor great firewall to block the (inter)net, and have freedom of speech (as well as legal gay marriage 👨❤️👨).
We are on the freedom side of this world, but China CCP government keep arguing and forcing the world to recognize that we are part of them with their money, so we will need to explain once and once. Don’t take it too hard, it just a reminder.
The problem came from a map, and the data of the map might came from ISO, the organization following the UN’s point of view to “world countries”, and UN, as united of nations, is miserably controlling by China CCP government — As one of the Permanent Five, basically they can deny anything they don’t like in UN, including the suggestions raised by Taiwan many times for ISO to “fix” the ISO-3166 “standard” country list which labelling Taiwan as “Province of China”, following by most of the websites, companies, maps, and international statistic datas… resulting above map in the very end to broke our heart.
There is the historical reason and the realistic of international politics that cause such situation, but we do still need to raise it again and again, even for most of the time we know it may be useless.
Please don’t take it as offensive. We just want to remind it and get things fix.
BTW, Mozilla (and many others) has an official policy when we listed countries and regions in our product, which can prevent much geopolitical angst.
The excluded of Taiwan in WHO & ICAO = world vulnerability to Coronavirus containment
This One-China dilemma is also causing humanitarian issues. Taiwan had been excluded from WHO (“World” Health Organization) and ICAO (International “Civil” Aviation Organization) for long time. This two organizations is extremely importan to the fight against Coronavirus, but again — miserably under the control of China CCP government.
There are 400,000 Taiwanese working in China, 600 planes a week between both side of Taiwan strait. We does in fact laid at the front line of prevent Conoravirus spreading out from China, and our government had so far did a good, hard and serious work, to keep the situation in controlled, kept a low infected numbers (9 as of Jan 31).
But without international co-operation, we won’t stand longer enough.
My country’s experience in dealing with such medical threatens from China (such as SARS and this Coronavirus) is worth to share with everyone, and we really should have ways to exchange those knowledges of virus and international traveler’s info with other countries, even if this might make China government un-happy, still, nobody should be excluded from the global medical health community (or community in any other domains.)
And again, please remember that don’t called us as part of China. We’re not part of them in all aspect. It just their desire.
