“Taiwan is part of China,” says Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters | D.W. | 09.08.2022

Roger Waters, the former lead singer of veteran British rock group Pink Floyd, has gone against mainstream political opinion in an interview with CNN, arguing that the West was responsible for the war between Russia and Ukraine, and that China was to be blamed for the situation in the Taiwan Strait.

In a conversation with host Michael Smerconish about the “political element” of the band’s recent tour, Waters had no qualms about criticizing the Biden Administration’s policy toward Ukraine, saying it was encouraging provocation. He also argued that the war in Ukraine was fundamentally a Russian response to the destruction of NATO’s expansion to the east.

Then the issue of Taiwan came up. The moderator said that the Chinese were “enclosing” Taiwan, to which Waters immediately replied with a negative: “Taiwan is part of China and the entire international community has fully accepted it since 1948, if you don’t know it, you haven’t read it. enough. Go read a book.”

He also told the host, “You believe the propaganda from your side… You can’t talk about human rights and Taiwan before you’ve done your homework.”

Pro-China or anti-US?

The video of the interview it was widely republished and quoted on Chinese social networks, causing a great repercussion. Various Chinese official media quoted the speech on social media platforms. On Weibo, the hashtag “Go to school if you don’t know that Taiwan is part of China” was seen by millions of people.

Most commentaries praised Waters, lamenting that “there are so few people in the West who are as cultured, know history, and have as much influence as he.” Others joked: “I woke up and Pink Floyd is now an old friend of the Chinese… It’s been 30 years since the wall was built.”

On another social media platform, Zhihu, Waters also received applause. Several users noted that Waters had never hidden his anti-war and anti-American leftist stance and that he was “an uncompromising warrior of international communism.”

Some recalled the time when Pink Floyd hung a giant head of Mao Zedong as a decoration for a concert tour. But others pointed out that the band had released a single in support of Ukraine after the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

“A foreigner’s impassioned accusation of ‘populist democracy’ is more convincing than 10,000 Chinese.” Others believe that he is not speaking out of love for China, but “is rather a barrage of Western media hypocrisy.”

The director of the news platform @Shadowproofcom tweeted a new version of the video, which he says includes more context in the comments that had been cut by the producers.

Taiwan netizens

On Twitter there were both messages of support and criticism of Waters’s comments, with one user, for example, saying that it was good to read books, but that Waters was clearly wrong about Taiwan’s problems.

On the Taiwanese Internet, most people could not agree with the rock pioneer’s views, but the tone of the comments was more balanced. The Liberty Times (《自由時報》) from Taiwan quoted a netizen as saying, “You don’t learn about Taiwan from books, you learn about Taiwan in Taiwan, throw away the books and come to Taiwan!”

“I went to see your tour in Canada in 2017, now you are welcome to come to Taiwan, you will know that Taiwan is not part of China, stop reading and come see,” said another user.

In addition to the Taiwan issue, Waters also sided with China on other fronts during the interview. The reporter mentions that China tops the list of human rights violations, and Waters responded by saying that China “didn’t invade Iraq in 2003 and kill millions of people. Who did China invade? Or who did they kill?”

The journalist replied: “Your own people.” Waters dismissed this claim as “nonsense” and warned the journalist again to read the “correct” thing.

It is not known what he meant by “right”. But not everything Waters reads holds up. Although the Chinese Communist Party has not invaded other countries since its creation, it is a recognized fact that it has committed crimes against human rights in its country.

Millions, if not tens of millions, of Chinese have died of hunger, political persecution, and violence during the Cultural Revolution and the political campaigns that preceded and followed it alone.

“It’s clear he’s been living on the Dark Side of the Moon”

Referring to two of Pink Floyd’s albums, Alex Bristow, deputy director of the Defense, Strategy and National Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, he said on Twitter: “Which division bell is Roger Waters in? It’s clear he’s been living on the Dark Side of the Moon. Taiwan has never been ruled by communist China.”

Oliver Jia, a Kyoto-based researcher on Japan-North Korea relations, said: “Roger Waters should be playing guitar instead of opining on geopolitical issues he clearly knows nothing about.”

FEW (DW, CNN, The Independent)