Ever Met a Pro-TI Mainlander?

Politics Taiwan Politics
1

Have you ever met a pro-Taiwan independence Chinese mainlander?

  • Nope, never. Maybe I will, though.
  • Never have, don’t think I ever will.
  • Yes, I have. I’ve met plenty.
  • I’ve met one or two.

0 voters

I’ve met pro-TI Taiwanese, and pro-unification Taiwanese, I’ve met pro-unification mainlanders, but I’ve never met a pro-TI mainlander.

And if you have, can you describe where the persons have lived in their life? (e.g. that person has lived in Taiwan before, that person has lived in a Western country, that person has never been out of the mainland, etc.)

2

Of the numerous Chinese from mainland China that I’ve discussed China’s position vis-a-vis Taiwan with, they’ve all been of the opinion that Taiwan should be a part of the PRC.

Most of them had also lived in Canada for quite a few years.

3

The set of Mainland Chinese contains 1.3 billion unique elements. So it is not difficult to imagine that there can exist an element of whatever characteristic you are looking for.

Just like it is not difficult to imagine there exist people who aren’t Chinese or Taiwanese, don’t speak Chinese or Taiwanese, aren’t citizens of ROC or PRC, never lived in Taiwan or Mainland, and are ardent supporters of unification or TI solution to the Strait Issue.

4

Ac-droput’s right of course shawn_c, I’ve met oodles of them. Not something they’re likely to screech too loudly in public, but if you can imagine there are people unhappy with the mainland government, it’s not too hard to see these same people having a soft spot for Taiwan’s independance.

Usually you’d hear it in terms of, “why would Taiwanese want Taiwan to return to China?”

HG

5

Huang Guang Chen, I knew there HAD to be some! That’s why I set up this poll. It’s just that, well, I guess I’ve never met any in Toronto - although Toronto contains over 1 million persons who self-identify as Chinese, a large proportion being born in mainland China.

6

Shawn_c, understand. Maybe the mainlanders you see in Canada don’t really have as much to gripe about given they have benefitted enough from the regime to get out of there to another country? Just a thought.

I’ve got the “why would Taiwanese want Taiwan to return to China?” or more commonly a shrug of indifference many times in southern China. Like many of my own boring countrymen (Australians), Chinese tend to become more vocally nationalistic when they are outside China. It’s a bit harder to blow your country’s trumpet when you’re literally standing in it, so to speak.

HG

7

HG, sounds like a solid theory. It’s probably safe to assume that the Chinese mainlanders I’ve met so far in Toronto, are in the upper fifth of China’s economic class.

8

There is a Mainland band that is pro-self determination (which is a lot more open minded than a lot of mainlanders), they played in Taiwan a couple of years ago at some 228 rally or something, or was it the holding hands thing ?

9

My landlord and his wife make two (well, one and a half, because she just nods whenever he says anything - I’m not sure she still has all her marbles).

He was born in Shandong, she in Nanjing. Apparently he started to question the KMT policy during the ‘white terror’ period of KMT rule. He reckons that Taiwan is effectively a seperate state and he would be happy to be a citizen of any future ‘Republic of Taiwan’. Ok, so he’s not exactly raising the green flag high, but that’s as pro-TI an attitude as I’ve ever heard from a mainlander.

10

I’ve met a good number of mainland mainlanders who couldn’t give half a shit about what Taiwan does with itself. Some of them have said things to the effect of “if I were Taiwanese, I would probably want independence.” However, such people could hardly be classified as pro independence. Even if they were allowed to do so openly, it’s not like they’re going to speak up about it or support it. I’m convinced that a noticeable minority of mainlanders feel either indifferent or even positively about Taiwan independence. I’m also convinced that their opinions, at least right now, don’t mean squat. Anybody who’s in any position of power on the mainland, be they government slick hairs or business types, preaches the same Taiwan unification gospel. I’m not saying that there aren’t elite type people in business and government who disagree with the party line on Taiwan, but such people NEVER disagree with that line in public. I imagine that it would take decades of press freedom for us to see non-conformist views regarding Taiwan expressed in front of an audience any larger than one.

11

Totally agree with Jive Turkey. There speaks a man who knows what he’s talking about. There is a strangely pervasive idea in Taiwan (especially amongst foreigners) that people in China could give a pink flying fuck about Taiwan. Where does it come from? Seriously? I think it’s possibly just conceit. Taiwan is quite far down the list of preferred destinations for Chinese. (I mean, have you seen the wiring in Taiwan? You can’t even put toilet paper down the toilet, you have to put it in a little bag - gross! And so on. The only news of Taiwan in China is earthquakes and fighting in the legislature.)

For the record, most people in China know already that Taiwan is de facto independent, but if it became un-independent tomorrow, they wouldn’t give a shit. Do you what the first question would be on 1.3 billion lips? “Will there be a day off?”

