California Church shooting: Chinese Immigrant shoots Taiwanese folks

I don't think this one has as much recreational discussion potential, sadly

 

Stop Asian Hate

Rocket River

 

Tinman is projecting his inferiority complex, to camouflage his inferior knowledge on the subject matter

anyone who knows just a bit about the Chinese/Taiwanese/HKers immigrant communities in the US----automatically excluding the willfully less-than-informed Tinman---knows that

• there is no tension among them.
  • in particular, those who have chosen to become a naturalized US citizen.

the shooter is a naturalized US citizen, living in Las Vegas, who had worked as a security guard. he drove 280 miles to to Laguna Woods, CA shoot at the church goers

the shooter may have told the cops that he was motivated by the tension between the mainland and Taiwan, i doubt it.
if i have to guess, it has more to do w the mounting gambling debts he owes to the Vegas casinos

 

I just saw the nightly news cover this and praise the one victim who died as a hero. One reason why this story might not get as much coverage is less to do with that the media knows little about the divide between the PRC and Taiwan but that only one person died.

I think most people know that Taiwan and the PRC are at odds. I just posted a link to wargames that NBC did on the matter.

 

For the most part Taiwanese and PRC immigrants overseas tend to get along and view each other as "Chinese". There has been tensions though. Many Taiwanese Americans are suspicions of organizations like the Confucian Institute which is funded by the PRC. I know just in Minnesota Taiwanese immigrants set up their own Chinese language school and have opposed other Chinese interest groups for being more aligned with the PRC.

In 2019 as protests ramped up in HK in several countries there were fights between students from the PRC with Pro HK democracy and pro Taiwan independent students.

 

The shooter was also Taiwanese Chinese but the media focuses on him being a Chinese immigrant to drum up the anti-China angle, which in turn creates more Asian hate.

 

OC Sheriff Barnes said Cheng, a sports medicine doctor who is survived by a wife and two children, heroically charged at the shooter and attempted to disarm him, allowing others to intervene.
Cheng probably saved the lives “of upwards of dozens of people,” the sheriff said.

A pastor hit the gunman on the head with a chair and parishioners hog-tied him with electrical cords. But Cheng was hit by gunfire.​

https://heavy.com/news/david-wenwei-chou/

he had immigrated to the US from China; he had also lived in Taiwan, where his wife and children currently live
​

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A neighbor who knew Chou said the suspected gunman had recently become homeless after he was evicted from his property, and said that
he believed Chou was struggling with mental health issues and problems receiving government assistance, according to a video from Fox 5 Las Vegas.

​

 

How do you logically go away from the reported alleged motivation to the debts angle? Like, if he owes money, he owes money. But he's really going to drive to another state and open fire on a specific group of people because...because he owes money to another party, a whole state away?

Doesn't make too much sense. Why wouldn't he commit the crime (or any crime) closer to home, if he really wasn't motivated by political tension?

 

Damn white supremacy

 

Yes White Supremacy is more ingrained in our society and has affected millions more negatively than racist black folks in the US. It also has more clout in powerful places as White Christian culture is still the hegemonic power in the US in terms of power to legislate its agenda onto the entire public.

 

Racism isn't simply a white black issue and there has been a history of problems between black communities and Asian communities.

That doesn't mean that white supremacy doesn't exist.

 

Hatred + Gun is a deadly combination.

Taiwan’s president condemns Laguna Woods church shooting – Orange County Register (ocregister.com)

Chou’s hatred toward the island, documented in hand-written notes that authorities found, appears to have begun when he felt he wasn’t treated well while living there.

A former neighbor said Chou’s life unraveled after his wife left him and his mental health had been in decline.

Chou’s family appeared to be among the roughly 1 million refugees from mainland China who moved to Taiwan at around the time of the Communist sweep to power on the mainland in 1949.

The former Japanese colony had only been handed over to Nationalist Chinese rule in 1945 at the end of World War II, and relations between mainlanders and native Taiwanese were often tense.

Separated by language and lifestyle, incidents of bullying and confrontation between the sides were frequent.

Many mainlander youth, who were concentrated in the major cities, joined violent organized crime gangs with ties to the military and Chinese secret societies, in part to defend themselves against Taiwanese rivals.

The Presbyterian Church is the most prominent of the Christian dominations in Taiwan and was closely identified with the pro-democracy movement under decades of martial law era and later with the Taiwan independence cause.

 

Some of the church goers said they recognize the shooter as someone who's been there before even though they don't know him well. So there could have been some history there.

The shooter was also born and raised in Taiwan. His wife recently left him and went back to Taiwan.

The crime can absolutely be driven by hatred of Taiwan, but it's not so cut and dry as a Chinese man committing hate crime against the Taiwanese IMO

 

Coincidentally I was just discussing Taiwanese culture and the affect of the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) coming to Taiwan after the Communist revolution over dinner.

While there have been tensions between th previous residents of Taiwan and the Chinese who came there fleeing the Communists I don’t think it’s as bad as the writer makes it out to be. In the early days there were and the KMT government was authoritarian and oppressive especially in the aboriginal population of Taiwan. Since then though it’s grown into a polyglot culture and many of those who came after 1949 have intermarried with those who lived there before. Including people in my own family.

Chou very well could’ve have had grievances with groups of over Taiwanese but it sounds like he had many issues and that led him to nurse a long standing older grudge.

 

both the mainlanders and Taiwanese speak Mandarin.

similarity in language and culture is the reason that mainland China has been Taiwan's largest trading partner.

currently, in mainland China

• there are Taiwanese retirees on pension living in senior communities
• Many Taiwanese Millennial enterpreneurs are conducting business there
• FoxConn, a large Taiwanese corporation, operates mfg facilities to mfg iPhones / Apple products

 

I know as much about KMT and Taiwanese culture as my 4 years old knows about this bbs. Interesting to learn more someday.

Either way, this does sound like an isolated thing - correct me if wrong. But even isolated, the opportunity for mass violence is just easier here in the States with ease of access to guns everywhere. It's a deadly combination (hatred + gun) that is not exactly preventable but is somewhat preventable.

With political and cultural hatred on the rise fast, I expect more of those types of mass violence.