Chinese reporters are agents of the Chinese Communist Party, and the government should institute stricter regulations covering those posted to Taiwan, a Taiwan Thinktank consultant said on Saturday.
Chinese President Xi Jingping (習近平) on Feb. 19, 2016, said that reporters’ work must uphold the spirit of the party, which means that Chinese reporters are agents of the Chinese government, Taiwan Thinktank consultant Tung Li-wen (董立文) said on Saturday, one day after two reporters from China’s Fujian Province-based Southeast Television had their accreditation revoked and were expelled.
Ai Kezhu (艾珂竹) and Lu Qiang (盧薔) had allegedly produced a talk show in Taiwan, which contravened the regulations governing their work here.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The pair protested the decision to expel them, saying that Southeast Television has been operating in Taiwan for 12 years, and all of its staffers in Taiwan had complied with Taiwanese laws.
China and Taiwan have different understandings about the functions of the media, and the government must clearly delineate those functions through strict regulations for Chinese reporters, Tung said.
The expelled reporters had understood Taiwanese laws when they contravened the conditions of permits to report from Taiwan, he said.
The Taiwan Thinktank was founded by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in December 2001.
“The media enjoy freedom of
the press in Taiwan, but the government does not allow news agencies to broadcast fake news,” said Chen Ming-chi (陳明祺), who served as deputy minister of the Mainland Affairs Council from July 2, 2018, until May this year, before returning to his former post as a National Tsing Hua University assistant professor of sociology.
Since the greatest threat to Taiwan’s democracy today is from China, it is no longer possible to protect the nation’s democracy by merely preventing abuses of power, Chen said.
The council’s decision to call for the two reporters to be expelled was the right move, as it demonstrated the nation’s resolve to protect its democracy, Chen said.
Cross-Strait Policy Association deputy secretary Chang Yu-shao (張宇韶) said that he had appeared on a Southeast Television program, but much of what he had said had been edited out before the program was broadcast.
No academics whose stance on cross-strait policies was in line with that of the DPP had ever been invited to the talk show program, he said.
“It was just one-sided attacks on the DPP,” he said.
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