And in any case they sure as hell aren’t going to tell anyone outside their immediate family that they’re big TI supporters. Hell why not go the whole hog and tell everyone you’re a big fan of the FLG? Indeed if any Chinese person came up to me and suggested he was in favour of TI, if he wasn’t an immediate relative, I’d make the unshakeable assumption he was an agent provocateur.

Oh and by the way, the richer and more educated they get, the less they give a shit about Taiwan, or China, or anything. Just like in the West. The peasant is far more interested in next year’s cabbage prices, and the high ranking official is wondering if he’ll be able to embezzle enough loot to buy that flat abroad. Everyone in between is working 30 hours a day for sixpence a year, or working out how to fleece rich-but-stupid foreigners/Taiwanese/HKers.

It doesn’t matter what people in China think about Taiwan, or anything really. When the CCP wants their opinion, it will give it to them.

12

So after 2 pages, we’ve come to an agreement that TI supporters on the mainland are in the minority.

Why not just pop up on a Chinese language forum and pose the question?

13

Doh! There you go again Ac_dropout, so close but missed the point. We came to some kind of agreement that in fact the majority of mainland Chinese don’t give a flying fuck. Clearer?

You’ve been to China I take it? And no, I don’t mean Taiwan, that really doesn’t count.

HG

14

I’m glad to hear the Mainland Chinese are ambivalent because we’ve come to a consensus that they should be ambivalent.

Hopefully cctang’s opinions can now conform to forumosa.com new consensus on what Mainland Chinese opinions should be.

Thought leadership at its best.

15

[quote=“hexuan”]Totally agree with Jive Turkey. There speaks a man who knows what he’s talking about. There is a strangely pervasive idea in Taiwan (especially amongst foreigners) that people in China could give a pink flying f*ck about Taiwan. Where does it come from? Seriously? I think it’s possibly just conceit. Taiwan is quite far down the list of preferred destinations for Chinese. (I mean, have you seen the wiring in Taiwan? You can’t even put toilet paper down the toilet, you have to put it in a little bag - gross! And so on. The only news of Taiwan in China is earthquakes and fighting in the legislature.)

For the record, most people in China know already that Taiwan is de facto independent, but if it became un-independent tomorrow, they wouldn’t give a shit. Do you what the first question would be on 1.3 billion lips? “Will there be a day off?”

And in any case they sure as hell aren’t going to tell anyone outside their immediate family that they’re big TI supporters. Hell why not go the whole hog and tell everyone you’re a big fan of the FLG? Indeed if any Chinese person came up to me and suggested he was in favour of TI, if he wasn’t an immediate relative, I’d make the unshakeable assumption he was an agent provocateur.

Oh and by the way, the richer and more educated they get, the less they give a shit about Taiwan, or China, or anything. Just like in the West. The peasant is far more interested in next year’s cabbage prices, and the high ranking official is wondering if he’ll be able to embezzle enough loot to buy that flat abroad. Everyone in between is working 30 hours a day for sixpence a year, or working out how to fleece rich-but-stupid foreigners/Taiwanese/HKers.

It doesn’t matter what people in China think about Taiwan, or anything really. When the CCP wants their opinion, it will give it to them.[/quote]

My own personal experience has been the exact opposite. Every mainland person that I’ve met (admittedly, mostly university students and random people I’ve met while travelling around) was not only emphatically pro-reunification, but they were under the impression that the vast majority of Taiwanese are too, but they’re being held captive by a few wingnut TI-supporters. There were differences in opinion; the more liberal types thought that they could lure Taiwan back primarily through encouraging economic and cultural links, while not a small number of people cheerfully predicted nuclear war by 2020.

For instance, this past March I was visiting a friend in Shaoshan who was doing some sort of internship with the village government there and ended up having hotpot with the vice mayor or some sort of personage like that. Not only did she accidentally let slip that I had spent time in Taiwan, but also that I was American. Christ, I got lectured for a f@#$ half hour about how I was meddling in other people’s affairs, and I only got out of it by vociferously offering to ganbei my way out of the situation. More typical was when I was taking some 9-hour bus ride through rural Hunan and after thr fourth time of watching the same Teresa Teng VCD, I fell into conversation with the bus driver. After also finding out that I was an American who had spent time in Taiwan, he kept joking about hearing news on the radio about nuclear bombs falling on the US (didn’t stop us from hitting the KTV with some strange women afterwards, ha.)

That goes with all sorts of other stories that I’ve seen on the Internet. Like one FOB English teacher in the mainland who was talking about “foreign countries” and accidentally wrote Taiwan between Korea and Thailand on the chalkboard and was fired the next day when one of his 11-year old students ratted him out to his parents.

If there were anything resembling democratic elections at the national level, there would only be one issue that the opposition would focus on: why has the CCP failed in the face of foreign intervention to reunite the motherland, thereby hurting the feelings of the great Chinese people. Those of you enjoying living/working/owning property in Taiwan should be damn glad that they sent the tanks out on June 4th.

