How quickly the proverbial frog is being cooked. Less than three months ago, thousands of young Taiwanese and representatives of media organizations gathered to protest against the acquisition by Want Want China Times Group of cable TV services run by China Network Systems, fearing that such a purchase — since then conditionally approved — would create a “media monster.”
This week, Want Want Group is not only appealing the conditions set by the government, but is on the brink, along with two other corporate giants, of acquiring Next Media Group’s outlets in Taiwan, including the staunchly independent Apple Daily and Next Magazine, sparking a new round of protests over the past two days.
With a decision expected later this week, one of the few remaining neutral media organizations in Taiwan could be swallowed up by a triumvirate composed of the China-friendly Want Want China Times Group, Formosa Plastics Group and the Chinatrust Charity Foundation. All three have important business operations in authoritarian China.
The main danger of media monopolization is not that Taiwanese will be “brainwashed,” but that journalists and editorialists will feel compelled to avoid certain controversial subjects for the financial benefit of their employers.
The argument has been made that in the electronic age, traditional media have lost some of their prestige as a “fourth estate” scrutinizing people in positions of authority. As the recent revolutions in northern Africa have shown, blogs, instant messaging and other online media now play a crucial role in mobilizing the masses. However, the fact remains that the masses still do not get the press passes needed to attend important events — journalists do, and it will be a while yet before bloggers, no matter how good they are, acquire the legitimacy and access that come with working for recognized media organizations.
As a wealthy few take control of the local media, and as their reliance on China continues to grow, Taiwan could someday find itself in a situation where most journalists covering important events — say, negotiations on future cross-strait agreements — come from those few media organizations whose owners have a stake in not alienating Beijing or the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Reporters who do not self-censor, or who take an undue interest in politics, would risk their careers. As a result, the population would be denied information that would now be the privilege of an elite few, whose interests may not necessarily coincide with those of the majority.
In the years leading up to Japan’s decision to ally with Nazi Germany in World War II, the Japanese never fully understood the extent of Adolf Hitler’s apocalyptic vision. Perhaps, had the Japanese translator of Mein Kampf not edited out Hitler’s references to Japanese as part of the Untermenschen, or “subhumans,” they might have made a different choice.
The current situation places greater responsibility on the few remaining media that can lay claim to independence, as well as the foreign news outlets that continue to operate in Taiwan. Worryingly, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has at times been inimical to foreign reporters, either accusing them of not fully understanding the situation because they are foreigners, or in more extreme instances, threatening them with expulsion for exposing damaging information.
With domestic media forced into submission by powerful commercial interests and a foreign press that is constantly excluded, one wonders who is left to ensure Taiwan’s story continues to be told fully and with honesty.
The students and their supporters who braved the scorching heat of September and the damp coldness of November for the sake of a free media environment have already said they will not give up and intend to resume their protest tomorrow to ask that government agencies in charge of monitoring the media do the right thing. Many of them are too young to know what it is like to live in an unfree media environment, but have enough imagination to know they don’t want that for their future.
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,
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