Reporters Without Borders, an NGO devoted to press freedom, issued a statement on Wednesday saying that despite recent assurances to the contrary from President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), it was concerned that media independence in Taiwan remains under threat from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
The statement highlighted KMT attempts to control the programming of Public Television Service (PTS). The party’s legislators have proposed that PTS would require item-by-item approval from the Government Information Office (GIO) for all budget matters.
The KMT’s “campaign to reaffirm its influence over the public TV stations seems to have strengthened,” the statement read, before urging the president “to set up mechanisms that guarantee media independence.”
Ma’s reply to an earlier statement by the group in October, in which he reiterated his inauguration speech promise that “Taiwan’s democracy should not be marred by … political interference in the media,” obviously didn’t satisfy them.
Maybe it too is aware, like most people in Taiwan, of how little influence the president actually wields over KMT legislators — or the party in general, for that matter.
In its October letter, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-Francois Julliard expressed concern about two incidents that took place earlier that month. The first was the resignation of several Radio Taiwan International senior managers, who claimed that the government had asked them not to broadcast reports critical of China. The second was the resignation of Central News Agency (CNA) deputy editor-in-chief Chuang Feng-chia (莊豐嘉), who said the agency’s reporters had been asked to drop stories deemed to be critical of Ma.
In an open letter before his resignation, Chuang lamented that if things proceeded on their present course, one day CNA reportage might come to be regarded with the same skepticism as that of Xinhua news agency, the Chinese government mouthpiece.
Chuang would have had no idea how quickly his prophecy would come to pass. One glance at the headlines from Monday’s CNA English-language service reveals an ominous Xinhua-like appearance.
“Keelung expects renewed prosperity from direct shipping with China,” “History made as new cross-strait flight route inaugurated,” “Southern counties eyeing tourism opportunities from direct links,” “Maritime pilots welcome opening of cross-strait shipping links,” are just a few of the overwhelmingly positive headlines on offer, despite the fact that Taiwan is approaching an official period of recession.
How quickly things have changed since January last year, when Reporters Without Borders founder and then secretary-general Robert Menard received the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy’s Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award for 2006.
At the time, Menard told then-GIO chief Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) that his organization needed the Taiwanese government’s help to pressure China into releasing people jailed simply for what they had written. Given the government’s recent actions there seems to be little hope of this request being granted.
When receiving his award, Menard also said that Reporters Without Borders would use the US$100,000 prize money to launch a new Chinese-language Web site to allow people in Chinese-speaking nations to be better informed.
Thank goodness for this, because the way things are going, Taiwanese themselves may soon require other sources in the Chinese language if they want to learn of the health of the media in their country.
The US Department of Defense recently released this year’s “Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” This annual report provides a comprehensive overview of China’s military capabilities, strategic objectives and evolving global ambitions. Taiwan features prominently in this year’s report, as capturing the nation remains central to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) vision of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” a goal he has set for 2049. The report underscores Taiwan’s critical role in China’s long-term strategy, highlighting its significance as a geopolitical flashpoint and a key target in China’s quest to assert dominance
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,
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
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
RSS