China policy and security policy expert Bonnie Glaser is accusing a Taiwanese newspaper of deliberately misleading readers to think that she was urging Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to accept the so-called “1992 consensus” and “one China” policy.
In a letter that Glaser released to the Taiwanese press in Washington, she said that a headline in the Chinese-language United Daily News on Thursday inaccurately reported on a remark she made during a panel discussion at a Washington conference on Wednesday sponsored by the Atlantic Council.
“In response to a question about what Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) might say to [US] President [Barack] Obama, I speculated that Xi would encourage the US to play a more proactive role to ensure the preservation of cross-strait stability,” Glaser said in the letter.
She said she told the conference that in order to achieve this, Xi might say: “There must be acceptance by Taiwan’s next president of the 1992 consensus and more importantly, one China.”
Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the paper’s reporter in Washington faithfully reported her words, but the editors in Taipei “deliberately created a headline to mislead readers to think that I personally urged Tsai Ing-wen to accept the 1992 consensus and one China.”
“This is not the first time that some Taiwanese media have distorted my statements to support their political agenda,” Glaser said. “I am an independent American scholar and I do not want to be a pawn in Taiwan’s politics, especially during the election season.”
“I urge the media in Taiwan to respect the integrity and freedom of American scholars to speak out their mind without the fear that their statements will be distorted or they will be quoted out of context,” she said.
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