On the same day that Kevin Lau (劉進圖), former editor of the Ming Pao, was slashed six times in a vicious attack on the streets of Hong Kong, protesters gathered outside the Taipei branch of China Construction Bank (CCB) over worries that the bank could influence freedom of the press in Taiwan by removing its advertisements from local papers, as it has done in Hong Kong when media outlets there write unfavorable things about China.
The two incidents have attracted a lot of attention from local media. However, it is more important to focus on the cross-strait service trade agreement that the legislature is reviewing to ensure that it does not jeopardize freedom of information in the nation.
Advertisements are a major source of income for media outlets and Internet content providers. The service trade agreement entails opening up almost every type of business involved in production and sales operations in the advertising industry, with the exclusion of television and radio advertising. The reason for doing this could very well be that the government wants to create an illusion that the opening will not be very far-reaching. Opening up to advertising agencies means that China will be able to control who gets to run advertisements in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.
How information provided by Internet platforms and the content and direction of journalism will be affected when advertising agencies control the sourcing of advertising must be discussed.
Other issues that need to be analyzed include the direction the advertising industry is headed and what pressures toward self-censorship will be placed on media outlets and other information providers.
A look at the local advertising market shows that the budget strategies of major international advertisers are controlled from their primary Asian operations centers, which more often than not are in China. So it is inevitable that the these firm’s advertising strategies will be influenced by Beijing to some degree.
When it comes to the budgets for advertisements placed by the Chinese government to meet its propaganda purposes, such as ads for travel and real estate in China, as well as the Chinese government’s use of embedded marketing in the media for a variety of things, specific media outlets are preferred by the Chinese government over others for ideological reasons.
It is not hard to imagine that the current situation — in which the placement of advertisements is a result of manipulation by vested interests instead of market competition — would become worse if the service trade agreement were passed and that the advertising market as a whole would suffer further distortion. Apart from influencing the source of income for media outlets and Internet content providers alongside compromising their professional autonomy, this will also severely damage the public’s right to information.
The government is blind to the fact that in a democratic society, commercial advertising can have indirect yet strong influence on press freedom and freedom of information and it insists that any advertisements aimed at meeting the political goals of the Chinese Communist Party will be prohibited in Taiwan.
The government also chooses to deliberately overlook the ability of large advertising agencies to control things here and in China and the power they have in negotiating advertising prices. As such, those who know how the media operates can easily see that this is an extremely stupid method of political propaganda that treats freedom of information as if it were nothing.
Regardless of whether it is media outlets, Internet content providers or the public that will be affected by the service trade agreement, people need to oppose the opening up of the advertising industry to China through the accord because this is definitely not just any old issue that can be ignored.
Liu Ching-yi is a professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Drew Cameron
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers