Since its launch in Taiwan during the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the Apple Daily’s role has changed, yet stayed the same. It excelled at attacking the Democratic Progressive Party, but now, with the party still struggling to find its feet and Chen locked up indefinitely, the newspaper has defied the pro-China media’s endless program of Chen-bashing. Instead, it has taken national and local Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governments to task.
Senior members of the KMT are beginning to run out of patience with the newspaper, it seems.
The Taipei City Government, which is controlled by the KMT, fined the newspaper NT$500,000 (US$15,500) on Wednesday and another NT$500,000 on Thursday night, the latter apparently for insubordination as much as any formal transgression. The original offense was publishing animated videos — mostly of crime reconstructions — online and making these sometimes explicit and sensational videos available for download to cellphones.
It’s one thing for a government to lecture media outlets on morality and propriety, but compelling schools to discontinue subscriptions and issuing heavy fines for media presentations not contained in a print version — and which are vaguely covered by the law — is another matter entirely.
For some, the news that the Apple Daily has subscribers among elementary, middle and high schools will come as a shock. Regardless of regulatory matters, there is no denying that the newspaper’s coverage of social aberration is often lurid and distressing, particularly its use of large, bloody photographs and images of corpses. Compared with these, the largely redundant blow-by-blow graphics that accompany stories of robberies and assault seem innocuous.
Even so, the knee-jerk response by regulatory authorities — both central and regional — to challenging or inaccurate media content has been raised a notch here, and the newspaper has fought back, accusing the government of martial law-style tactics, a none-too-subtle reference to the KMT’s seedy past.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) has been at the forefront of the attack on the Apple Daily, and his chest-thumping recalls the speed with which he recently formed a bizarre “voluntary” association of restaurants and other outlets that pledged not to sell US beef on pain of city government fines.
For him to noisily ban the Apple Daily from schools for providing cellphone download codes for News-in-Motion clips in its print edition, however, is preposterous given that many editions of the newspaper — and those of some of its competitors — shouldn’t be in the hands of children at all. Now, with all the free publicity, every curious child in the school system will get the codes from the local convenience store’s newspaper rack without buying anything.
Hau is trying to steer media outlets away from his litany of administrative and political problems by taking just as sensationalist a line as the media outlets he decries. The Wenshan-Neihu MRT line, the shuttered Maokong Gondola, his poor relationship with President (and now party boss) Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), a generally mediocre list of “achievements” — all this will be put further inside the paper, but only for now.
As in Hong Kong, Apple Daily boss Jimmy Lai (黎智英) is more of a threat to Taiwan’s governments than they are to him. This man has stared down far more formidable opponents in Beijing and lived to tell. If KMT figureheads wish to risk packaging a political fight with Lai as a morality crusade, they will have to go about their business with a little more intelligence and tact — and without politicizing a law that has not kept up with new technology.
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
Recent media reports have again warned that traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies are disappearing and might vanish altogether within the next 15 years. Yet viewed through the broader lens of social and economic change, the rise and fall — or transformation — of industries is rarely the result of a single factor, nor is it inherently negative. Taiwan itself offers a clear parallel. Once renowned globally for manufacturing, it is now best known for its high-tech industries. Along the way, some businesses successfully transformed, while others disappeared. These shifts, painful as they might be for those directly affected, have not necessarily harmed society
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