John Oliver on Sunday took a deep dive into the incredibly complicated and often perilous world of relations between China and Taiwan.
As Oliver pointed out, China has increased its saber-rattling as President Xi Jinping has vowed reunification with Taiwan, which it considers a rogue territory.
The tensions between the two have much of the rest of the world walking on eggshells in how they talk about Taiwan and China ― to the point where actor John Cena issued a lengthy apology to China, in Chinese, for referring to Taiwan as a country.
“Every part of that is so weird,†a stunned Oliver said after rolling the footage of Cena’s apology.
“It’s weird John Cena apologized to China. It’s weird he did it for calling Taiwan a country. And it’s weird to see him do it in pretty decent Mandarin,†Oliver said. (Cena has studied Chinese for years.)
Even seasoned global figures have learned to tiptoe around the issue, or try to ignore it completely, often with extremely awkward results as Oliver shared in some other clips.
But the “Last Week Tonight†host shows why the rest of the world shouldn’t ignore the situation:
