Stating that many foreign media reports had incorrectly interpreted Saturday's election as a referendum on independence, US academics yesterday said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government must fight the foreign media's spin on events.
The US scholars made the remark yesterday while visiting with Wu A-ming (
"One thing which I found the western media got wrong, particularly CNN, was that they viewed this election as referendum on independence," said June Dreyer, chair of the Department of Political Science of the University of Miami. "But to us, it does not seem that way."
The pan-blue camp, consisting of the pro-unification Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP), retained its legislative majority in Saturday's election, winning a total of 114 seats. The DPP and its small political ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), fell short of their goal to gain a majority in the new legislature.
Several foreign media outlets, such as CNN, reported Saturday's electoral result as the people of Taiwan saying no to a new mandate to accelerate President Chen Shui-bian's (
"It is very much not in Taiwan's interest to allow the foreign spin to prevail. And the foreign spin is -- Chen loses, China won," said Edward Friedman, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin.
Battling `spin'
"I think the most important thing, in terms of Taiwan's standing in the world and its relationship to the world, is to fight this battle of `spin.'"
Friedman said the most frightening thing he found about this the international media's spin on the events was that "it is not just CNN, the Asian Wall Street Journal but everyone."
"Even an Arab newspaper wrote it the same way," Friedman said, adding that although many foreign press outlets had sent reporters to Taiwan to cover the weekend's election, "their heads never, somehow, get involved with Taiwan's reality."
Friedman attributed it to "China's power and China's ability to define reality."
Another observation the US scholars noted was incorrectly reported in the foreign media's coverage of the election was the mood of the population in the lead-up to the election.
"I listen to CNN and I read the western newspapers and I was amazed at how wrong they were, because they were saying in the days before the election, Taiwan was very tense. And we didn't find it tense at all," she said.
Commenting on the electoral result, Dreyer noted some positive elements of the result.
"If [US President] George Bush and the American State Department think this is a referendum on independence and it failed ... they will be less nervous and they will not give warnings to Taiwan, will not have [Secretary of State] Colin Powell saying that we are for unification and things like that," Dreyer said.
Breathing space
"So this will give Taiwan some breathing space and meanwhile, of course, we all understand that pro-localization continues to take place and the longer it can take place without George Bush or the State Department noticing, the better," she said.
Regarding to issues Chen promoted during the campaign such as rectifying the names of government agencies and state-own enterprises to "Taiwan," Dreyer said the administration should "do it and do it slowly." "It would probably be less upsetting to the American government," she said.
Friedman said the name-change issue was not a new issue.
When Chiang Kai-shek's (
"So, in terms of the use of the word Taiwan to establish sovereignty, the truth is it goes back to Chiang Kai-shek."
The process of Taiwanization had been expanding in the 1970s under Chiang, when he allowed more seats for Taiwan in the legislature, and in the 1980s under his son, Chiang Ching-kuo (
Conspiracy
"It was an ordinary piece of KMT politics of being on Taiwan, and the name change issue is not a recent conspiracy, it is a piece of the reality of being on Taiwan," he said.
"After all, the American office here is the American Institution in Taiwan and the American act is called the Taiwan Relations Act," he said.
Questioned on the US' sensitivity over the name-change issue, Friedman attributed it to "the rise of Chinese power."
"China not wanting to see it happen, and China worrying about Taiwan identification (
Friedman thinks the reason the US does this for China relates to the international situation following 911 and the Iraq invasion.
Proliferation
"With China's rise as an economic power and the feeling that you need China for many many things, not just North Korea, proliferation, and Pakistan, but lots of things, China each time would say to the US `but this costs us [domestically] to do this, and what are you going to do for us?" he said.
"So when I go back home I'll say to my people that we gained something too, and the US has been accepting that line and acting for Beijing in terms of its feeling of its general international situation," Friedman said.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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