Media ignore China investment risks

Yao Yi has a degree in international trade and is a stock analyst. Her family has invested in China since 1995, operating a food, shoe and rice factory.

Chen Pin (陳彬), author of Immigrant to Shanghai and one of Taiwan's most popular writers, argued that most publications are too positive about investing in China.

"Most publications offer superficial information. Taiwanese entrepreneurs investing in China are not as successful as Taiwan publications claim. Those entre-preneurs want to appear successful so as to attract more investment from Taiwan, and these publications just report those pretensions," Chen said.

Wang, however, explained that because discovering or publishing information on failed investments is difficult, there is always a gap between reality and what is published.

"Failures are largely hidden, and only the coverage of successful investments in China are encouraged," Wang said.

Misleading coverage

The Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University, however, criticized the broadcast media's coverage of China as being more biased than print media, saying they had mis-led Taiwan citizens when they compared China's domestic situation to the progress made by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

"Compared with Western media, Taiwan's media ignores issues concerning corruption, unrest and unemployment, which misleads a lot of Taiwanese who are investing in China," said Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), deputy director of the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University.

Yang Chao (楊釗), a cross-strait news journalist with ETTV, admitted that covering sensitive issues can lead to problems with China's government and therefore many reporters try to avoid them.

"There are a lot of limitations when we cover stories in China. In order to avoid making trouble for the company and myself we don't touch sensitive issues.

"On the other hand, I don't think the Western correspondents cover China better than us, and I believe my coverage is balanced," Yang said.

Cheng Hung-Yi criticized media coverage saying: "Since Taiwanese journalists are quite junior and easily misled, there is little in-depth coverage. On the other hand, some media and journalists are just afraid of upsetting China."

"There are a lot of limitations placed on the media by the Chinese government. But how cross-strait issues are covered really depends on whether journalists want to be effective," said Yang Shun-mei (楊順美), a retired journalist, who covered cross-strait issues for about 10 years.