As a counterattack against Beijing's enactment of the "Anti-Secession" Law targeting Taiwan, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) made a decision on April 10 to temporarily ban China's state-run Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily newspaper from stationing correspondents in Taiwan. Once the decision was announced, it immediately caused polarized reactions in Taiwan's public. But, is it reasonable to cut down cross-strait media exchanges?
Those who support the MAC's decision tend to view this issue from a national security perspective. They believe the two Chinese media outlets have long carried out political propaganda for the Chinese government and have issued misleading reports about Taiwan's affairs.
As a result, rather than allowing the Chinese media to continually besmirch Taiwan, they prefer that the government has taken the initiative to root out these media culprits. They think that only in this way can cross-strait exchanges be carried out on a basis of equality.
Those who oppose the MAC's move tend to view this issue from the perspective of preserving press freedom. They believe that barring Chinese journalists from Taiwan not only damages Taiwan's image of democracy and liberty, it doesn't help to resolve the cross-strait deadlock.
This issue must be looked at in two ways. The first is to ask whether allowing Chinese journalists to be stationed in Taiwan achieves the goal of creating an environment of balanced and diverse cross-strait reporting.
But since these journalists first came to Taiwan, policymakers have known that this was simply a move in the government's cross-strait strategy, and had nothing to do with helping the people of China learn more about Taiwan.
Under China's political system, news agencies are no more than government mouthpieces and their stories must reflect the government's standards and judgement. The decision to allow Chinese media workers into Taiwan was intended as a goodwill gesture for a hoped-for reciprocation in Beijing's Taiwan policy.
It is obvious that Taiwan did not receive the expected response from China; and therefore, the government officials believe that terminating the policy is natural and right.
The second approach is to take an ideological perspective. Since the Democratic Progressive Party came to power in 2000, the guidelines for maintaining diplomatic ties have focused on upholding the nation as an independent political entity.
As a result, the nation's diplomatic and cross-strait policies gradually lost flexibility and pragmatism. Toeing the right political line is what matters now in decision-making.
Although the government's drive to push for localization in Taiwan has proved fruitful, it has brought it back into a state of confrontation with China. President Chen Shui-bian's (
It is hardly surprising that Chen is tightening the policy on cross-strait exchanges to keep the initiative and to emphasize Taiwan's separate existence. While Taiwan makes small sacrifices of its cross-strait bargaining counters as a way of keeping the initiative, it reveals its inability to come up with a new framework to really resolve the cross-strait stalemate.
Taiwan, when jostling for power, actually has many advantages over China. How to make good use of all these resources and turn the tables on China is the most urgent task regarding the formulation of cross-strait policy.
Chen Mu-min is an assistant professor of Political Science at the National Changhua University of Education.
TRANSLATED BY YA-TI LIN AND DANIEL CHENG
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