Stating that many foreign media reports had incorrectly interpreted Saturday's election as a referendum on independence, US academics yesterday said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government must fight the foreign media's spin on events.
The US scholars made the remark yesterday while visiting with Wu A-ming (
"One thing which I found the western media got wrong, particularly CNN, was that they viewed this election as referendum on independence," said June Dreyer, chair of the Department of Political Science of the University of Miami. "But to us, it does not seem that way."
The pan-blue camp, consisting of the pro-unification Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP), retained its legislative majority in Saturday's election, winning a total of 114 seats. The DPP and its small political ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), fell short of their goal to gain a majority in the new legislature.
Several foreign media outlets, such as CNN, reported Saturday's electoral result as the people of Taiwan saying no to a new mandate to accelerate President Chen Shui-bian's (
"It is very much not in Taiwan's interest to allow the foreign spin to prevail. And the foreign spin is -- Chen loses, China won," said Edward Friedman, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin.
Battling `spin'
"I think the most important thing, in terms of Taiwan's standing in the world and its relationship to the world, is to fight this battle of `spin.'"
Friedman said the most frightening thing he found about this the international media's spin on the events was that "it is not just CNN, the Asian Wall Street Journal but everyone."
"Even an Arab newspaper wrote it the same way," Friedman said, adding that although many foreign press outlets had sent reporters to Taiwan to cover the weekend's election, "their heads never, somehow, get involved with Taiwan's reality."
Friedman attributed it to "China's power and China's ability to define reality."
Another observation the US scholars noted was incorrectly reported in the foreign media's coverage of the election was the mood of the population in the lead-up to the election.
"I listen to CNN and I read the western newspapers and I was amazed at how wrong they were, because they were saying in the days before the election, Taiwan was very tense. And we didn't find it tense at all," she said.
Commenting on the electoral result, Dreyer noted some positive elements of the result.
"If [US President] George Bush and the American State Department think this is a referendum on independence and it failed ... they will be less nervous and they will not give warnings to Taiwan, will not have [Secretary of State] Colin Powell saying that we are for unification and things like that," Dreyer said.
Breathing space
"So this will give Taiwan some breathing space and meanwhile, of course, we all understand that pro-localization continues to take place and the longer it can take place without George Bush or the State Department noticing, the better," she said.
Regarding to issues Chen promoted during the campaign such as rectifying the names of government agencies and state-own enterprises to "Taiwan," Dreyer said the administration should "do it and do it slowly." "It would probably be less upsetting to the American government," she said.
Friedman said the name-change issue was not a new issue.
When Chiang Kai-shek's (
"So, in terms of the use of the word Taiwan to establish sovereignty, the truth is it goes back to Chiang Kai-shek."
The process of Taiwanization had been expanding in the 1970s under Chiang, when he allowed more seats for Taiwan in the legislature, and in the 1980s under his son, Chiang Ching-kuo (
Conspiracy
"It was an ordinary piece of KMT politics of being on Taiwan, and the name change issue is not a recent conspiracy, it is a piece of the reality of being on Taiwan," he said.
"After all, the American office here is the American Institution in Taiwan and the American act is called the Taiwan Relations Act," he said.
Questioned on the US' sensitivity over the name-change issue, Friedman attributed it to "the rise of Chinese power."
"China not wanting to see it happen, and China worrying about Taiwan identification (
Friedman thinks the reason the US does this for China relates to the international situation following 911 and the Iraq invasion.
Proliferation
"With China's rise as an economic power and the feeling that you need China for many many things, not just North Korea, proliferation, and Pakistan, but lots of things, China each time would say to the US `but this costs us [domestically] to do this, and what are you going to do for us?" he said.
"So when I go back home I'll say to my people that we gained something too, and the US has been accepting that line and acting for Beijing in terms of its feeling of its general international situation," Friedman said.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS