偽物

Newspeak #2: "Peaceful Reunification" Neither peaceful, nor a reunification. Beijing repeats one phrase so often that even Western media use it without blinking: "peaceful reunification." Read it slowly. Both words are lies. 1. It isn't peaceful. China's 2005 Anti-Secession Law says that if "possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted," the state "shall employ non-peaceful means." Peace is plan A. War is plan B. And only Beijing decides when plan A has run out. Meanwhile, Chinese warplanes and warships circle Taiwan almost every day, and drills named "Joint Sword" and "Strait Thunder" rehearse a blockade of the island. If a man points a gun at you and says "I'd prefer to settle this peacefully," that isn't peace. That's robbery with good manners. 2. It isn't a reunification. "Re-" means again. The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. It has never governed Taiwan, not for a single day. You can't get back together with someone you were never with. Picture a man telling a woman he has never dated: "We'll get back together. I hope you'll come willingly. But if you marry someone else, I'll do what I have to." Then he parks outside her house every night. Nobody would call that a peaceful reunion. We'd call it stalking. 3. We've already seen the "peaceful" version. "One Country, Two Systems" was originally designed for Taiwan. Hong Kong got it first, as the showcase, with a promise: no change for 50 years. It lasted 23. In 2020 the National Security Law arrived, and the opposition, the free press and the protests went with it. Taiwanese don't need to imagine what "peaceful reunification" looks like. They watched it happen. 4. "Voluntary," Chinese style. Chinese has a phrase for this: 被自愿, "to be volunteered." You were volunteered to donate. You were volunteered to work overtime. In 2021, tennis star Peng Shuai accused former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Her post vanished within about 30 minutes. Weeks later she said it was a "misunderstanding" and that she had never said anyone assaulted her. The WTA suspended its tournaments in China because no one could confirm she was speaking freely. That's the point. A "yes" only means something if saying "no" is safe. 5. Taiwan has already answered. In a March 2026 survey for Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, only 7.8% of Taiwanese favored unification, now or eventually. In NCCU's long-running identity poll, 62% call themselves Taiwanese. Only 2.5% call themselves Chinese. So drop the euphemism. Unification by force is coercion. Unification "by peace," with missiles in the background, is coercion too. The only truly peaceful option is the one Beijing refuses to consider: accepting that Taiwan can say no.

Why We Should Protect Taiwan the Way We Protected Mbappé I used to ask myself: would reunification really be so bad? People on both sides of the strait share the same blood. Families were torn apart in 1949. Many who fled to Taiwan never saw their hometowns, or the relatives they left behind, ever again. Politics robbed them of that. Part of me thought reunification might heal that wound. I changed my mind. Not because of any politician, but because of posts like this one: "If I were China's decision-maker, I'd keep the island, not the people. Give them 5 days to leave by whatever means, and bomb everyone who stays to death. With China's industrial capacity, we can fire a million rockets a day. Come back in a month and see which Ultraman is still alive." Read it again. 23 million people, five days to abandon their homes, and everyone left behind dies. Written like a joke, with a cartoon reference at the end. They call it "reunification." But you cannot claim to love a people while planning to bomb them off their own land. That isn't reunification. It's ethnic cleansing, said out loud. And the casualness is the most frightening part. Mao once spoke of a war in which half of mankind might die as if it were a statistic. Decades later, his admirers talk about human lives exactly the same way. Now think about Mbappé. A week ago most Chinese netizens barely knew his name. Then he made one joke about a meme. Within days he faced a flood of online abuse, lost his sponsors, had his matches pulled from state TV, and was pressured into apologizing in three languages. Most people watching thought: this is too much. No one should be treated like this. Mbappé went through it for a few days. Taiwan has lived with it for decades: daily threats, military drills on its doorstep, its people dehumanized online, its friends punished economically. I can't imagine what that feels like. And the playbook doesn't stop at borders. Bully, threaten, punish economically, demand submission. If we stay silent when it's used on Mbappé and on Taiwan, we have already accepted that it can be used on us. When someone openly fantasizes about bombing every person who disagrees, that is no longer a political opinion. It's a call for mass murder of civilians. Standing with Taiwan isn't anti-China. It's refusing to accept that 23 million people can be erased because a government wants their land.