Satire: Taiwanese citizens and foreign media reacts to China military drills

As the Chinese military exercises begun just shortly after Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, left Taiwan a little over a week ago, one could be forgiven to believe that a war had just begun too, if consuming certain foreign medias or listening to some foreign ”experts” analysing the situation.

Meanwhile the Taiwanese population, already used to Chinese threats and military drills, kept as calm as ever, indeed even taking to the shoreline in hope of getting a glimpse of the Chinese ships or missiles in the vicinity.

I thought so too.

👇 BTW, this is how brave Taiwanese people are 😅

In order to watch the Chinese military exercises, Taiwanese tourists gather in the viewing-sun garden in Liuqiu Island near the Taiwan 😹 pic.twitter.com/CVt1g46otE

— Te Sheng Lin ⚡️🚘🔋🇺🇸 (@teshen8lin) August 4, 2022

The discrepancy between foreign media reporting – sensationalist or ignorant as it may be – and the situation on the ground in Taiwan is the topic of this week’s satire by cartoonist Niklas ”@KluddNiklas” Eriksson here on Kinamedia.

Many pieces are already written (here, here and here) about the reaction (or lack thereof) to the Chinese military exercise among the Taiwanese themselves.

Instead of running for shelter or prepping food and other necessities, life on the resilient island goes on like normal just before the extensive drills took place.

So rather than further repeating the same message already reported by others, I leave you to behold the drawing above as a visual imagination of the differences between the perspectives of locals and outsiders on whats happening around Taiwan right now.

This week’s cartoon can be viewed in full size via here.

A full collection of Kludd-Niklas’ works for Kinamedia can be seen via this link.