Politics

posts on political issues relevant to Greater China

Crackdown on extreme nationalism

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Source: China Digital Times (7/3/24)
Chinese Social Media Platforms Launch Crackdown on Extreme Nationalism and Xenophobic Hate-Speech after Fatal Suzhou Stabbing
By

Chinese social media platforms have announced a belated crackdown on “extreme nationalism” and xenophobic hate-speech online, following last week’s fatal stabbing at a school bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in which a Japanese mother and child were injured by a knife-wielding man, and Chinese school bus attendant Hu Youping was killed after trying to intervene. Just two weeks earlier, four visiting American teachers were stabbed and injured by another man at a public park in Jilin, in northeastern China. Both stabbings are believed to have been motivated by xenophobic sentiment, and many online commenters have witheringly described the attackers as “modern-day Boxers,” referring to the anti-foreign rebels who launched the Boxer Rebellion approximately 125 years ago.

In the last few weeks, CDT editors have compiled numerous essays, articles, and netizen comments pointing out apparent links between the recent spate of attacks and the vitriolic anti-Japanese and other xenophobic content that is tolerated on Chinese television, social media, and even in school textbooks. It is worth nothing that several of these essays were censored and taken offline in the days following the Suzhou attack. The hate-speech crackdown announced by social media platforms this week seems to reflect a belated realization that xenophobic online content may be fueling hatred and even radicalizing some individuals to carry out offline attacks. Continue reading Crackdown on extreme nationalism →

Netizens reflect on anti-Japanese propaganda

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Source: China Digital Times (6/26/24)
Netizens Reflect on Anti-Japanese Propaganda after Stabbing at School Bus Stop
By Alexander Boyd

A stabbing at a school bus stop in Eastern China that left two Japanese nationals and a Chinese national injured is the latest instance of anti-foreigner violence to rock China in the last month. Two weeks ago, four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College were stabbed in a park in northern China. Details of this latest attack are sparse: a Japanese mother and her child were stabbed while waiting for a school bus to Suzhou’s Japanese School, a school for Japanese children that follows a Japanese curriculum. Both sustained minor injuries. A Chinese bystander who attempted to prevent the attacker from boarding the school bus was grievously injured and remains in the hospital as of publication. On Weibo, reactions to the news ranged from despair over xenophobic propaganda to admiration of the Chinese bystander’s bravery. Particular ire focused on a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson’s insistence that this attack—like the one in Jilin—was “random”:

Cor-Universe：When certain emotions get stirred up, they can lead to murder.

吃瓜的专业群众SH：If we don’t reform our education and propaganda systems, there’ll only be more of these “Boxers” going forward.

迷路的羊羔：Xenophobic propaganda: scares off foreign business → leading to job losses→ which inspire attacks on foreigners → scaring off more foreign businesses → causing more job losses → leading to even more xenophobic propaganda → scaring off more businesses → thus more job loss … I term this an “Okamoto cycle.” [A reference to a 2022 incident in which Chinese men, the Six Okamoto Gentlemen, opened up a Japanese convenience store franchise and then pretended to be anti-Japanese to drum up business.]

千里虽遥：Random attacks happen randomly, but xenophobic social media videos that incite hatred against everyday people and businesses should be brought under control.

你的眼我的脸：Why are these “random attacks” happening so regularly?

紫雨hz-1974：Once the Boxers rise up, it’s hard to suppress them. Continue reading Netizens reflect on anti-Japanese propaganda →

Bookstores as sites of subtle protest

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Source: China Digital Times (6/18/24)
Bookstores Become Sites of Subtle Protest Against Xi Jinping
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The novel “Changing of the Guard” displayed at left, alongside “Study Outline for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message calling for Xi Jinping to step down. Since Xi has risen to power, placing Xi’s works next to other books to make a political point has become a relatively common, low-key mode of political dissent. It’s often unclear whether the juxtapositions are created by bookstore employees or the product of cheeky swaps by politically astute customers—or simply accidental.

