President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration will conditionally approve a controversial Chinese music event to be held in Taipei as a result of a consensus reached in the so-called “Chinese Nationalist Party-Chinese Communist Party (KMT-CCP) platform,” the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus said yesterday, citing unnamed sources.
“Sources told us that everything had already been worked out in the KMT-CCP platform beforehand and the government is set to conditionally approve the event’s application,” TSU whip Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) told a press conference.
Public discussion about the event arose after the organizers of the Chinese Music Chart Awards unilaterally announced on Thursday that this year’s event would be held in Taipei on Dec. 29, despite not having received official approval from the Taiwanese government.
Today’s joint review meeting of 26 government agencies will be nominal and the under-the-table maneuver for staging this event is suspicious, Huang said.
The TSU discovered that the Taipei Artist Agency Association (TAAA), the event’s co-organizer in Taiwan, played the critical role of helper in facilitating the event’s application with Taiwanese government, she said.
Huang questioned the relations between the TAAA and the pan-blue camp as TAAA president Chao Shao-wei (趙少威) is the younger brother of former New Party lawmaker Chao Shao-kang (趙少康) and several pan-blue camp politicians, including New Party Taipei City Councilors Ouyang Lung (歐陽龍), Lee Hsin (李新) and Hou Kuan-chun (侯冠群), as well as Deputy Speaker Hung Shiu-chu (洪秀柱) and KMT legislators Alex Tsai (蔡正元) and Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛), were listed as the association’s consultants.
Additionally, while the event has yet to be approved by the Taiwanese authorities, a Chinese tour agency has been advertising tour packages since early last month, TSU Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) said.
Lin said the agency would not have taken the risk if it was not guaranteed the event would be held.
The TSU also found it unacceptable that the event’s awards are reportedly to be divided into two groups — neidi (內地, referring to China) and “Hong Kong and Taiwan,” Lin said.
The move is an obvious united front tactic to belittle Taiwan’s sovereignty, Lin said, adding that while most people support cross-strait cultural exchanges, they would not accept such disrespect of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Chang Tsu-tse (張祖慈) of the Ministry of Culture said the ministry had expressed concerns over the belittlement of Taiwan in its review and would not approve the application if the applicants did not submit all the required documents.
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