President Chen Shui-bian's (
The conference was originally scheduled to be held at the association's club room at UN headquarters, but, under pressure from China and the UN Secretariat, it was relocated to the UN Plaza Hotel.
This setback embodied the bullying Taiwan has endured at the hands of Beijing with the help of the UN. It also made Chen's appeal to join the UN more powerful and more legitimate.
More than 30 reporters attended the conference, including journalists from France, Britain, Japan, the US, Korea and Costa Rica.
The discussion was occasionally barbed, and there were questions from CNN, the Mainichi Daily News, the Associated Press, Reuters, the Financial Times, the New York Sun and China's People's Daily.
The event was widely reported and helped to shape opinion and solicit sympathy and support.
Within the week, 39 reports on the videoconference appeared in the international media.
Even CNN, which normally does not air political advertisements, broadcast footage of Chen's videoconference as well as a promotional video provided by the Government Information Office.
Most importantly, the network pointed out in its program Diplomatic License that blocking Taiwan from the UN was equivalent to the diplomatic segregation of Taiwanese people and that its participation in the UN was not an attempt to replace China or to challenge its status or representation in the UN.
The comments certainly got to the heart of the issue.
The attendance and extensive coverage given by the international media proved that the pan-blue camp's Bulletgate propaganda and "Taiwan's Hitler" representation of Chen did not work.
Not a single US media organization swallowed it. American mainstream media, such as CNN, the Washington Times, the New York Sun, the Baltimore Sun and the Detroit Free Press, also respectfully addressed Chen as president.
Americans seemed to have thrown literature promoting the "Bulletgate" conspiracy theory into the trash.
The ridiculous comparison of Chen to Adolf Hitler seems to have been treated with equal contempt. Otherwise, the media would not have reported Chen's talk as widely.
The pan-blue camp has not admitted defeat in the presidential election and has accused Chen of vote-rigging and staging the assassination attempt he suffered.
It failed to overthrow Chen's government, and so launched demonstrations from election day all the way until Chen's inauguration day two months later.
Now the opposition has set up an extraordinary task force to investigate the "truth" behind the shooting.
But surveys show that the public do not believe or support what the pan-blue camp is claiming.
The public is actually quite fed up with the opposition and will express their dissatisfaction in the legislative elections. Neither the wisdom nor the critical faculties of the public should be underestimated or manipulated.
Beijing tried to be obstructive, but in the end it enhanced Taiwan's presence in the international media. The pan-blue camp's attempt to boycott the ruling party, however, will lead to its own destruction. This is probably another blessing.
Chin Heng-wei is editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine.
Translated by Jennie Shih
The White House’s decision to take a 9.9 percent stake in Intel Corp is looking like very shrewd business indeed. Since the government bought in at US$20.47 a share last August, the US chipmaker’s surging stock price has delivered the US a US$43 billion return. One of the reasons the investment has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Howard personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients imaginable. They include Nvidia Corp, the company at the heart of the AI
A single photograph can cut through a lot of noise, but it can also be used to misrepresent the truth. At the very least, it can concentrate the mind on something that requires further investigation. On Monday last week, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) and former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a news conference in which they showed a photograph of former foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑), now Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman. In the image Hsiao is seated next to Xiamen Taiwan Businessmen Association chairman Han Ying-huan (韓螢煥). The two men were holding
I first met Professor Ray Jiing (井迎瑞) as a film and documentary student at Shih Hsin University’s (SHU) Department of Radio Television and Film in 1988. The following year, he went on to become the director of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive — forerunner of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). Over his eight-year tenure, Jiing rescued and restored over 200 classic Taiwanese films. In 1997, he established the Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary and Film Archiving at Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), and I joined the program in his third cohort of students. Beyond a
President William Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) May 20 second-anniversary address was not just a routine policy review; it was damage control. US President Donald Trump’s remarks — that he did not want to see anyone move toward independence and that the delivery of a major Taiwan arms package could depend on the progress of US-China relations — unsettled Taiwan’s public and created an opening for opposition parties to question whether Taiwan was being treated as a bargaining chip in Washington’s dealings with Beijing. Lai’s speech was designed to close that opening. The address covered the expected ground: sovereignty, cross-strait relations, defense spending,
RSS