With the nation’s attention rightly focused on urgent rescue efforts in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot last weekend, a couple of notable events that would otherwise have grabbed the headlines slipped under the radar for most people.
The first was comments made on Thursday by Li Fei (李非), deputy director of the Taiwan Research Center at Xiamen University, who was in Taiwan to take part in a cross-strait forum.
Lee said that China’s pushing of cross-strait economic exchanges had three main benefits, one of which was to accelerate unification.
While Lee’s forthright language may be shocking to some given where he was speaking, this is not the first time he has made such comments. On a previous occasion, the Presidential Office was swift to play down the implications of his words, saying that the government would uphold Taiwan’s interests in economic dealings with China.
But despite the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s best efforts to skirt discussion of the implications of growing closer to China, Beijing’s views on economic exchanges and the part they play in its unification agenda are plain for all to see.
The second notable event was the launch on Tuesday by the China Times Group of Want Daily (旺報), a newspaper dedicated to covering news from China.
Launching a newspaper that focuses on events in another country is a bizarre concept.
But the launch is even more bizarre considering how the Internet has changed the way readers gather news.
Newspapers that report on domestic affairs are struggling to make money; it is thus difficult to comprehend what makes the China Times Group think that people will spend good money on a publication with its eyes trained on another land — one that many Taiwanese have never been to, nor have the desire to visit.
The launch seems to confirm fears that media specialists expressed when the Want Want Group took control of the China Times Group last year: A business that earns most of its money in China and controls a large portion of the Taiwanese media would use the newspaper as a conduit for pro-China propaganda.
The rationale behind the Want Daily, according to the first issue, is to help Taiwanese “understand” China.
While many in Taiwan understand how a government can turn guns on its own people in order to maintain power — Taiwanese have had that experience, after all — some may not understand why a government would persecute and torture its own people over religious beliefs, or jail activists and silence critics who try to help those suffering at the hands of thuggish officials, as happened in the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake.
The only thing that a lot of Taiwanese need to better understand about China is that its government will stop at nothing until Taiwan is brought under its control.
Only impartial, warts-and-all news coverage, not Want Daily puff pieces, will perform this function.
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