One of the problems that plague the media in Taiwan is a lack of public awareness. The founder of the China Times, Yu Chi-chung (余紀忠), passed away recently and for several days the newspaper carried little news other than stories about him. Letting a forum for public debate degenerate into someone's private turf is a mistake.
Nearly 20 years ago, in order to celebrate his mother's birthday, Yu also put public resources to private use in a way that threw propriety to the wind. Someone wrote to criticize his behavior in an article headlined "Yu Celebrates His Mother's Birthday" (The headline "余紀忠做他媽的壽"can be read in two different ways, one of them containing an expletive.) Surprisingly enough, the Times has seen little improvement after so many years.
If the Times wants to fill its pages with articles flattering Yu or attempting to deify him, then so be it. If there are those who wish to mourn, each should do as he sees fit. The problem is that it is not only excessive but also inaccurate to laud Yu as the guardian angel of Taiwan's democracy.
We can't deny Yu's position in the history of journalism. Nor can we fail to recognize the media empire he built. And we are compelled to respect his journalistic expertise and political sensitivity. However, it obviously contradicts reality to insist on crediting him with the work of developing Taiwan from an authoritarian regime into a democracy.
The most important factor that enabled the China Times to succeed and become a major media power was the monopoly it enjoyed under martial law. Without the ban on newspapers sanctioned by the government, the Times couldn't have achieved its dominance. Under martial law, the paper also could not have survived if it didn't curry favor with the Chiang family.
Don't forget, Yu was a member of the KMT's Central Standing Committee. Only when the late president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) passed away and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) took office and Taiwan finally entered the post-martial law era did Yu withdraw from the power center of the party-state apparatus.
Of course, looking at the Times from a relative or comparative perspective, its editorial stance was more enlightened than that of the other party mouthpiece, the United Daily News, in the era of a party
dictatorship.
But even if that is the case, these two major papers merely reflected the internal struggle between "two different lines" within the Chiang family dynasty. Whether conservative or enlightened, the dispute never strayed outside the boundaries delineated by the Chiang family.
The philosopher Lao-tze (
One need only review the key incidents in Taiwan's political development -- all of which appeared on the opinion page of the Times -- and through quick re-examination, we can evaluate the overall tenor of the paper. There is no need to speak of the experiences of those who have worked at the Times and received orders directly from the boss. Was Yu really as great as all the high-ranking bureaucrats have fatuously claimed?
People can laugh or cry, recite a prayer or sing a man's praises, but it's all about private personal feelings. The lessons of history must be sought from the facts. Let the glorification of Yu stop here. I'm afraid there is no way to bring back the era in which Yu lived. Say a few fair and impartial words for the man and then once again give the journalism world the space to speak the truth.
Chin Heng-wei is editor in chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine.
Translated by Ethan Harkness
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs