Despite growing protests, the US government’s Voice of America (VOA) broadcasting system is determined to go ahead with budget cutting plans and cancel shortwave radio broadcasts into China.
“This is another alarming sign that America is cowering before China’s gangster regime,” Representative Dana Rohrabacher said.
“The Chinese people are our greatest allies and the free flow of information is our greatest weapon,” said Rohrabacher, a Republican and member of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee.
To save about US$8 million, VOA is firing 45 of its 69 Chinese-speaking journalists and as of October next year will stop all of its radio and TV programs aimed at China. Instead, it will expand Internet and other digital media efforts — especially mobile-phone operations — to get uncensored news into China.
Sources say that there is enormous opposition to the plan within VOA and the conservative Washington Times has quoted an unnamed US government official as saying that in Tibet and Xinjiang, “shortwave is a lifeline to those who are cut off from all but the official media.”
“Those who are limited to shortwave still represent millions of highly motivated information seekers,” the official said.
“Beijing puts millions of dollars into jamming shortwave signals to keep out stories about a dissident talking about nonviolent dissent, the Dalai Lama discussing the real situation in Tibet or growing protests throughout China by those who have been displaced by government malfeasance,” he said.
At the same time, China is greatly expanding its own propaganda broadcasting service, especially programming aimed at North America.
Other sources have told the Taipei Times the Chinese government lobby in Washington had been working hard to persuade the administration of US President Barack Obama that VOA broadcasts amount to “an unfriendly gesture.”
“The decision by VOA to end its broadcasts into China is a major victory in the propaganda war for Beijing,” a senior congressional staff member said.
However, although many members of Congress were opposed to the move, it was not considered greatly significant when considered within the whole of Obama’s new budget package, the staffer said.
“There are too many other major priorities to deal with and I’m afraid the VOA’s China decision will just slip through,” he said.
In comments to the Washington Times published on Tuesday, John Tkacik, a former US State Department official and China specialist, said the decision to stop shortwave broadcasts was “ironic” because they “are much more difficult [and labor intensive] to jam than VOA’s digital, social media and satellite broadcasts.”
“The Egypt demonstrations were organized via text messaging and Facebook, but those media are very tightly monitored and censored in China,” Tkacik told the paper. “So, I’m not sure it makes much sense for VOA to divert all its efforts into social and digital media.”
In unpublished comments obtained by the Taipei Times, Tkacik said ending VOA’s Mandarin broadcasts would represent a major victory for Beijing in what he called “the global propaganda wars.”
“Chinese communist media have completely unfettered access to US audiences and Beijing is now building up its US programming, both via cable TV channels as well as via its so-called ‘Confucius Institutes,’” he said. “The Broadcasting Board of Governors [BBG] is cutting American programming to the world’s biggest potential audience … [and] Taiwan has curtailed its free broadcasts into China to avoid antagonizing the Chinese.
The BBG is responsible for all US government or government-sponsored, non-military international broadcasting.
“I’m not sure there is any other news source available in China that the Chinese government cannot manipulate absolutely,” Tkacik said.
He said the VOA Chinese Service served as an effective instrument for China’s policymaking elite to gather open source intelligence on US issues — an important role that he said US policymakers didn’t seem to fully appreciate.
“You can use VOA as a direct line to China’s foreign and military policy elites — not so much to change their minds, but to get your message across at a very high level to policy-level bureaucrats,” he said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS