HKFP reports…
A Taiwanese film has been axed from a film festival programme after it failed to meet requirements set by the Hong Kong government’s censorship requirements.
The Hong Kong International Film Festival said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that it had to cancel the screening of Family Matters.
…The film revolves around a four-member family in Taiwan’s historic Changhua city as they deal with issues including identity, fertility and relationship, according to its synopsis.
The film was honoured with a best feature film award at the New York Asian Film Festival in late July.
Focus Taiwan suggests what the problem is…
Taiwan … newspapers Liberty Times and United Daily News on Wednesday both cited sources as saying the cancellation was due to the appearance of the term “Min Kuo” (民國), a reference to the “Republic of China,” Taiwan’s official name, which is not recognized by China — officially the People’s Republic of China — as a sovereign state.
HK01, a Hong Kong-based online news outlet, reported the same day that, according to sources, at least seven Taiwanese films have been pulled from screenings in Hong Kong since 2021, when amendments to the FCO began requiring censors to consider whether a film’s screening would be “contrary to the interests of national security.”
(Chances are the phrase occurs in a date using the ROC’s quasi-dynastic calendar system, which counts years from 1911. For example, 2025 is 民國114年.)
If movies threaten a country’s national security, maybe it should beef up its navy? ASPI Strategist on Beijing’s fancy-looking ‘barges with legs’ – obviously designed to enable an invasion of Taiwan…
Since March, China has been making a splash with manoeuvres off its south coast involving a line of odd-looking barges with retractable legs that work like giant stilts. Taiwanese analysts aren’t impressed, however.
The barges have towers at their fronts that convert to long, drop-down bridges, so the vessels can connect to each other. If the first barge in a line of them touches the land, they can form a pier standing on the seabed and extending 800 metres or more to deeper water. Chinese soldiers, equipment and supplies could be offloaded from big ships that need that water depth, and the invasion force would have less need for ports.
Or so the theory goes.
As the piece points out, the mega-barges would be juicy targets for Taiwanese land-based forces. There’s also a problem with landing large numbers of troops, vehicles and equipment in one spot under fire – the attacker creates a huge traffic jam on the beach.
Maybe Chinese defence contractors have hit on an ingenious take on roll-on-roll-off ferries, or maybe this project is a result of too much money sloshing around for military R&D.
Since we’re ending the week on a Taiwan theme – a nice video about a book in Taiwanese, Mandarin, Scottish Gaelic and English. (When I was last in Taipei, I met a 10-year-old Hong Kong-born kid whose family had relocated and who could read any Chinese passage aloud in Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiwanese. A neat party trick.)