On Friday, representatives from several Taiwanese media organizations attended a cross-strait media summit in Beijing cohosted by China’s Beijing Daily Group and the Taiwan-based Want Want China Times Media Group. At the closed-door Cross-Strait Media People Summit — also attended by Taiwan’s United Daily News Group, Eastern Broadcasting Co and TVBS Media — Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Yang (汪洋) called on Taiwanese media to promote a Taiwanese version of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” model of governance, advocated by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a speech on Jan. 2.
Participation at the event by Taiwanese media organizations — the contents of Wang’s address was subsequently leaked to the wider Taiwanese media — is disturbing and should be viewed through the prism of Beijing’s wider effort to influence public debate in Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) calls this its “united front” strategy — a decades-long “whole of society” campaign to infiltrate and subvert Taiwan’s open and liberal democracy, thereby achieving its goal of unification without the need to fire a single shot. The question is: What should the government do about it?
Predictably, the government has already issued several boilerplate statements criticizing the forum. On Saturday, the Mainland Affairs Council censured Wang for “using a cross-strait media summit as a platform for political propaganda.” President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has also weighed in, rebuking the CCP for interfering in Taiwan’s internal affairs and the freedom of its press.
Tellingly, both statements refrained from directly criticizing the Taiwanese media organizations in attendance, instead focusing on the forum itself. This might be because officials believe that at least some of the organizations attended in good faith, but were ambushed by Wang’s speech. Officials might also be wary of attacking individual media organizations, lest they are accused of encroaching upon freedom of the press.
However, there are signs that the government is moving toward tighter regulation of the media. Last month, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said: “We hope the media can regulate itself, but we have witnessed disconcerting developments, which the public has also condemned... Both self-regulation and laws are needed for effective regulation.”
The Executive Yuan is drafting a bill aimed at regulating false reporting in the media, while National Security Bureau (NSB) Deputy Director-General Ko Cheng-heng (柯承亨) yesterday told reporters his organization is keeping a close eye on domestic media that are either pro-China or share the CCP’s values and are spreading disinformation to influence public debate.
The government is also looking at amending the Criminal Code to allow for the prosecution of individuals who help spread false information. This highlights a significant conundrum for the government: Beijing’s “united front” campaign does not limit itself to traditional media. China is also using Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms, through which much of the younger generation obtains news reporting, to influence public debate by spreading disinformation and fake news.
Nevertheless, the trend toward online media also presents the government with an opportunity. Beijing’s social media influence campaign, to a large extent, rests upon it being able to fund pro-China content creators in Taiwan. It should be possible for the NSB to track and cut off funding sources linked to China.
However, the government must tread carefully. If it goes down the road of overt media censorship, it will begin to undo all of the progress made through Taiwan’s democratic reforms and will be unwittingly assisting Beijing in its goal of unification by destroying the very freedoms that differentiate liberal Taiwan from totalitarian China.
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
Next week, the nation is to celebrate the Lunar New Year break. Unfortunately, cold winds are a-blowing, literally and figuratively. The Central Weather Administration has warned of an approaching cold air mass, while obstinate winds of chaos eddy around the Legislative Yuan. English theologian Thomas Fuller optimistically pointed out in 1650 that “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” We could paraphrase by saying the coldest days are just before the renewed hope of spring. However, one must temper any optimism about the damage being done in the legislature by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), under
To our readers: Due to the Lunar New Year holiday, from Sunday, Jan. 26, through Sunday, Feb. 2, the Taipei Times will have a reduced format without our regular editorials and opinion pieces. From Tuesday to Saturday the paper will not be delivered to subscribers, but will be available for purchase at convenience stores. Subscribers will receive the editions they missed once normal distribution resumes on Sunday, Feb. 2. The paper returns to its usual format on Monday, Feb. 3, when our regular editorials and opinion pieces will also be resumed.
Young Taiwanese are consuming an increasing amount of Chinese content on TikTok, causing them to have more favorable views of China, a Financial Times report cited Taiwanese social scientists and politicians as saying. Taiwanese are being exposed to disinformation of a political nature from China, even when using TikTok to view entertainment-related content, the article published on Friday last week said. Fewer young people identify as “Taiwanese” (as opposed to “Chinese”) compared with past years, it wrote, citing the results of a survey last year by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation. Nevertheless, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would be hard-pressed
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