Chinese Police Arrest Man for Asking, ‘What Law Says You Can’t Call Taiwan a Country?’

An 18-year-old unemployed man in northeastern China used social media recently to ask, “What law says you can’t call Taiwan a country?” He soon got his answer when Chinese police detained him, citing a law against “profaning the people’s feelings.”

Reuters reported on Friday that the man, identified only by his family name Yang, also wrote a post on Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) declaring Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to be his “real father.” This also seems to have profaned the feelings of the people of China. There is no mention in the report of how Shinzo Abe feels about it.

China is, of course, very touchy about the status of Taiwan and has gone to great lengths to keep it from being recognized as a separate country, rather than a temporarily estranged province of China.  

“Yang, who police said had previously been warned for making ‘bad comments’ online, had confessed his crimes and had been detained on suspicion of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’” Reuters reported, citing police sources.

Yang did not take the hint, because according to the UK Daily Mail, he wrote a Weibo post on Thursday criticizing the police for arresting him.

“Isn’t everyone supposed to be treated equally before the law? If you need to arrest so-called offenders, you need to arrest all of them! Why was I the only person arrested?” Yang asked. The question is likely to have much the same answer as his previous query about the legal basis for not calling Taiwan a country.

If Yang gets hungry between bouts of political oppression, he might consider swinging by the nearest 85 Degrees Celsius Bakery for a tasty dumpling. They could use the business. The Taiwan-based bakery chain has a store in Los Angeles that was visited by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Sunday as she passed through California. The bakery gave Tsai a gift bag and asked her to autograph a pillow shaped like a pineapple.

All hell promptly broke loose in China, which has long striven to lure Taiwanese businesses to the mainland, and currently hosts over 600 85C Bakery locations. Weibo hummed with calls for a boycott from mainland Chinese, the bakery vanished from food-service apps, the company’s stock plunged, and someone hacked its website.

85C attempted damage control with an online statement declaring that it supports the “One China policy” and hopes for improved relations with the mainland. This enraged Taiwanese customers and prompted Tsai’s office to criticize Beijing for using “unwarranted pressure” to squeeze a “humiliating” statement from the corporation.