Civic groups in Taiwan condemn China’s law on promoting ethnic unity and progress

Taipei, June 14 (IANS) Civic groups slammed China for its law on promoting ethnic unity and progress set to be promulgated on July 1, saying that it amounted to forced assimilation and cultural cleansing, local media reported on Sunday.

The groups said on Saturday that the law will impose a single national identity, weaken the identities of non-Han ethnic groups and promotes the “integration” of different ethnic groups through policies across several sectors such as education, housing, population movement, community life, culture, tourism and development, Taiwan-based Taipei Times reported.

Taiwan Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang stressed that the law amounts to repression under the pretext of unity, targeting Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, Hong Kongers and Taiwanese.

He said that the law intentionally exploits the similarity in wording between zhonghua minzu (“the Chinese nation”) and zhonghua minguo (“the Republic of China”) to further reduce Taiwan’s efforts to cooperate with the international community.

Lai added that the goal of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “great revival of the zhonghua minzu” was unification, in terms of territory and ethnicity.

He stressed that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2019 “Five-point Plan” or the 2022 white paper issued by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era”, connect the “great rejuvenation of the zhonghua minzu with the goal of reunification”.

On Saturday, Soochow University political science associate professor Chen Fang-yu said the logic behind China’s nationalism was that they want people of Taiwan and Hong Kong to identify themselves as “Chinese” or “Han” and that Chinese nationalism could not accept different ethnicities, Taipei Times reported.

Civic groups criticised the CCP’s implementation of “integration” through law and making little effort to hide its expansionist ambitions, saying that Taiwan is likely to face hegemonic pressure.

They contended that “unity” for CCP is based on state violence and the trampling of cultural dignity, while Taiwan’s definition is to protect ethnic diversity and the autonomy of ethnic dignity, Taipei Times reported.

Earlier in May, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) urged people to remain alert to cybersecurity risks posed by four Chinese-made mobile apps, including Amap, which currently tops Android and iOS download charts for navigation apps in Taiwan, local media reported.

The other three Chinese-made mobile apps are bilibili, iQIYI, BIMOBIMO, MODA’s Administration for Cyber Security (ACS) announced the findings during a news conference in Taipei, Taiwan-based Central News Agency (CNA) reported.

MODA’s Administration for Cyber Security (ACS) said that the main concern with Chinese-developed apps is that they share data with China, which is a “greater risk to national security” and is something that his agency wanted to bring into the notice of citizens of Taiwan.

ACS senior official Lee Yu-wei said that the companies behind the four apps may need to share data with Chinese authorities under China’s Cybersecurity Law and National Intelligence Law.

ACS conducts tests on four apps in four categories like reading data from other apps, gathering and sharing user data, accessing users’ device information, and reading users’ activity.

The reported quoted Lee as saying that Amap had the highest number of risk behaviours among these four apps.

He said that risk factors were identified on both operating systems included continuously reading location of the users, accessing contacts, audio visual data and microphone permissions.

He urged people to remain alert to risks posed by all apps and not only Chinese-developed, by checking whether the permissions asked by the apps are reasonable and using cybersecurity tools when required, CNA reported.

–IANS

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