Seven more foreign news outlets have applied to open bureaus in Taiwan this year, including the New York Times, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, following China’s expulsion of US journalists in March.
After the US placed a personnel cap on four Chinese media companies, China responded by banning US reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal from covering news from China, Hong Kong and Macau.
“We maintain bureaus in Beijing and Shanghai with correspondents, and are hopeful that the Chinese government will allow all of our reporters to return,” New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an e-mail to the Taipei Times.
“As a result of the expulsion order, some affected correspondents are in the process of relocating to Taipei and Seoul. Our newsroom has not missed a beat and continues to cover China fairly and aggressively,” she said.
“It’s great having @nytimes reporters in #Taiwan. Our vibrant international media landscape is much the richer for their presence,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Welcome & enjoy the country’s freedom in producing all the news that’s fit to print!”
Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said that the ministry has also welcomed the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal to establish branches in Taiwan, although they have not formally submitted requests.
Including the new applications, 59 foreign news outlets are stationed in Taiwan from 16 nations: France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US, she said.
The number of foreign journalists in Taiwan has increased in the past few years, as the nation’s press freedom has been praised by the global community, she added.
Before the nation’s presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 11, more than 210 foreign journalists, including nearly 60 originally stationed in Taiwan, had applied for permits to cover the elections, the ministry said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
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