Chang Wei-shan addresses a cross-Straits youth forum held on June 18 in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province. Photo: Courtesy of Chang Wei-shan

For most of her life, Chang Wei-shan, born in central Taiwan, had believed that people on the Chinese mainland were the enemy and Taiwan should be independent. But her views changed after entering college, when she became a firm supporter and activist of the island's reunification with the mainland.



Despite suffering obstacles, verbal abuse and even alienation from her family and friends due to her change of heart, the 26-year-old has never had doubts about her transition, instead devoting herself to preparing Taiwan for unification.



"I think I'm doing something that I ought to do. It's just like I'm saving a guy who has fallen into the water. The only thing in my mind is how to rescue him, rather than being distracted or thinking of giving up," Chang told the Global Times on Tuesday.



Cross-Straits relations have been strained since Tsai Ing-wen and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party took office in Taiwan in 2016 and refused to recognize the 1992 Consensus that endorses the One China principle.



"The clamor for independence has grown since Tsai took office. The environment for those who are pro-unification is deteriorating," Chang said. "Those who do not reject unification have become silenced."



The editor of Yuan Wang, a monthly magazine founded in 1987 on the island to promote unification, Chang has been active on social media, TV programs and meetings, battling against pro-independence forces.



Following in the footsteps of Sao Tome and Principe, Panama recently severed ties with Taiwan and established diplomatic relations with the Chinese mainland. However, the Tsai administration is reportedly continuing with its desinicization campaign and drafting further revisions to school textbooks.



Chang believes the revisions have greatly weakened young Taiwan people's affection for the mainland, and sees herself as a victim.



New thinking



She said she was taught to be hostile to the mainland and worship Japan. "Our education convinced us that Chinese mainlanders are our enemies who want to annex us," she said. But things started to change after she was admitted to the Department of Political Science at the Chinese Culture University in Taipei.



When first asked by a teacher why she supported independence, she found herself unable to answer. She then started to read books about Chinese history, political thought and culture.



In her previous education, people in the Chinese mainland were described as conservative, bad, and had no freedom or human rights. "But after reading, I found that mainlanders' thought, instead of being useless, was much more wise and profound than that of the West," she said. "I felt that being Chinese was something to be proud of."



In 2015, on her first trip to the mainland, she went to the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, where she got to know that the mainland was not as bad or ugly as it was portrayed in Taiwan.



In a documentary made by ifeng.com in 2015, she openly told the story of her change of view and announced her support for reunification, which drew widespread criticism from pro-independence groups in Taiwan.



A legislator on the island even openly commented that she, then a new media worker in the "Executive Yuan," the Taiwan government in Taipei, should be "killed."



In February 2016, she quit her job in the government. "The officer asked me to be discreet in word and deed. Besides, the Kuomintang had already lost the upper hand at that time. I didn't want to work for a pro-independence government," she said.



Left in the cold



Some netizens in Taiwan attacked her on social media, asking her to "get out and go back to China." She fought back. "Taiwan is part of China…You who don't recognize China should get out. Get out of Chinese territory and back to your motherland Japan," she posted on her social media account.



Many of her relatives and friends also turned against her, too.



Some friends blocked her on social media and cut her from their contact lists. Some of her relatives even said she had become radical or crazy. "It's a pity that several aunts who had treated me well now keep their distance from me," she said. Her parents also worried about her.



Chang laments that less than one 10th of Taiwan residents support fast unification and young people there grew up to worship Western values.



At a cross-Straits youth forum on new media held recently in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, Chang called on young reunification supporters in Taiwan to make good use of the new media to fight against secessionist forces.



In 2016, she and her team started to make videos attempting to correct the views of the Taiwan people about the mainland. In one eight-minute video published online in July that year, they explained China's historical sovereignty over the South China Sea and criticized the Tsai administration's inaction and betrayal of compatriots, which gained nationwide praise.



But their efforts have been met with obstacles. Their account on Youtube was blocked within 48 hours after they uploaded a video about the February 28 Incident, an uprising in Taiwan in 1947 that protested against the Kuomintang government's suffocating rule. The reason was unclear, but she believes it was linked to pressure from pro-independence groups.



In her eyes, supporting independence means choosing to stand with the US and Japan, which is immoral. "Taiwan people are always inferior citizens in the eyes of the US and Japanese imperialists," she said, "The countries care about their own hegemonic interests and don't want to see Chinese rejuvenation."



Now, the difficulty for reunification supporters in Taiwan is an acute lack of personnel and resources, Chang said. "I always ponder the fact that even if all residents in Taiwan back independence, we would still have 1.3 billion people behind us," she said.



But due to geographical barriers, the majority of residents on the mainland can hardly offer them help, she admitted.



Despite the challenges, she said she will do whatever she can to promote reunification and national rejuvenation. "If I can, I will try to give birth to a bunch of children who can bear the rise and fall of the world as their own responsibilities."



Some people, including her sister, have already been influenced by her and support her, she said.