薛仁忠

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.