The latest incident occurred last week. A photograph taken inside a Hangzhou bookshop showed the novel “Changing of the Guard” displayed next to the 2023 edition of “Study Outline for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” a juxtaposition that some read as an implicit call for Xi to step down:

The novel itself is not a work of secret dissent, but rather a paean to Party governance. Written by Zhang Ping, a former vice-president of the Party-dominated China Writers Association, the novel is set in the fictional city of Linjin. The novel’s plot centers on unprecedented rain and flooding striking the city just as the provincial and municipal authorities are set to undergo a leadership transition. Yet put alongside Xi’s works, the implication is obvious.

Previous instances have seen Xi’s books paired with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, novels by Ernest Hemingway, childhood psychology books, Winnie the Pooh, books on Hitler, and studies of China’s imperial system. CDT has compiled a slideshow of the works: Continue reading Bookstores as sites of subtle protest →

Shangyuan Art Museum demolition

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Below is a link to a very good documentary by Chen Jiaping 陈家坪. He climbed in to join us at the demolition site of Shangyuan Art Museum last Saturday, June 15. The local powers were paranoid that day. Invitations to a party on the ruins had been circulating. So they tried to block off exit and entry. But they could not prevent this excellent film:

https://www.xiaohongshu.com/discovery/item/66717a1d000000001c0374e2

I have been documenting the demolition with poems and photos on my WeChat. The poems can be found on the following blog posts:

SOUND 声音
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/18/sound-%e5%a3%b0%e9%9f%b3/
美 BEAUTIFUL
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/17/%e7%be%8e-beautiful/
躲 HIDING
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/16/%e8%ba%b2-hiding/
SHANGYUAN ART MUSEUM 上苑艺术馆
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/14/%e4%b8%8a%e8%8b%91%e8%89%ba%e6%9c%af%e9%a6%86-shangyuan-art-museum/
IT HAS BEGUN 开始了 DAS IST DER ANFANG
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/13/anfang-%e5%bc%80%e5%a7%8b%e4%ba%86/
DEMOLISH 拆
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/04/%e6%8b%86-demolish/

Thank you for watching, reading and circulating!

Martin Winter 维马丁
in the ruins of Shangyuan Art Museum

#MeToo journalist sentenced to 5 years

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Source: The Guardian (6/14/24)
China #MeToo journalist sentenced to five years in jail, supporters say
Sophia Huang Xueqin, who reported on #MeToo movement and Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, sentenced along with labour activist Wang Jianbing
By  in Taipei

Sophia Huang Xueqin, a freelance journalist who reported on China’s MeToo movement and the Hong Kong democracy protests, has been sentenced to five years in jail. Photograph: Thomas Yau/SCMP/Getty Images

A Chinese court has sentenced the prominent #MeToo journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin to five years in jail and the labour activist Wang Jianbing to three and a half years, almost 1,000 days after they were detained on allegations of inciting state subversion, according to supporters.

On Friday, supporters of the pair said the court had found them guilty and given Huang the maximum sentence. The jail terms would take into account the time they had already spent in detention. A copy of the verdict said Huang was also deprived of political rights for four years and fined $100,000 RMB (£10,800). Wang faced three years of deprivation of political rights and was fined $50,000 RMB.

Huang told the court she intended to appeal, the supporters said.

“[The sentence] was longer than we expected,” said a spokesperson for the campaign group Free Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, asking to remain anonymous for safety concerns. “I don’t think it should have been this severe, and it is completely unnecessary. So we support Huang Xueqin’s intention to appeal.”

Just one day’s notice was given of Friday’s hearing, and the public and media were kept away by a heavy police presence of both uniformed and plain clothed officers, as well as court workers and large barriers. The closed-door trial began in September last year, two years after their arrest. Continue reading #MeToo journalist sentenced to 5 years →

Recollections of June 4th beyond Beijing

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Source: China Digital Times (6/5/24)
Memories of a Massacre: Recollections of June Fourth Beyond Beijing
By

Despite near absolute censorship of any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre within China, memories of June Fourth still persist. On the 35th anniversary of the 1989 student movement’s suppression, a number of people who lived through the era published personal recollections to overseas websites. CDT has archived their essays and translated selected excerpts from each.

Jiang Xue, a leading Chinese journalist now reporting from exile, published a mix of reportage and memoir in Wainao (WHYNOT), a Chinese-language online magazine. She recalled how the events played out in her small hometown in Gansu, hundreds of miles from the events in Beijing. She remembered solidarity and initial permissiveness, followed by a crackdown on public mourning:

That summer, we all gathered anxiously to listen to Voice of America, straining for any and all news out of Beijing about the student movement. One day in March, our class leader brought our entire class to a blackboard at the school gate and posted our school’s first big-character poster. To this day, I remember the crude blue characters written in a fountain pen on a large white paper: “Down with corruption, punish profiteering bureaucrats, support the student sit-in.”

[…] Before the massacre, the movement on the square was in full swing. One day, my classmates entrusted me to go to the town post office to donate our 14.5 yuan student fund. Writing on the post office’s crude desk, I put down the address: “The Tiananmen Square student sit-in.” The postal workers helped me fill out the remittance, which went smoothly. Nobody said, “This address is unclear, it won’t arrive.” That day, all of us, including the postal workers, knew without a doubt: The students on Tiananmen Square would receive the money. Continue reading Recollections of June 4th beyond Beijing →

Taiwan factcheckers

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Source: The Guardian (6/4/24)
From beef noodles to bots: Taiwan’s factcheckers on fighting Chinese disinformation and ‘unstoppable’ AI
Taiwan is the target of more disinformation from abroad than any other democracy, according to University of Gothenburg study
By Elaine Chan

A person uses her mobile phone outside a restaurant in Taipei. Experts blame China for much of the disinformation aimed at Taiwan. Photograph: Ann Wang/Reuters

Charles Yeh’s battle with disinformation in Taiwan began with a bowl of beef noodles. Nine years ago, the Taiwanese engineer was at a restaurant with his family when his mother-in-law started picking the green onions out of her food. Asked what she was doing, she explained that onions can harm your liver. She knew this, she said, because she had received text messages telling her so.

Yeh was puzzled by this. His family had always happily eaten green onions. So he decided to set the record straight.

He put the truth in a blog post and circulated it among family and friends through the messaging app Line. They shared it more broadly, and soon he received requests from strangers asking to be connected to his personal Line account.

“There wasn’t much of a factchecking concept in Taiwan then, but I realised there was a demand. I could also help resolve people’s problems,” Yeh said. So he continued, and in 2015 launched the website MyGoPen, which means, “don’t be fooled again” in Taiwanese.

Within two years, MyGoPen had 50,000 subscribers. Today, it has more than 400,000. In 2023, it received 1.3m fact check requests and has debunked disinformation on everything from carcinogens in bananas to the false claim that Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te, had a child out of marriage. Continue reading Taiwan factcheckers →

‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Identity’

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Source: NYT (6/4/24)
As China’s Internet Disappears, ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Memory’
The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.
By Li Yuan

An illustration of a large creature with glowing red eyes. Its paws are on stacks of paper, which are also in its mouth, in between its baring fangs. Nearby, people are holding documents, two of them holding up one that says “404.”

Credit…Yifan Wu

Chinese people know their country’s internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation.

They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it.

Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet — and collective online memory — is disappearing in chunks.

A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available.

“The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace,” the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored.

“We used to believe that the internet had a memory,” He Jiayan, a blogger who writes about successful businesspeople, wrote in the post. “But we didn’t realize that this memory is like that of a goldfish.” Continue reading ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Identity’ →

The ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy in China

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TIANANMEN AT 35—THE ONGOING STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY IN CHINA
US Congressional-Executive Commission on China
2118 Rayburn House Office Building | Tuesday, June 4, 2024 – 10:30am

In 1989, citizens in China from all walks of life participated in demonstrations that swept throughout the country including in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The peaceful demonstrators of that year called upon the Chinese government to eliminate corruption, accelerate political reform, and protect human rights, particularly the freedom of expression—demands echoed during the “White Paper” protests that spread throughout China in 2022. The Chinese Communist’s Party’s violent suppression of the 1989 demonstrations, along with ongoing censorship of any public discussion of what happened in June of 1989, have had far-reaching consequences for Chinese society and U.S.-China relations.

On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, this hearing will review the legacy of the 1989 protests and look at how a new generation of advocates are seeking to both preserve the memory of Tiananmen and advocate for human rights and political reforms in the People’s Republic of China, despite increasing intimidation and censorship.  Witnesses will provide testimony about Hong Kong’s efforts to repress Tiananmen commemorations, discuss the impact of the “White Paper Movement” on a next generation of advocates, and provide details about the PRC’s transnational repression efforts targeting those advocating for greater freedoms in China.

The hearing will be livestreamed on the CECC’s YouTube channel.

Witnesses: 

Fengsuo Zhou—Tiananmen student leader and Executive Director, Human Rights in China

Rowena He—Senior Research Fellow, University of Texas, Austin and author of Tiananmen Exiles: Voices for the Struggle for Democracy in China

Ruohui Yang—founder of the human rights and democracy organization Assembly of Citizens and student at Humber College, Canada

“Karin” (an alias) —White Paper Protest activist and student at Columbia University (will appear in disguise)

More witnesses may be added

Closing off Memory of Tiananmen Massacre

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Source: Human Rights Watch (6/2/24)
China: Closing Off Memory of Tiananmen Massacre
35 Years On, Commemorators Imprisoned, Victims’ Families Denied Redress
By Human Rights Watch

Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators protest in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, May 17, 1989. © 1989 Sadayuki Mikami/AP Photo

(New York) – The Chinese government is further suppressing any discussion and commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Human Rights Watch said today. Leading up to the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre on June 4, 2024, Chinese authorities have again preempted commemorations.

The government has imprisoned those in China and Hong Kong who have sought to honor the memory of the victims, while refusing to acknowledge responsibility for the mass killings or provide redress for victims and their families.

“The Chinese government is seeking to erase memory of the Tiananmen Massacre throughout China and in Hong Kong,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “But 35 years on, the government has been unable to extinguish the flames of remembrance for those risking all to promote respect for democracy and human rights in China.”

On April 3, Xu Guang (徐光), a 1989 student leader, was sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he demanded that the Chinese government acknowledge the Tiananmen Massacre and held a sign calling for redress at a local police station in May 2022. Xu was reportedly tortured, shackled, and mistreated while in detention.

Tiananmen Mothers, a group of relatives of victims of the 1989 massacre, reported that one of their founders, Zhan Xianling, is under surveillance with guards outside her home. Other activists connected to the 1989 democracy movement including Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer who had been a student representative at Tiananmen, and Ji Feng, a student leader in Guizhou, are similarly under tightened police surveillance or taken away from their homes. Continue reading Closing off Memory of Tiananmen Massacre →

Chengyu for Xi Jinping’s New Era

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Scroll down for Part 2.–Kirk Denton

Source: China Digital Times (5/14/24)
Chengyu for Xi Jinping’s New Era (Part 1)
By 

Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often four-character, literary expressions that are the kernel of a larger tale. The following New Era chengyu are all references to infamous incidents that have taken place within the last calendar year. Consistent with much of CDT’s 2024 coverage, the chengyu introduced below center on economic pain: impoverished farmers, distressed creditors, penny-pinching landlords—even cash-strapped police departments. Many also focus on official malfeasance: petty despotism, official greed, and wanton enforcement of the law. Without further ado, here are the five entries that make up Part 1 of CDT’s “New Era chengyu” compilation:

Yunhao Blocks the Plow (云浩止耕, Yúnhào zhǐ gēng)

Ji Doesn’t Know the Law (纪不懂法, Jì bù dǒng fǎ)

Repaying Debt With Prison Time (以刑化债, yǐ xíng huà zhài)

Calculating Damages by Lantern-Light (提灯定损, tídēng dìng sǔn)

Fishing the High Seas (远洋捕捞, yuǎnyáng bǔlāo) [Chinese]

Yunhao Blocks the Plow (云浩止耕, Yúnhào zhǐ gēng)

