American late-night talk show “Last Week Tonight” turned the spotlight on Taiwan last Sunday. The 22-minute episode covered everything Taiwan. Host John Oliver offered an amusing take on cross-strait tensions, as well as Taiwan’s complicated international status. Speaking about Taiwan’s democratic journey, Oliver said that the island’s 23 million people deserve the right to decide their own future.

Last Sunday, popular HBO talk show “Last Week Tonight” dedicated 22 minutes of running time to Taiwan. Besides introducing it as the birthplace of bubble tea, the show also touched on the island’s abundance of mascots.

It’s a clip from a “Formosa News” report on Taiwan’s mascot industry. In Sunday’s episode on Taiwan, host John Oliver turned his satirical comedy on China’s military harassment of Taiwan. He poked fun at Fast and Furious star John Cena, who made making a profuse apology to China after he described Taiwan as a country.

John Oliver
‘Last Week Tonight’ host
Every part of that is so weird. 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. That’s just too many weird things.

Oliver said that, to avoid provoking China, Taiwan uses the name “Chinese Taipei” for the Olympic Games. He said that not everyone in Taiwan has warmed to the arrangement. To illustrate, he threw to a clip of rock star-turned-lawmaker Freddy Lim.

Freddy Lim
Independent lawmaker
Some friends from overseas messaged me, saying I was on John Oliver’s talk show. Through a very humorous approach, he’s letting the international community learn more about Taiwan’s predicament.

On the show, Oliver walked viewers through cross-strait tensions, 400 years of Taiwan history, and Chinese offensive against Taiwan on the global stage. He showed footage of lively fistfights breaking out at the Legislative Yuan. In the end, he concluded that the Taiwanese should be the ones who decide their own future.

John Oliver
‘Last Week Tonight’ host
Taiwan’s is 23 million people who, in the face of considerable odds, have built a democratic society and very much deserve the right to decide their own future in any way that they deem fit. Even if that means sporadically beating the absolute s--- out of each other.

In 2018, Oliver made a joke about Chinese leader Xi Jinping on “Last Week Tonight.” As a result, his name and the program’s name were censored on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo. In spending 22 minutes discussing Taiwan, Oliver is likely to once again infuriate Beijing.