The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has more than doubled its budget for promoting President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) cross-strait achievements this year, recently announcing NT$5.5 million (US$179,900) in bids for commercials to coincide with the seventh anniversary of Ma’s inauguration.
A council budget plan shows that it intended to escalate publicity campaigns far ahead of Ma’s final year in office, as its communication budget climbed by 153 percent this year to about NT$43 million from last year’s NT$28 million, including nearly NT$28 million for publicizing the government’s China policies — up from about NT$12 million last year.
The council allocated NT$21.8 million for media advertisement this year — more than twice as much as last year’s NT$9.76 million — including NT$10.8 million for television commercials, more than double last year’s NT$5 million, according to the plan.
Print media ad funding nearly doubled to NT$7 million from last year’s NT$3.27 million, while online ad money jumped from NT$1.48 million last year to NT$4 million this year — accounting for the largest expansion in the council’s budget this year, the plan showed.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) questioned the government’s promotional efforts in the final year of Ma’s second-term, saying that the Ma administration spent too much on advertising in a bid to battle public dissatisfaction with the government
The government has been criticized for “under the table” dealings on cross-strait policies, but instead of proposing improvements, it is under the illusion that it could just lavish money on advertising to engage with the public, he said.
The administration is beyond redemption, he added.
Nanhua University communication professor Tsai Hong-pin (蔡鴻濱) said that the government’s poor performance has led to a lack of media coverage of its administrative efforts.
“The government is making a fool of the public by running commercials to praise its own work, which has limited results in boosting [the government’s reputation],” he said.
Government officials paid by taxpayers should have done their jobs properly, but they have not exercised effective administration and have raided public coffers to finance public relations campaigns, which “doubly fleeced” the public, he said.
In response, the council said that it has routinely mapped out annual budgets to improve communication with the public and the bid recently announced had nothing to do with popularizing Ma’s achievements, but was instead a scheduled program to advance the government’s China policies, including institutionalizing a cross-strait negotiating mechanism.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater