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What international media missed about the Taiwanese reaction to China's provocative live-fire war games

First foreign press seemed to assume we'd panic, then marveled that Taiwanese seemed unafraid, but the truth is more nuanced

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Taiwan launched a military exercise on Tuesday, but said the planned drills were not a response to Chinese activity

Taiwan launched a military exercise on Tuesday, but said the planned drills were not a response to Chinese activity

TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — On Saturday evening (August 6) a friend and I went out for dinner. It eventually got so packed and noisy we left to walk around People’s Park in Taichung.

It was a pleasant scene. People threw frisbees, couples picnicked, and children played with colorful toys lit up with LEDs sold by streetside vendors.

A street musician livened the atmosphere. It was a near-perfect evening.

Well, except for the gnawing anxiety periodically tugging at the back of my mind over the missiles being shot over us and the simulated invasion taking place all around Taiwan.

When these unprecedentedly aggressive Chinese military drills began, the foreign media portrayed them in highly dramatic terms. One would have assumed that the public here would be frantic, panicked, and hiding in bunkers surrounded by canned food, bags of rice, and plenty of water.

Of course, that did not happen, and on the surface, life went on as normal. Foreign media then picked up on this, with coverage of how the public was living life as usual, calm, and unworried.

What does "Amy Lee" have to say?

The coverage followed a typical pattern that would feature anecdotal quotes from, for some reason, usually a female professional based in Taipei aged in her 30s with a name like Amy Lee, saying how her life was going on as normal and things were just fine. This would be followed with an explanation that Taiwan has been living with Chinese threats for 70 years and to just take it in stride.

There is some truth to that. The international press has the attention span of a gnat, and tends to forget that threats from China are common, but Taiwanese know this very well and fully understand both the long-term and short-term context.

But the foreign press, which rarely posts journalists who can speak or read any of the local languages, failed to pick up on what is really going on. While there is no panic and people are leading normal lives, there is anxiety and worry this time, and the signs of it are all about.

One also suspects the Amy Lees they interview are putting on a brave face for the foreign journalists. They do not want to look weak or scared to the world.

Knowing the context as well as they do, Taiwanese are well aware China’s live-fire exercises surrounding the nation are a major and dangerous escalation. Missiles being fired over Taiwan’s mainland, hostile drones flying into Taiwan airspace in Kinmen, and warships squaring off from both sides a mere 180 meters apart is serious and risky business.

The story dominates local news

In the local TV news, it is by far the biggest story–though they did manage to save a little space for the really important stuff, like segments on K-pop stars. It is the similarly dominant story on the newspapers and websites.

They ran lots of segments of missiles being fired, shots of warships, how to download apps to find air raid shelters and even one slightly mad reporter who rented a boat to try and get closer to the action. The tone was serious, sometimes solemn, and occasionally a bit nervous.

As I sat down to write this column, every single one of the ‘trending’ stories in the politics section of the Yahoo Local Chinese language news aggregator was on the topic, with similar stories in English on Taiwan News’ ‘Most Popular’ list.

Taiwan is a big consumer of news, so this is significant. News outlets would not be featuring it so heavily if it were not bringing in the eyeballs in a big way.

Many Taiwanese articles refer to much of the public being worried or anxious simply as a fact. Local journalists will have a wider sample base of normal people in their lives who will talk to them more normally than foreign journalists do.

All major parties condemn China

Everyone is weighing in on it, politicians, TV news show pundits, and random famous people. Pretty much everyone in some form or another is condemning China’s actions, even on the deep blue, normally pro-China end of the political spectrum.

The Kuomintang (KMT) even took the unusual step of translating their condemnation into English. Former KMT Chair Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who often parrots Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda on things like East Turkestan (Xinjiang), attacked the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government on Facebook, accusing it of “lying flat” and accused them of: “being fundamentally tantamount to abandoning national defence, which is really absurd to the extreme.”

That Hung would attack the DPP is not unusual, but it is striking she’s attacking the administration not for “provoking” China as she normally does, but rather for not taking enough measures to protect against them. In short, people are on edge and concerned about the situation–even Hung.

But as always, Taiwanese respond to the situation with humor to break the tension.

Think back to the beginning of the pandemic

To those living overseas, probably the best analogy I can think of is the very early days of the pandemic. The TV was full of alarming reports of the spread of a deadly new virus, with quarantines, lockdowns and chaos in far away places like Wuhan and Italy.

But for most people at that point, it still was not in your community (unless you were in Wuhan or Italy). No doubt it was there in your mind as the TV tracked its spread to more and more parts of the world.

There was no way then to know when, or if, it would come to your community, or what would happen when it did. All you could do was go about your daily life as normal, but with that nagging worry about what could happen next lingering in the back of your mind.

Then amplify that. If a Chinese invasion were to happen, it would be devastating to a degree that makes the pandemic look like happy times by comparison.

Shrimp fried rice in Tanzi

I’ll end with some comments from my own “Amy Lee,” though I doubt she has an English name, from my working class neighborhood in the Tanzi District in Taichung. Picking up her delicious shrimp fried rice from her hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the owner–who I would guess is in her 50s–wanted to discuss the subject.

We spoke in the heavily Taiwanese-inflected Mandarin commonly spoken outside of Taipei, and she proved to be quite informed and articulate on the topic, as so many Taiwanese are (I can’t count the number of taxi drivers I’ve chatted with who could easily take on the talk show pundits). The first thing she wanted to know was if I was preparing to leave the country, and seemed pleased I was not panicked and fully intended to stay.

Her tone and comments were a mix of concern, anger, and defiance. She had clearly been following the situation closely, and was bothered by China’s “threatening” behaviour.

She described the “Chinese communists” using a term (流氓國家) that translates literally to “gangster state,” which I think captures her meaning better than the more common translations of the term as “rogue nation” or “outlaw state.” Her tone was firm, and delivered with backbone.

Though bothered and concerned by the communist “provocations,” she did not think China was about to invade.

And with that, and my prized shrimp fried rice in hand, we both went back to our normal lives.

Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) is a regular contributing columnist for Taiwan News, the central Taiwan correspondent for ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder of Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Twitter: @donovan_smith.