Reporters Without Borders, an NGO devoted to press freedom, issued a statement on Wednesday saying that despite recent assurances to the contrary from President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), it was concerned that media independence in Taiwan remains under threat from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
The statement highlighted KMT attempts to control the programming of Public Television Service (PTS). The party’s legislators have proposed that PTS would require item-by-item approval from the Government Information Office (GIO) for all budget matters.
The KMT’s “campaign to reaffirm its influence over the public TV stations seems to have strengthened,” the statement read, before urging the president “to set up mechanisms that guarantee media independence.”
Ma’s reply to an earlier statement by the group in October, in which he reiterated his inauguration speech promise that “Taiwan’s democracy should not be marred by … political interference in the media,” obviously didn’t satisfy them.
Maybe it too is aware, like most people in Taiwan, of how little influence the president actually wields over KMT legislators — or the party in general, for that matter.
In its October letter, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-Francois Julliard expressed concern about two incidents that took place earlier that month. The first was the resignation of several Radio Taiwan International senior managers, who claimed that the government had asked them not to broadcast reports critical of China. The second was the resignation of Central News Agency (CNA) deputy editor-in-chief Chuang Feng-chia (莊豐嘉), who said the agency’s reporters had been asked to drop stories deemed to be critical of Ma.
In an open letter before his resignation, Chuang lamented that if things proceeded on their present course, one day CNA reportage might come to be regarded with the same skepticism as that of Xinhua news agency, the Chinese government mouthpiece.
Chuang would have had no idea how quickly his prophecy would come to pass. One glance at the headlines from Monday’s CNA English-language service reveals an ominous Xinhua-like appearance.
“Keelung expects renewed prosperity from direct shipping with China,” “History made as new cross-strait flight route inaugurated,” “Southern counties eyeing tourism opportunities from direct links,” “Maritime pilots welcome opening of cross-strait shipping links,” are just a few of the overwhelmingly positive headlines on offer, despite the fact that Taiwan is approaching an official period of recession.
How quickly things have changed since January last year, when Reporters Without Borders founder and then secretary-general Robert Menard received the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy’s Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award for 2006.
At the time, Menard told then-GIO chief Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) that his organization needed the Taiwanese government’s help to pressure China into releasing people jailed simply for what they had written. Given the government’s recent actions there seems to be little hope of this request being granted.
When receiving his award, Menard also said that Reporters Without Borders would use the US$100,000 prize money to launch a new Chinese-language Web site to allow people in Chinese-speaking nations to be better informed.
Thank goodness for this, because the way things are going, Taiwanese themselves may soon require other sources in the Chinese language if they want to learn of the health of the media in their country.
George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This article will help readers avoid repeating mistakes by examining four examples from the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces and the Republic of China (ROC) forces that involved two city sieges and two island invasions. The city sieges compared are Changchun (May to October 1948) and Beiping (November 1948 to January 1949, renamed Beijing after its capture), and attempts to invade Kinmen (October 1949) and Hainan (April 1950). Comparing and contrasting these examples, we can learn how Taiwan may prevent a war with
A recent trio of opinion articles in this newspaper reflects the growing anxiety surrounding Washington’s reported request for Taiwan to shift up to 50 percent of its semiconductor production abroad — a process likely to take 10 years, even under the most serious and coordinated effort. Simon H. Tang (湯先鈍) issued a sharp warning (“US trade threatens silicon shield,” Oct. 4, page 8), calling the move a threat to Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” which he argues deters aggression by making Taiwan indispensable. On the same day, Hsiao Hsi-huei (蕭錫惠) (“Responding to US semiconductor policy shift,” Oct. 4, page 8) focused on
Taiwan is rapidly accelerating toward becoming a “super-aged society” — moving at one of the fastest rates globally — with the proportion of elderly people in the population sharply rising. While the demographic shift of “fewer births than deaths” is no longer an anomaly, the nation’s legal framework and social customs appear stuck in the last century. Without adjustments, incidents like last month’s viral kicking incident on the Taipei MRT involving a 73-year-old woman would continue to proliferate, sowing seeds of generational distrust and conflict. The Senior Citizens Welfare Act (老人福利法), originally enacted in 1980 and revised multiple times, positions older
Taiwan’s business-friendly environment and science parks designed to foster technology industries are the key elements of the nation’s winning chip formula, inspiring the US and other countries to try to replicate it. Representatives from US business groups — such as the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, and the Arizona-Taiwan Trade and Investment Office — in July visited the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) headquarters and its first fab. They showed great interest in creating similar science parks, with aims to build an extensive semiconductor chain suitable for the US, with chip designing, packaging and manufacturing. The
RSS