For a government accused by opposition and rights advocates of reverting to an authoritarian past, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been surprisingly inept at image control, a situation all the more strange given the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) strong ties with the media.
Starting with the barbed wire and barricades that preceded the arrival in Taiwan of Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), then continuing with police clashes with demonstrators protesting against the visit, critics of the KMT government were given plenty of ammunition to advance claims that the Ma administration is whittling away at democratic principles and what exists of due process.
Other faux pas — such as Ma walking away from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) deputy caucus whip Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) as she lay on the ground, and KMT legislators crowing over the detention of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) without charge last Tuesday — also blemished the government’s image and raised questions about its ability to maintain a facade of respectability.
What could have been passed off as carelessness shifted to incompetence on the night of Chen Shui-bian’s arrest, with prosecutors gratuitously handcuffing the former president and failing to foresee that the media-savvy Chen would turn the occasion into a classic camera moment. Minutes later, images of a handcuffed former president shouting injustice and political persecution were circulated around the world, threatening to downgrade Taiwan’s image to that of a banana republic.
Many people overseas were oblivious to the mass demonstrations and clashes that accompanied Chen Yunlin’s visit, but few have not seen the final pictures of the former president before he was taken away. The impact of that image — and the worrying questions it raises about the KMT administration — cannot be underestimated.
If the KMT’s detractors are justified in fearing a slide toward authoritarianism, image is the next thing the party must work on. And there are signs that the authorities are becoming more sensitive to the ability of reporters and photographers to access all areas.
After several days on a presumed hunger strike, the former president was taken from his detention center in Taipei County to hospital for a checkup. Once again, the media rushed to broadcast images of an emaciated and perhaps ailing former leader, which — added to other images of hunger-striking DPP leaders — would have infuriated DPP supporters and fueled tensions.
The wait was anti-climactic. The former president was barely visible. As a precaution, and against the longstanding practice of parading patients before the media both outside and inside hospital grounds, the ambulance backed into the building, from where Chen was unloaded, depriving the throng of crucial images and leaving it with bland pictures of ambulances, police cars and people milling around.
It is extremely unlikely that this transpired out of respect for the former president’s privacy or his rights as a likely defendant.
Media outlets have benefited from callous disregard for the dignity of ordinary people and the rights of defendants for many years. The irony is that Chen Shui-bian’s protest has offered the authorities an object lesson in image management that may well result in more regulation — and not necessarily for the better. With the National Communications Commission shutting down unlicensed radio stations rather than engaging the issue of how the media compromise the rights of people in its stories, it can be assumed that changes will take place with politics strictly in mind.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they