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Ensuring a presence for Taiwan in the world

It has been a week since President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his entourage returned home from their 13-day trip to six diplomatic allies in Central America and West Africa. One of the purposes of this trip was to assert our presence as a sovereign state in the international community.

Even though people in Taiwan were fed live pictures of Chen's whirlwind tour through these countries, there was no coverage by major international media such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and so on.

With reports from local English newspapers like the Taipei Times, at least the outside world was able to access coverage of Taiwan's activities on the international stage, especially those involving assistance to developing countries.

Such English language media coverage, however, is not sufficient. We need television programs about Taiwan broadcast in English and reaching greater audiences.

If government officials, especially President Chen and the new ruling elite are serious about Taiwan "standing up and walking into the international community," there should be at the very least a weekly, if not a daily, English language TV program about Taiwan.

Let's just call this program tentatively "This Week in Taipei." It might take the format of ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley" or other US news programs. It might be an English version of TTV's weekly program "I Have Something to Say" (有話要問).

In addition to a host, there could be a panel of reporters or scholars, firing off questions to a government official or legislator. Part of the program could be a roundtable discussion of important events occurring in Taiwan during that week.

Such a program would serve a multitude of purposes, all of which will help Taiwan to gain international exposure.

First, "This Week in Taipei" would provide a forum for government officials to interact with scholars and foreign correspondents serving on the panel.

Our government officials have enough interaction with local reporters, but sometimes lack understanding of what concerns foreign correspondents. Answering questions and elaborating on public policy in such a panel format would be a good start to removing such an

obstacle.

Second, if Taiwan aims at "internationalization" without English language news programs about the country, such as those made by Japan's NHK or China's CCTV, it will be difficult for outsiders to perceive the sincerity of our intentions.

If foreigners in Taiwan are not proficient in Chinese language and watch reports on Taiwan by CCTV, don't we rightly worry that they are getting a distorted view of us? "This Week in Taipei" would at least help to balance such distortions.

Third, CNN occasionally shows a picture of fighting or wrestling in our Legislative Yuan just before it breaks for commercials. Only when we have a presidential election does that network give serious coverage to Taiwan. The reason for this is very simple. It does not have a correspondent stationed here. "This Week in Taipei" could fill the void by providing serious news to this global network.

In sum, there are sufficient numbers of government officials and scholars in Taiwan who are educated abroad and possess an adequate command of the English language to appear on "This Week in Taipei" without the need for translation.

There are also many foreign correspondents who could join the panel to make it a truly international program.

The question to ask, then, is why don't we have such a program yet?

Yen Chen-shen is a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations.
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