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.
It is employment pass renewal season in Singapore, and the new regime is dominating the conversation at after-work cocktails on Fridays. From September, overseas employees on a work visa would need to fulfill the city-state’s new points-based system, and earn a minimum salary threshold to stay in their jobs. While this mirrors what happens in other countries, it risks turning foreign companies away, and could tarnish the nation’s image as a global business hub. The program was announced in 2022 in a bid to promote fair hiring practices. Points are awarded for how a candidate’s salary compares with local peers, along
China last month enacted legislation to punish —including with the death penalty — “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists.” The country’s leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), need to be reminded about what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said and done in the past. They should think about whether those historical figures were also die-hard advocates of Taiwanese independence. The Taiwanese Communist Party was established in the Shanghai French Concession in April 1928, with a political charter that included the slogans “Long live the independence of the Taiwanese people” and “Establish a republic of Taiwan.” The CCP sent a representative, Peng
Japan and the Philippines on Monday signed a defense agreement that would facilitate joint drills between them. The pact was made “as both face an increasingly assertive China,” and is in line with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s “effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea,” The Associated Press (AP) said. The pact also comes on the heels of comments by former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who said at a forum on Tuesday last week that China’s recent aggression toward the Philippines in
The Ministry of National Defense on Tuesday announced that the military would hold its annual Han Kuang exercises from July 22 to 26. Military officers said the exercises would feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure. This year’s exercises underline the recent reforms in Taiwan’s military as it transitions from a top-down command structure to one where autonomy is pushed down to the front lines to improve decisionmaking and adaptability. Militaries around the world have been observing and studying Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have seen that the Ukrainian military has been much quicker to adapt to