Education Quote by Alex Chiu

A single sentence that pretends to be neutral, then quietly detonates. By framing the point as a childhood lesson rather than a political claim, Alex Chiu smuggles authority in through the side door: not "I believe Taiwan is part of China", but "this is what school taught me". It’s a rhetorical move that shifts responsibility from the speaker to an institution, implying that the idea is standard, inevitable, even banal. That banality is the point. Normalization is how contested identities get laundered into common sense.

The subtext is also defensive. "When I was in Taiwan" signals personal proximity and credibility, pre-empting the familiar retort that outsiders don’t get to define Taiwanese reality. Yet the phrasing is slippery: he isn’t verifying the statement’s truth, only reporting the curriculum. That leaves him room to retreat if challenged, while still planting a narrative that aligns with Beijing’s preferred framing.

Context does the real work here. Taiwan’s status has been shaped as much by classrooms and passports as by treaties and missiles. Education policy on the island has swung with party power: older curricula often emphasized a broader "China" identity; more recent reforms have foregrounded Taiwan as distinct. Chiu’s recollection, coming from a businessman rather than a politician, reads like the everyday echo of that ideological tug-of-war. It’s a reminder that geopolitics doesn’t only happen in summits; it happens in homework, in what children are told their country is called, and who gets to say so without sounding like they’re saying anything at all.