KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 — Taiwanese actress Janine Chang has incurred the wrath of Chinese social media users over what she wrote in her masters’ thesis at Taiwan’s National Central University 11 years ago.
Singapore portal TODAY reported that the 39-year-old had written the sentence ‘issues regarding artiste management in my country’ in her thesis and Chinese internet users are up in arms with her use of “my country” when referring to Taiwan.
While it is unclear how the Chinese social media users managed to get their hands on the thesis, the find, however, led them to conclude Chang is pro-Taiwan independence.
To strengthen their case, the social media users also dug up Chang’s past interviews where she compared the work environment in the mainland and Taiwan.
“It was then that I realised Taiwan should not fall behind. I felt that we needed to show how professional we are too,” she had said in one of the interviews.
This led Chinese social media users to accuse her of “betraying” China while raking in money from mainland dramas.
Responding to the controversy, Chang said the claims were “baseless” and “unreliable”.
“Janine Chang is not pro-Taiwan independence. She has always regarded herself as Chinese,” the actress said in a statement issued via her studio.
The actress also updated her personal Weibo where she declared:
“In the course of my acting career, I’ve met respectable seniors from the mainland, Taiwan, Hongkong and Macau. I love acting, which I treat as my career. We are Chinese regardless of which land we are from. I am not pro-Taiwan independence.”
Most Taiwanese celebrities rarely reveal their stance on Taiwan’s political status for fear of being locked out of the lucrative Chinese market or angering fans at home who identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.
