One of the topics that came up during yesterday’s New Year Party was if people were for or against the reunification of Taiwan and China. My stance as many of you know is I’m against the reunification unless the government changes. DNG was bringing up that the reunification would bring heaps of economic benefits to both countries, but I argued asking if economic strength was the best measure of how great a society or civilization is? Would you give up certain freedoms to obtain a better economy? This led to an argument of how China has no freedom of religion (i.e. Falun Gong) and Taiwan has limited freedom of speech and USA doesn’t really have that much freedom considering that the media is really controlled by the shareholders, although it appears to be “free”. I agreed that that may be the case, but the level of freedom is clearly differentiable. For example, my website will no longer be able to view within China because the word Falun Gong has appeared on my website. Even if a website has the word Freedom or Liberty, they are automatically blocked by the Great Firewall of China and if you’ve seen the recent allegations against Microsoft, Yahoo, and even Google for compromising ethics to make money in China, you’ll know what I’m talking about. And with bloggers nowadays, large news companies aren’t the only source of news anymore.
I gave my example of how China is like the Matrix and the people inside have no real sense of what the “real world” outside is like since every aspect of their lives is controlled by the government. If you were living in the Matrix, would you take the blue pill or the red pill? I agree the situation may be not as simple as that and once you know that an outside world exists, your decision can change. But let’s say the option exists and knowing that once you take the blue pill, there’s no turning back and if you take the red pill, you won’t remember anything about the outside world, which pill would you take. Now that you have an idea of what I’m getting at, people in China are ignorant of this because of the Firewall, but people in Taiwan are not. They already know what the REAL WORLD outside is and by reunification, they’re forcing them to enter this China bubble and force them to believe this new version of reality.
Hong Kong also came into discussion since it reunited with China back in 1997. I shared my knowledge with the group saying how once China took over Hong Kong, all newspapers basically caved and became supporters of communism. All but one: Apple Daily (蘋果日報). You can read the Wikipedia entry about it. My dad tells me it’s because that all the editors of Apple Daily are US citizens or something like that and that the Communist government can’t touch them. Another interesting fact you might want to know is that currently the Hong Kong’s chief executive is chosen by a 400 member committee which all are chosen by the government. Hong Kong people have been rallying to reform this and move toward democracy. There was a bill to increase that number from 400 to 800, but it was shot down because you have to understand, 800 people out of 7 million is like nothing.
My stance has and will remain the same no matter how much economical benefits there may be, there are certain freedoms that should never be given up. China can take its time to improve. Even if it takes 200 years before China’s reformed where they don’t need a Firewall to cover the real truth, Taiwan can wait that long before reunification.