16

A few years ago I was at a Chinese supermarket, in of all places, Jamaica.

Two very old Chinese men were speaking loudly about China, they both agreed that they didn’t trust the PRC government and that it should probably be removed. By the time I was done with my shopping however they also said that Taiwan should be a part of China as soon as possible even if Taiwan, even if it subjects the Taiwanese people under the same government that they disapprove of. I really didn’t get their logic. But many “Mainlanders” who disapprove of the CCP, (from the USA and Canada) have expressed the same opinions.

There was a girl I met in highschool however, she was pro-China all the way and even announced that she was communist. She worked for the American Chamber of Commerce in PRC for a while (funny right?). She kept preaching to naive kids that Taiwan was a violent country with high crime and disorder, and to quell the disorder, the few TI individuals must be expelled and let the majority of Taiwanese, whom she claimed are Pro-Unification, be let “free into China”.

Of course I asked her about the personal violence she experienced in Taiwan and she said that the window of her auntie’s car was broken.

I really never got why she felt that way.

17

Those stories are all pretty funny. Here are some of my “encounters”!

One of my friends from China, who has been in Canada for at least five years studying, and I think is here permanently, believes that Taiwan should be united with China. She doesn’t care if people have to die, because, “if that’s what it takes, so be it.” And she believes China NEEDS the CCP in order to control the multitudes. She also got into a huge argument with her other friend, who is Taiwanese, over the issue. I think they’re still friends…

This dude in one of my classes, is around 30-something years old, has an engineering degree from China, but has immigrated to Canada permanently under the “foreign-professionals” category of Canadian immigration. Anyway, we argue every class about the issue, and he brings up the usual, “then what about Abraham Lincoln?!” “American imperialists!” When he first brought up the Lincoln argument, I almost gave him some credit… but then when our prof. started talking about Japanese, he wrote, “die Japs” on a piece of paper for my viewing pleasure. I then made the decision to immediately discount any argument he makes for unification.

This guy from Suzhou that I met on the airplane from Taipei to Toronto also believed in unification - because of “history”. I didn’t say much to him… anyway, I think he was 18.

Now for some opposing views:

This lady I met in Zhonghe, she said her family moved out of China a while ago, and had lived in South Korea for over a decade, and then decided to move to Taiwan. I asked her why she moved away, and she said that there is no freedom in China.

My friend from Singapore, and her friends in turn, believe in Taiwan’s status as an independent nation.

One more point I’d like to mention. It’s too bad that many of the Chinese not born in Taiwan, but living there, choose to support the pan-blue camp (overseas Chinese who’ve emigrated to Taiwan). Not really because they particularly like the pan-blue camp, but because they’re not “native Taiwanese”… and that’s what the pan-greens play themselves off as. Even despite the fact that many of them support Taiwan’s status as an independent nation, and sometimes don’t agree with the pan-blue platform.

18

I suspect, and I may be going out on a limb here, that sometimes people in China, and Chinese people living in Wai Guo don’t always tell foreigners the truth. It’s just a hunch, though.

I make a point of always agreeing most vociferously with whatever Chinese people say. It often throws them completely.

Chinese Rent-a-Nationalist: “America is the great Satan!”

Dumb-ass Foreigner (me): “Absofuckinglutely! You Chinese totally kick ass and we American just suck huge quantities of donkey dick!”

Chinese Rent-a-Nationalist: “Er, yes well, I mean you’re not that bad, but you have to admit we Chinese are pretty damned smart eh?”

Dumb-ass Foreigner (me): “Fucking righteous! You got all that ten thousand years of history shit goin’ on, and we just climbed out of the goddamn trees last week!”

Chinese Rent-a-Nationalist: “Yeah, well er, you know. Taiwan’s a part of China isn’t it? That’s pretty cool, eh?”

Dumb-ass Foreigner (me): “You bet your sweet ass it is! I just spent 15 years living there, and those people over there are just itching to get a part of that PRC / PLA / PAP action! All my friends have posters of Lei Feng on the wall wondering where the fuck the PLA got to after it was going to pop over in 1952 and liberate us all from those scum-sucking capitalist roadster pig-dogs! You guys sure were lucky you didn’t have to deal with all that capitalism shit! People running round like headless chickens making money hand over fist - horrible! Long live the CCP! Gan Bei!”

Chinese Rent-a-Nationalist: “Who is Lei Feng?”

Dumb-ass Foreigner (me): “???”

19

Miranda

[quote]Chinese Rent-a-Nationalist: “Who is Lei Feng?”

Dumb-ass Foreigner (me): “???”[/quote]
:notworthy:

All of it.

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

HG

20

:laughing: :laughing: Classic Miranda. I just spit my tea over my screen. Too bad most of Forumosa won’t get it :notworthy: