Taiwan Diaoyu Islands Essay Contest Winner Ridiculed Online
by Stuart Dingle on Thursday, December 6, 2012
Earlier this summer, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry held an essay competition inviting students and the public to offer their thoughts on and suggestions for resolving the contentious Diaoyu Islands dispute (aka Senkaku Islands). It was both panned criticized.
Recently, Taiwanese netizens recently reacted negatively when it was revealed that the winning submission for the high school category was written by a student named ‘Zhang Tongyi’, his given name meaning “unification”. Some netizens criticized the competition itself as the government yet again failing to do anything meaningful to protect national interests while others criticized it as promoting Taiwanese nationalism or additional reasons to hate the KMT political party and President Ma Yingjeou’s administration.
From Yahoo Taiwan:
Diaoyu island essay champion accused of having won because of his name
The results of the Diaoyu Island short essay competition run by the [Taiwan] Ministry of Foreign Affairs were announced on the 26th, with the names of the winners of the high school and university groups becoming the focus of netizens’ attention. The name of the first-place winner of the high school group, a Hsinchu high school student named ‘Zhang Tongyi’, was particularly notable, inciting heated discussion among netizens, with some netizens going as far as saying that he received an extra 100 points simply because of his name [The KMT-led government is seen as being open to "unification" with mainland China (PRC)]. Furthermore, netizens disliked the winning essay, comparing it to a 30-year-old entrance exam.
Zhang Tongyi’s writing style led netizens to doubt whether he was a high school student. After netizens finished reading it, they felt they had traveled back in time, as if [the propaganda motto] ‘protecting secrets against spies is everyone’s responsibility’ appeared before their eyes. Another netizen sarcastically commented that it was a shame he didn’t include the story of Chiang Kai-shek watching fish swim upstream, and a netizen named ‘lahiboy’ expressed that the champion’s name itself already says it all. But netizen ‘zard0205′ also praised the champion as a patriotic young scholar, that Lu You [a 12th century Southern Song Dynaty poet that advocate a unified China] now has a successor.
Apart from the high school champion being a hot topic, the university champion has also been been accused by netizens of plagiarism. Netizen ‘terrymoon’ conducted online searches for every sentence and discovered that over 80% of the essay was similar to what can be found on Wikipedia and the Foreign Ministry’s Sovereignty Statement. A netizen said that a university student doing this wasn’t an accident, bluntly saying that he turned the essay competition into a report of common knowledge, and also earned some money.
The Foreign Ministry previously delayed the announcement of the winners, precisely to spend time examining the submissions for plagiarism. Netizens mercilessly slammed [the Foreign Ministry], saying an ordinary netizen [likely referring specifically to a subset of netizen users of the popular Taiwanese PTT BBS, sometimes synonymous with "trolls", "haters", or even "diaosi"] did something in one night that the Foreign Ministry’s experts failed to do with half a month.
As netizens heatedly discussed, the Foreign Ministry website was also overloaded, preventing people from being able to look at the winning essay. Netizens criticized the content [of the winning essay] as melodrama and flattery, without any substance or practical use with regards to the issue of protecting the Diaoyu Islands. Most netizens also believe this was simply a bullshit competition, and that after all this talk, the Diaoyu Islands are still in the hands of the Japanese.
