The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Tuesday condemned Beijing for urging local media firms to “expose” Taiwan independence activities, saying that local media representatives could face prosecution if they help China target Taiwanese.
Chinese authorities have “summoned certain Taiwanese media outlets to Beijing for instructions and urged them to ‘jointly expose Taiwan independence separatist activities,’” it said in a statement.
The move “essentially amounts to asking Taiwanese media to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party’s [CCP] transnational repression against Taiwan and restrict the freedoms of the Taiwanese people through intimidation,” the MAC said.
Photo: Taipei Times
In Taiwan, peaceful advocacy of independence is protected as free speech and is not illegal, it said.
The council described Beijing’s tactics as “using Taiwan to control Taiwan.”
The statement came after Wu Xi (吳璽), deputy head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, made remarks on the role of cross-strait media at the seventh edition of the cross-strait media summit in Beijing earlier on Tuesday.
“Taiwan independence separatist forces” have been spreading false information and malicious remarks to incite anti-China sentiment, and create cross-strait confrontation, seriously undermining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Wu said.
Media professionals from both sides ahould “use truthful reporting and rational commentary to expose the harmfulness and danger of Taiwan independence activities and external interference,” he said.
The MAC said Taiwanese media firms that sent representatives to the event might contravene laws such as the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) and the National Security Act (國家安全法) if they cooperate with Beijing as “local collaborators” in its campaign to “punish Taiwan independence.”
Examples of such conduct include following Beijing’s instructions to “exploit press freedom” by accusing specific people of being independence advocates, providing the personal information of Taiwanese or disseminating bounty notices, it said.
The laws carry a maximum prison sentence of more than seven years, it added.
Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) warned the public to be wary of China’s growing “united front” infiltration, saying that anyone caught aiding Beijing’s efforts would face strict prosecution under the law.
While the government has consistently supported healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, it firmly opposes any “united front” actions aimed at interfering with Taiwan’s internal affairs and democratic operations, Lee said.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported that more than 100 media executives and journalists attended the summit, including Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), vice chairman of the Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團), which owns media firms such as CTi Television Inc (中天電視) and the China Times.
An exclusive report by the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Tuesday cited national security sources as saying that other Taiwanese attendees included representatives from the United Daily News, TVBS News and the Observer magazine.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS