You've got to hand it to Vice President Annette Lu (
But she sure can bring media outlets like CNN and The Associated Press (AP) to their knees for quoting abusive language from Beijing. In the week that she announced her push for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nomination for president, Lu pounced on two of several news outlets that recycled the expressions "scum of the nation" and "insane" just when she was looking to make an extra headline out of her campaign launch.
Beijing's insults are ludicrous and demean every Taiwanese. But they are dramatic, and to many entertaining, which is why news agencies and correspondents turn to them when they seek to spice up their stories. For years, this newspaper has criticized international news agencies for misrepresenting Taiwan and portraying it as a "renegade Chinese province" at the expense of the Taiwanese view. In this instance, however, AP and CNN were simply playing the same old tune. While objectionable, these kinds of reports are nothing new.
So why has it taken seven years for the DPP government to do anything about it?
The key here is to distinguish between reporting that is sensationalist and that which is actively biased toward one side of the Taiwan Strait. If CNN is guilty of anything it is the former, but this is largely a product of ignorance and not having a reliable correspondent in Taiwan, not ill will toward Lu or any other individual.
For AP and CNN to be accused of being "proud and prejudicial" -- as Lu has said -- and pro-China in general is preposterous. Only weeks ago CNN's Anjali Rao interviewed President Chen Shui-bian (
As for AP, Taiwan has been quite professionally covered by the agency's correspondents. We might occasionally quibble with AP's treatment of stories and its interpretation of political developments, but for DPP caucus whip Wang Sing-nan (
It's one thing to keep a select group of reporters from China's state-run media on a short leash. It's another altogether to threaten real journalists with visa cancelations. If freedom of speech is to be respected, then reporters must not be threatened, and that includes threats over material that is offensive to the government of the day.
If AP proceeds with a compensatory Lu interview as it has promised, there are certain questions that it should include on domestic matters if it is not to stoop to the level of an appeasing infomercial -- which is what Lu would prefer.
This could be among them: Why are the rights of ordinary women -- not to mention migrant women -- regularly stomped on in this country but of only fleeting interest to the most powerful "feminist" in the land?
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS