On March 18, 2018, famous Taiwanese Writer Li Ao died in Taipei after a long illness due to brain cancer. He left his son his last wish: “I can’t see the reunification of China, you have to realize it for me.”
Born in 1935 in Harbin under the rule of “Manchukuo”, Li Ao came to Taiwan from mainland China in 1949 and was a Taiwanese cultural celebrity who firmly supported cross-strait reunification during his lifetime. His son, Li, 29, has always made no secret of the fact that he was influenced by his father’s support for reunification, and is therefore considered one of the few young “unificationists” in Taiwan.
Li has been criticized for abandoning Taiwan University to attend Peking University, and the publication of Li’s Counterinsurgency Chronicles, which criticizes Taiwan’s Education, has generated much debate. In his application submitted to Peking University, he wrote, “Although I got into the best university in Taiwan, and although Taiwan is part of the motherland, I want to go to the best university in the motherland because I hope I am part of it.”
After completing his undergraduate studies in mainland China, Li continued his studies in the United States and the United Kingdom, later studying Cold War history under Dutch sinologist Hans van de Ven, who recently defended his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
In recent years, however, Li’s thinking on the issue of cross-strait reunification has gradually undergone some changes.
He has repeatedly criticized mainland China’s policy toward Taiwan on the Internet and in the media. in January 2020, Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected president of Taiwan on behalf of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with a high number of votes, defeating Kuomintang candidate Kuo-yu. Li counter-insurgency sent out 134 “zap” characters on Sina Weibo and @StateTaiwanOffice, which was seen as a hint that the election results were a slap in the face to China’s State Council, and his Weibo and Today’s Headlines accounts were subsequently blocked to this day.
In addition, many of Li Ao’s writings have been censored by mainland China since his death, also reversing Li’s Perception of counter-insurgency. In the past, Li Ao officially published more than 40 books in mainland China, but after book approvals were slowly tightened in 2012, only three books are currently left to be published. According to Li, mainland Chinese authorities do not keep their promises and have been delaying the approval of his father’s books.
Li said his father is a nationalist and liberal because he experienced Japanese colonial rule firsthand and believes the Communist Party made China strong, but also wants it to slowly open up freedom of speech. He told the BBC that his father, who was such a staunch supporter of cross-strait reunification, was suppressed and his books were censored after his passing, and he felt bad for him.
Li counter-insurgency and his father Li Ao
The statements made by Li Ao on Taiwan’s political programs recently reached mainland China, where the mainland media called him “ungrateful” and “cooperating with the green media to smear the mainland”. Some Weibo users also questioned, “Li Ao’s son has become ‘independent’?”
Li told BBC Chinese that he still supports cross-strait reunification, but that he himself has run out of ways to convince Taiwanese people that the Chinese Communist authorities will keep their promises.
On the third anniversary of Li Ao’s death, BBC Chinese interviewed Li, reviewing Li Ao’s influence on him, the changes in his thinking as a young “unificationist”, and his thoughts on future cross-strait relations.
The following is a transcript of the interview (edited and abridged).
Li Ao’s last moments
BBC: There are many labels for your father. The New York Times said he was a rebellious fanatic who defended freedom, and Chen Wenxi said he was a contemporary Chinese intellectual who inherited the spirit of May Fourth.
Li Counter-insurgency: He is a very representative case of the intertwining and compatibility of liberalism and nationalism. He proved through his actions that these two concepts are not in conflict and are compatible.
BBC: Is there anything that strikes you now when you recall your father?
Li Counter: In mid-2017, my father had entered the intensive care unit. After staying in the ICU for a long Time, there would be some illusion of perception of the environment and time; he didn’t know where he was now and what time it was because he couldn’t see the sun in the ICU, and he must be sedated when intubated, and sometimes the sedation inevitably had some side effects. In that case, it took several days to get over after leaving the ICU to the general ward.
At that time, he often told me that the hospital pillows, hospital gowns and quilts were all made by The Japanese, and he did not want them and asked me to throw them away. Then I had to keep reassuring him that they were not made by the Japanese, that you were now in Taipei General Hospital, that you had just left the intensive care unit, and that they were not made by Japan, but were medical equipment and clothes made by Taiwan itself, before he slowly eased up.
Li Ao
Actually, every time I think of this image, I want to cry. His subconscious mind and his memory were always before 1945, when he was a child, he saw the Japanese flaunting their power in front of him, and he had such a great tolerance and good feeling towards the Communist Party because he thought that no matter what, the Communist Party would lead China to power, and at least it would never happen again for the Japanese to flaunt their power on Chinese soil.
Compare that to the way the Communist Party treated him after he left. Yes, the Communist Party, we recognize your great merits, but you can do so much to your own people, so I think why do you want me to support your reunification? Support for reunification should be from the heart, not kidnapped by national righteousness.
Li Ao who was suppressed
BBC: You have repeatedly said that Li Ao was suppressed in mainland China, what are the specific incidents?
Li Ao: There are two main aspects, the first is that his writings and speech have been seriously distorted and suppressed. The second is the extremely serious violation of his right to reputation, which the mainland officials are completely and intentionally conniving at.
First of all, his speech was suppressed, and many of his remarks were intentionally taken out of context by the mainland officials. Roughly speaking, he talked less about liberalism and more about national unification. In fact, this was the tone of my father’s visit to Peking University in 2005, which favored the part of propaganda talking about national unification. In April 2020, there was a forum on whether liberalism and nationalism could be compatible, and I think my father is a very typical example, and it is perfectly compatible. Someone said that my dad had to be more tolerant of the Communist Party and abandoned his original liberalism because he was pursuing national unification, which is total nonsense, he didn’t change anything at all. It’s just that the part where he talked about liberalism was watered down or taken out under the official control of the CCP. Including his later microblogging, many things were often blocked and could not be posted at all.
What I am most unhappy about is the censorship of writings. At present, only three of my father’s books can be published on the mainland: Beijing Fayuan Temple, Li Ao’s Memoirs, and Li Ao’s Autobiography. In the past, I spent a lot of patience, time and sincerity to negotiate with the Information Bureau of the State Administration of Taiwan. They were perfectly within their authority to release the book, but they wouldn’t do so, threatening me with this, implying explicitly that you, Li Ao, had to do something in Taiwan before they were willing to help the book continue through the approval process. I don’t think they are in any position to threaten me with this or use it as a bargaining chip with me.
The second part is the right to reputation. My father’s speech is distorted, and many people only see fragments of Li Ao, and there are many impostor articles using his name to circulate. Officials don’t bother, real articles are not allowed to be published, fake articles are condoned, and microblogs and weibo are flying around, causing my father’s reputation to be easily misinterpreted and turning him into a punching bag. There are some netizens on the mainland who do not have the courage to go to the street to oppose the Communist Party and the government, so they come to scold Li Ao and vent their anger by scolding Li Ao for his change and betrayal of liberalism, and then the officials are happy to see this phenomenon happen.
Never considered buying a house in mainland China
BBC: You once said that you and your father have no financial interests in mainland China, do you have any properties or investments in mainland China?
The BBC: You and your father have no financial interests in mainland China, do you have any properties or investments in mainland China?
Then, when I went to school in Beijing, many people asked me to buy a house, and the price in Beijing was already very high, but there were some second-tier cities where the houses looked good, but my dad wouldn’t buy them either.
Li Ao
Anyone with common sense would know that buying a house within the third ring in Beijing in 2005 would only go up, not down. Even so, my dad didn’t want it. He said he didn’t want anyone to gossip about me. Later, when I went to Beijing, he also told me that you should never have any economic activities, no matter if you want to invest or start a business, so I can now speak very loudly and the Communist Party has nothing on me.
Is cross-strait reunification possible?
BBC: For cross-strait reunification, your thoughts seem to have changed over the years?
Li counter-insurgency: I support the good ideal of reunification, I have not changed until now. Why I support it is simple, because it was one of the explanations my father gave me before he died. Many Taiwanese people have kindly told me that this era is changing and you don’t necessarily have to abide by the explanations of the older generation in the past. But this is my father’s explanation to me, and I have to do what I have promised. But the word “China Unification” is so idealistic and beautiful that I now realize it is only an ideal after all, and I cannot see any reason to support it in reality.
The simplest example, from my own case, I found that the Communist Party is often untrustworthy. I asked many deep blue expatriates (the ethnic group that moved to Taiwan from the mainland with the KMT army in 1949), including those unificationist groups in Taiwan, including mainlanders, and all of them were dumbfounded. I said that when my father left, the people from the National Taiwan Affairs Office personally promised to do their best to speed up the publication of the book, but even for such a simple request, they could skip the check (write a blank check) for three years and use all kinds of excuses to put it off. How can I believe that after I support the reunification today, the Communist Party will keep its promise in case the reunification really happens? I really don’t believe it. If I say I don’t believe it, do you believe it? These blue ones are dumbfounded.
Li counter-insurgency and father Li Ao
I can’t convince today’s Taiwanese or young Taiwanese friends that you should trust the Communist Party, they are different, they will keep their word, they will keep their promises, I can’t do it. Because of my own case, I know they don’t keep their word. And then they will tell you a set of reasons that they didn’t renege on their promises, it’s because you’re not right about this and you’re not right about that and that’s why we need to change. I might have believed them a little bit in the past with this kind of sophistry, but at least with this case I’m 100% not convinced. That is, in many cases, I think the problem is with the Communist Party, not with the people it accuses.
I think my transformation is that I recognize that there is a gap between the ideal and the reality. I have not turned my back on this ideal, but I have changed because I see that often when pursuing an ideal, there is no way to change the reality when there is a lot of resistance.
BBC: Last year, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the presidential election in Taiwan again, and many polls showed that the number of supporters of Taiwan’s independence reached a high level for decades. As a Taiwanese Unificationist, how do you see the possibility of cross-strait reunification now?
Li Counter-insurgency: I think the possibility of cross-strait reunification is very, very low. At least for a long time, peaceful reunification is simply not possible, nor is reunification by force. And I don’t think the mainland has any reason to say that armed reunification must be pursued now. I don’t think the mainland would dare to do such a thing, and China also has to solve its own domestic problems, such as really getting out of poverty, reviving its economy, and at the same time easing relations between China and the United States.
So I think it’s going to drag on for a long time. I think Beijing is a little bit very stupid and keeps trying to highlight that they are only targeting the DPP, for example by stopping the pineapple. It wants to create the impression that only a small group of people in the DPP are working on Taiwan independence, and that most Taiwanese are good people. But this method has been proven very wrong, Taiwanese people will not think you are targeting the DPP, and then we will hate the DPP and go to vote for the KMT. Taiwan people will think, you are targeting everyone, and are very disgusted by this kind of behavior. (The official (mainland’s) strike side only targets the DPP, but that’s not the case. 8.17 million votes for the DPP is a record high (Note: Tsai Ing-wen got 8.17 million votes in the 2020 Taiwan presidential election, the highest number of votes in the history of Taiwan’s presidential election), and it’s impossible to separate the DPP from the Taiwanese.
Peking University is a microcosm
BBC: What do you feel most deeply in your four years at Peking University?
Li counter-insurgency: The most touching thing about the campus is that I saw some very good students and how they went about planning their future in various fields, and I also saw the downfall of some students. When I was studying there was an anti-corruption movement and I saw a few very typical students. For example, he may have operated for three and a half years, from the time he got into BYU, he wanted to take the route of the league committee to get into the official world. He spent a lot of effort to make friends, some became the president of the student council of the institution, some went to elect the president or vice-president of the school council, and used every opportunity to make his resume a little more beautiful. But just one month before graduating from college, his father was arrested, a mayor anti-corruption fall, his girlfriend also walked away, the career path is completely insulated, and then he ran to do finance. I have read several such stories, I think this is Life. Peking University is a microcosm of society, I learned a lot from there.
BBC: Is there any difference between how you saw China when you were on the mainland and how you saw it when you went to the US and studied in the UK later?
Li Counterpart: I think the perspective is different. This politically relevant Culture, in Beijing was my introduction to the process. When I went to Beijing, I admit that I couldn’t understand many things, for example, I didn’t understand what the Party Committee was, what the relationship between the Secretary of the Party Committee and the Dean of our college really was, what the Communist Youth League was, and what kind of ranking corresponded to the Secretary of the School Committee in order of administrative rank …… These four years in Beijing helped me to have some clearer understanding of the mainland. I have invested a lot of research in this area.
Li Supper
With this understanding, I realized when I went abroad how there were so many problems.
When I went to the U.S., it was fine because I had only spent a year and a half in the U.S. for my master’s degree. Then I went to England and realized that there were really big problems. The bureaucracy at Home (in China) is even more alarming when it comes to foreign countries. For example, at the end of 2019, they organized a march by mainland Chinese students, and the march organized by Hong Kong people, but the Chinese students in Cambridge did not want to participate at all, so they mobilized people from other places to make the scene, which was very ugly. There are numerous cases of this kind of swollen face, and there are also many seminars paid for by embassies.
If we look at China from the UK and the US, I feel that there is something very wrong with the current practice in mainland China. In the end, the united front is completely spreading money for performance. At least from my standpoint, I think this is very wrong. I hope that China will be really strong, and that its strength will not be based on money to buy hearts and minds, but that people will really respect and like such a country from the bottom of their hearts.
BBC: What are your plans and intentions?
Li Counter-insurgency: I am about to publish a new book, The Abuse of Chiang Kai-shek’s Diary. Next, I hope to find a place in Taiwan’s academic world to develop as a scholar, while occasionally I can talk about cross-strait issues that interest me. Let’s start as a scholar first, I think this is a job I am very passionate about.
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