"there are no Taiwnese in Taiwan"

really?
i mean "really!"

Buddhist Master and founder of the Fo Kuang Shan monastery Hsing Yun (星雲) came under fire ... [for] ... a series of comments Hsing Yun made while in China ...
Hsing Yun said that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one family. There are no Taiwanese in Taiwan and Taiwanese are all Chinese.”
Which Taiwanese is not Chinese?” he asked. “They are Chinese just like you are. We are all brothers and sisters.”
Hsing Yun also said that ... “The more [cross-strait] exchange we have, the more mixed we will be. Then we won’t be able to distinguish who’s Mainland [Chinese] and who’s Taiwanese — and we will naturally become unified.”

these are reminiscent of comments by Formosa Group chairman Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) or was it Evergreen boss Chang Yung-fa (張榮發), whose outbursts were excused as "necessary to protect their investments in China".

so perhaps religion is just another business

(and interestingly, Chang has been moving into Hsing's territory too: he is currently in Singapore to "promote Morals Monthly Digest, a magazine he launched in January last year and distributes for free to promote traditional moral values.")

and it is a shame that news reports of Hsing's comments don't tell us a bit more context, so that it doesn't appear like this is the typical view of a Taiwan monk dedicated to an ascetic life away from the "dusty world". Just something like mention of his birth in China's Jiangsu Province and his long term political advocacy of Taiwan's "unification with" (annexation by) China.

[update]
fortunately Michael Turton is on the ball with this one:
he was born in China, fled to Taiwan, and has served the KMT and Chinese nationalism ever since, advocating the annexation of Taiwan to China. He's not advocating annexation of Tibet and Taiwan to China out of some weird Buddhist commitment. ... Hsing Yun, as this excellent overview of his political activities mentions, is a former KMT Central Standing Committee member.