In April of this year, an undercover reporting team captured a shocking incident in Inner Mongolia’s Kailu County: village cadres blocking villagers from plowing fields on the eve of the make-or-break planting season. The reporters were with the state-run outlet Reports on China’s Three Rural Issues (中国三农发布, Zhōngguó sānnóng fābù) and they had traveled to Kailu after receiving a mass of complaints from villagers that officials were prohibiting them from planting—unless the villagers agreed to pay extortionate fees. The provenance of the dispute dates back two decades, when a nearly 1,000 acre (5600 mu) parcel of land was contracted out to villagers on a thirty-year lease. Since then, through diligent irrigation and stewardship, the land has been transformed from a palace where “even rabbits wouldn’t shit” to a viable corn field. But this year, local cadres were demanding that villagers pay an extra 200 yuan per mu tax before being allowed to plant—a fee that villagers insisted was illegal. The undercover state-media reporters captured footage of cadres blocking plows, accusing villagers of illegally occupying public land, and chiding them that calling the police was useless. One official, the village deputy Party secretary Ji Yunhao, was particularly egregious in his conduct, threatening villagers, “So what if 110 [China’s 911 emergency hot-line number] officers arrive? The higher-ups ordered me to collect money, so that’s what I’m going to do.” Ji was relieved of his position after the video attracted public criticism. However, there has been no official statement on Ji’s seemingly falsified resume, which came to light after his bullying behavior went viral. Continue reading Chengyu for Xi Jinping’s New Era →

Goldfish Memories

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Source: China Media Project (5/27/24)
Goldfish Memories
In a post to China’s popular WeChat platform last week, one writer bemoaned the shocking loss of nearly a full decade of information from the early days of the country’s domestic internet. Within hours the writer’s reflections had vanished too.
By David Bandurski

In a fitting illustration last week of the Chinese leadership’s unrelenting efforts to manipulate collective memory, an online essay with a shocking revelation about the wholesale disappearance of Chinese internet content spanning the 2000s was deleted by content monitors. But the post, quickly archived and shared, reverberated in platforms beyond PRC-managed cyberspace.

Written by He Jiayan (何加盐), an internet influencer active since 2018, the essay concluded, based on a wide range of searches of various entertainment and cultural figures from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, that nearly 100 percent of content from major internet portals and private websites from the first decade of China’s internet has now been obliterated. “No one has recognized a serious problem,” wrote He. “The Chinese-language internet is rapidly collapsing, and Chinese-language internet content predating the emergence of the mobile internet has almost entirely disappeared.”

Simple searches through the Baidu search engine for public figures such as Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun (雷军), who would have yielded perhaps millions of unique posts during the period of the “traditional internet” from the late 1990s through the end of the 2000s, turned up few if any results, He Jiayan revealed. These wholesale absences in Chinese-language content from inside China were repeated when He used non-Chinese search engines, including Google and Bing. Continue reading Goldfish Memories →

‘Nikah’ review

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Source: Art of Life in Central Asia (5/29/24)
‘Nikah’: An astonishing portrait of Uyghur life on the edge of erasure
By Darren Byler

A still from “Nikah,” a fictional film by Mukaddas Mijit and Bastien Ehouzan, showing Dilber and Rena preparing for Rena’s wedding.

Mukaddas Mijit and Bastien Ehouzan’s Nikah is extraordinary. It is a quiet film, a portrait of a young Uyghur woman and her family living in a Uyghur world in the late 2010s. It is astonishing in its restraint, in the way it remains true to a ground-level view of what it looked and felt like to be on the verge of internment. Nikah is a portrait of the impossible becoming reality.

The story on the surface is a simple one. Two daughters in their twenties, Dilber and Rena, are caught between their own ambitions — careers, travel, love — and community pressures to follow gendered norms dictating what young women should do, whom they should get married to, and the life path of a wife and mother. After the younger sister, Rena, is married to a young man in the community, the pressure builds on the older sister, Dilber, to marry as well — or be lost to old age or, more ominously, as whispers imply, be married off to a Han man.

In 2017, the Chinese state criminalized much of what is portrayed in the film as signs of religious extremism. Drawing on one of the world’s broadest counterterrorism laws and a mandate from Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, police and civil servants began to use face-recognition video surveillance, informants, and torture to “round up those that needed to be rounded up.” Dilber and Rena — plus other characters portrayed in the film — are exactly whom that mandate was for. As viewers, we are placed on the precipice of the largest mass internment of a religious minority since World War II.

But it doesn’t feel that way until the film’s final sequence, when we witness the quiet shattering of the families we have met. This narrative technique, holding in reserve the immense tragedy that is about to emerge, is what makes this film so astonishing. It allows viewers to understand the stakes of that shattering, the absurdity of traditions misread and flattened by digitized anti-Muslim racism. And it also lets the viewer appreciate the extreme beauty of Uyghur communal life. Continue reading ‘Nikah’ review →

HK convicts activists

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Source: NYT (5/30/24)
Hong Kong Convicts Democracy Activists in Largest National Security Trial
As part of China’s crackdown on even peaceful opposition, a court in Hong Kong convicted 14 people, who now face prison time along with dozens of others.
By Tiffany May

A black bus labeled “HKCS” turns off a road, toward a building. People with video cameras are in the foreground, filming.

A prison bus arriving at court in Hong Kong on Thursday, before verdicts were announced in a national security trial. Credit…Leung Man Hei/EPA, via Shutterstock

Fourteen democracy activists in Hong Kong were convicted on Thursday on national security charges, adding to the ranks of dozens of others — once the vanguard of the city’s opposition — who may now become a generation of political prisoners.

The authorities had accused 47 pro-democracy figures, including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group, of conspiracy to commit subversion. Thirty-one of them had earlier pleaded guilty. On Thursday, judges picked by Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader convicted 14 of the remaining activists and acquitted two others. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

The convictions show how the authorities have used the sweeping powers of a national security law imposed by Beijing to quash dissent across broad swathes of society. Most of the defendants had already spent at least the last three years in detention before the 118-day trial ended.

Some of those accused are former lawmakers who joined politics after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by the British in 1997. Others are activists and legislators who have advocated self-determination for Hong Kong with more confrontational tactics. Several, like Mr. Wong, who rose to fame as a teenage activist, were among the students leading large street occupations in 2014 for the right to vote. Continue reading HK convicts activists →

Why lawmakers are brawling and people protesting in Taiwan

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Source: NYT (5/28/24)
Why Lawmakers Are Brawling and People Are Protesting in Taiwan
Supporters of President Lai Ching-te are protesting legislative amendments introduced by the opposition that would limit his authority.
By Amy Chang Chien and Chris Buckley

Throngs of people pack a city street, with one person holding aloft a Taiwanese flag.

Supporters of President Lai Ching-te at a protest in Taipei, Taiwan, last week. Credit…Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Opposition lawmakers in Taiwan pushed through measures on Tuesday that could challenge the powers of the new president, Lai Ching-te, defying tens of thousands of his supporters who poured into the streets in recent days in protest.

The legislation proposed by Mr. Lai’s opponents gained passage only a little over a week after he took office, highlighting the challenges he will face in pursuing his agenda without a legislative majority. In elections in January, the opposition Nationalist Party and Taiwan People’s Party together secured more seats in the 113-seat legislature than Mr. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party.

The bill backed by the two opposition parties would expand the legislature’s powers to investigate the administration. Mr. Lai’s supporters have accused the opposition of overreach and of serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, which claims Taiwan as its territory. Nationalist and Taiwan People’s Party legislators have rejected those accusations, and Mr. Lai’s officials have not offered proof of allegations that Beijing orchestrated the legislation.

Debates in the legislature have been heated. Politicians jostled and fought, and members of Mr. Lai’s party covered the floor and walls of the chamber with protest placards.

The legislative changes would give lawmakers more power to question senior government officials and demand internal documents. The amendments would also authorize lawmakers to punish officials found in contempt, which could include refusing to answer questions or hand over documents. Continue reading Why lawmakers are brawling and people protesting in Taiwan →