More than 60 academics and members of civic groups launched a petition yesterday to boycott the Chinese-language China Times newspaper over recent controversial remarks by its owner, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), concerning the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Tsai, chairman and chief executive of the Want Want Group (旺旺集團) and owner of multiple media outlets including the China Times, said in an interview last month with the Washington Post that the 1989 crackdown on June 4 in Beijing did not constitute a massacre.
A joint petition drafted by academics and civic groups, including the Taipei Society and pro-democracy advocates, yesterday called for a “boycott of the crooked China Times.”
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Petitioners called on the public to reject such an “unfaithful medium,” accusing the China Times of abandoning its responsibilities as a media outlet and allowing itself to become a tool for Tsai to ingratiate himself with a totalitarian regime.
Taipei Society director Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appealed for more academics to join their efforts to blacklist the China Times, adding that they might petition government agencies in the near future.
National Chengchi University’s Department of Radio and Television associate professor Kuo Li-shin (郭力昕) said Tsai’s remarks had damaged the professionalism, autonomy and freedom of journalism.
Kuo also called on columnists perceived as pan-blue to back the boycott by “not writing or publishing” in the China Times in a bid to heal a split within society that divides people into either pan-blue or pan-green camps.
“This is just the first step,” Kuo said, adding that Tsai’s constant attempts to acquire and merge different media outlets have monopolized the supposedly diversified public voices of Taiwanese society.
Chiou Wen-tsong (邱文聰), an assistant researcher at Academia Sinica, expressed concern over how little attention the media have paid to Tsai’s remarks, describing the phenomenon as “the gradual collapse of Taiwan’s defense mechanism for its democracy.”
With the owner of a media outlet being in total control of its editorial line and monitoring what its reporters can put in their -articles, it appears as if Taiwanese are under the control of a totalitarian regime again, National Chengchi University professor Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) said.
Wang Dan (王丹), a student leader in Tiananmen Square in 1989 who initiated the boycott against the China Times last month via a post on his Facebook page, yesterday wrote on his Facebook page: “In my opinion, people are entitled to express their stance on historic incidents and to defend their freedom of speech in their own manner. It’s not necessary to force columnists currently working at the China Times to quit writing because of public pressure. So long as they can ensure that their articles are not altered or removed, we should respect their choices.”
Meanwhile, according to a reporter working at the China Times, employees scarcely talked about the controversy triggered by Tsai, adding that Tsai’s remarks and the China Times’ pro-China stance had caused jeering among his co-workers.
“We are only trying to make a living,” the anonymous reporter said, adding that Tsai, who last week said his remarks had been distorted and taken out of -context by the Washington Post and that he would communicate with people who misunderstood him, should keep his word and clearly explain his remarks.
Translated by Stacy Hsu, Staff Writer
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
RSS