Week by week, the National Communications Commission (NCC) is vindicating fears that its partisan membership would pay dividends for pan-blue-camp figures with media interests.
In recent months the NCC has made an ass of itself by lecturing or fining local and international media outlets on innocuous content errors. More than this, however, the NCC's membership has made it clear that it intends to micromanage media affairs in this country in a way that makes the Government Information Office's paternalistic style appear enlightened.
Now, the NCC has picked a genuinely political fight with the rest of the executive by approving the sale of the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC) to four "front companies" -- in the words of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) critics -- allegedly owned by Jaw Shaw-kong (
Yesterday it was revealed that the NCC wrote to the National Security Bureau and other government agencies asking for analyses of the ramifications of the sale on national security. The NCC, it seems, would like other government agencies to do its work for it. The bureau and the other agencies declined, which is hardly surprising.
The bigger picture needs to be spelt out. We are not only criticizing individual decisions by the NCC or regressive elements in the pan-blue camp -- though there is certainly no shortage of them -- but arguing that the regulator for media and telecommunications should be distanced from the blue-green political divide as far as possible, and that it stop meddling in problems that are better addressed by the industry and the feedback of ordinary people.
Instead, we have a situation in which the sale of media properties to anyone with political connections results in the entire membership of the NCC suffering a conflict of interest.
In the unlikely event that the DPP wins a majority of seats in the next legislature, the NCC as it stands would then become a plaything for the pan-green camp. This would only continue to hurt the interests of the general public.
The NCC is, in effect, a partisan and punitive arm of the legislature rather than a body of independent experts appointed by the executive. It resembles nothing more than the para-legal kangaroo courts that "investigated" the assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (
And nothing illustrates the infantile potential of this partisan morass better than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) -- the current NCC membership's benefactor -- yesterday threatening to sue the government for hurting the NCC members' feelings.
When the Council of Grand Justices declared the NCC unconstitutional over its partisan membership selection process in July last year, the justices also confusingly gave the NCC a reprieve, allowing the body to continue functioning until the end of this year, by which time the law is supposed to be amended to meet the court's requirements.
That reprieve remains one of the council's strangest decisions in recent years, and its legacy may well be a round of wasteful litigation within the executive.
But if this farce alerts voters and more sensible politicians to the folly that comes with the creation of politically partisan government agencies, then some good may yet come of it.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS