Group criticizes celebrities over pro-China statements
By Chen Yu-fu and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Twenty-eight Taiwanese entertainers publicly identified the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as their “motherland” around China’s National Day this year, including actors Wu Kang-ren (吳慷仁), Peter Ho (何潤東) and Nicky Wu (吳奇隆), the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday.
Reposting messages from Chinese state media referring to China as the “motherland,” or taking part in official Chinese National Day programs and celebrations, went beyond offering holiday greetings and amounted to public expressions of national identity, the group told a news conference in Taipei.
The entertainers should not enjoy the freedoms and social benefits of Taiwan’s liberal democracy while endorsing Beijing’s political agenda, union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said.
From left, Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang, and researchers Huang Cheng-han and Huang Ting-wei hold a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
Such endorsements allow Beijing to claim that Taiwan is part of the PRC’s “sacred territory” and that unification is the “holy duty” of all people of Chinese heritage, including Taiwanese, Lai said.
Russia issued large numbers of Russian passports to people in Crimea and eastern Ukraine before invoking the need to protect Russians and defend a “common Slavic homeland” as a pretext for invading Crimea and launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he said.
The 28 entertainers’ comments could put Taiwan on a similar path, Lai said, urging them to retract their statements or relinquish their Taiwanese citizenship.
While Taiwanese are free to identify as Chinese, they should not impose the view that China is their “motherland” on the rest of the population, he added.
Union think tank researcher Huang Cheng-han (黃承瀚) said the group verified that the 23 entertainers had reposted National Day messages from Chinese state media outlets China Central Television (CCTV) and the People’s Daily, either on their personal accounts or through their studios.
The posts included hashtags such as “77th anniversary of the founding of the PRC” and “One person, one wish for the motherland,” encouraging people to post their greetings, Huang said, adding that the wording left no room for ambiguity.
CCTV’s posts explicitly linked “motherland” with the anniversary of the PRC’s founding, so entertainers who reposted them should have understood that they were participating in state-sponsored national identity propaganda, he said.
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