Uncool China fails to woo Taiwan's
youth By Jens Kastner
TAIPEI - The Chinese Communist Party's
(CCP) fourth-most powerful figure recently called
for extra efforts to get Taiwan's youth into the
China boat. In a speech at the Great Hall of the
People in Beijing, Jia Qinglin, chairman of
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
(CPPCC) - the country's top political advisory
body, emphasized that it's crucial that the
island's young people "identify more closely with
the Chinese nation and culture."
While
Jia's statement certainly gave the starter's gun
to a number of jolly state-sponsored cross-strait
youth outings, more game-changers factors are
subtly influencing Taiwanese youth's hearts and
minds.
That Beijing - despite the
spectacular cross-strait rapprochement lately -
continues to battle with a weighty image problem in
Taiwan can hardly be
called a secret. In droves of surveys, the
island's youth has stubbornly said they feel more
Taiwanese than Chinese, and that Japan but not
China is their favorite country. They say they
would only consider moving to China in order to
make more money, not because they think it's
trendy or cool.
Also the recent frenzy
surrounding Jeremy Lin, the first American-born
NBA player of Chinese descent, was telling: As
Lin's parents were born in Taiwan, the local youth
lauded Lin as one of their own while flatly
dismissing China's claims on him. That Taiwan and
China could together take pride on the basketball
star because he, like the vast majority of people
on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, happens to be
a "hua ren" - an ethnic Chinese - didn't
cross the minds of the many young white-collar
workers and students in Taiwan who stayed up all
night to see Lin's games in Taipei sports bars.
It seems that Beijing's initiatives to
make "China" an appealing brand name to the
island's youth is failing to bear fruits. One
reason could be that fancy soft power drives were
launched elsewhere - eg, by renting a huge Time's
Square billboard for the state-run news agency
Xinhua or extending a hand to Hollywood producers
- but the actions the Chinese took targeting young
Taiwanese were more low key.
Last year,
Chinese President Hu Jintao, as part of a program
aiming at engaging 10,000 youngsters from both
sides of the Taiwan Strait, invited Taiwanese into
the Great Hall of the People for sessions of
traditional calligraphy, Tibetan Thangka paintings
and Taiwanese ethnic minority lyrics, among
others. Also some cross-strait high school
basketball games were held recently. Furthermore,
over a hundred Chinese universities opened their
doors to Taiwanese high school graduates in 2010.
However, when the targeted groups are
asked the question "What's your favorite country?"
by a social networking website, China still
garners hardly more than 5% of the votes, while
Japan, Taiwan's former colonial power and China's
arch rival, usually rakes in well over 40%.
There are signs that Beijing's drive to
woo the island's young will gain traction before
very long. It's just that the soft power tools of
choice aren't calligraphy jamborees and their
likes.
"Chinese pop music and TV idol
dramas are gradually becoming more popular with
the Taiwanese youth," said York Chiou, a professor
at Shih Hsin University Department of Radio,
Television and Film, in Taipei. "In the past, it
used to be Taiwanese artists who went to the
mainland and became famous, not vice versa."
And indeed, a Chinese reach-out to
Taiwan's youth via music, TV and movies is under
way. In a layered salvo of productions, different
age groups and audiences are taken on and likely
to some extent or another influenced for the good
of the Chinese cause.
Targeting the very
little ones, there's Xi Yang Yang, or Happy
Lamb and Grey Wolf, a cartoon series that is
broadcast daily on Taiwanese TV. In it, a family
of dumb wolves tries to catch lambs that attend a
lamb school but always fails. While the storyline
itself can hardly be categorized as something
holding much of a political significance, it could
well be the craze surrounding it: Xi Yang Yang
dolls, toys and stickers are extremely popular in
the island's nurseries, effectively beginning to
elbow away Japan's Hello Kitty and Doraemon. In
terms of soft power, the formula is simple: If the
wolves and lambs of China manage to oust the
mouthless cat of Japan from Taiwanese children's
daily lives, it will eventually make some
difference to the new generation's attitudes also
in the political realm. It's the McDonald's
system: today's happy toddlers are tomorrow's
loyal consumers.
Woju, or Dwelling
Narrowness, can be taken as a prime example of how
Chinese TV productions slowly but steadily change
the perceptions of Taiwanese in their 20s. The TV
series portrays the difficulties of buying an
affordable home in Chinese cities and puts the
spotlight also on other social issues in
contemporary urban China.
Ho Pao-sui, a
lecturer at Taipei's Chinese Culture University,
explained what a significant mark the series has
been leaving on young Taiwanese viewers'
impressions of mainland China.
"We
Taiwanese have seen mainlanders traditionally as
lazy communists, who get their houses arranged by
the state", she said. "But through this series, we
come to understand that they are like us - they
diligently struggle for a better life."
Ho
then made mention of yet another TV drama in
Beijing's bag of tricks. In Men Dang Fu Bu
Dui, or Meet the Parents, which is a
cross-strait coproduction, a young mainland
Chinese man falls in love with a young Taiwanese
woman. Due to one cultural misunderstanding
following another, she initially rejects him, and
so does her family and his her, but as the story
unfolds, both sides come to know each other, and,
of course, eventually love each other.
"A
bit of a trivial story line; but who knows, it
might work", Ho said.
Jens Kastner
is a Taipei-based journalist.
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