Taiwanese movie and television personalities have lost their competitiveness in China due to restrictions on creative expression there, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council said.
The council on Wednesday last week released the findings of the report, which examined the experiences of Taiwanese working in the movie and film industry who signed contracts in China in the past few years, following Beijing’s incentives to attract Taiwanese talent.
They were required to practice self-censorship and generally encountered difficulties in producing creative content in the face of restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, the report said.
In 2018, Beijing removed limits on the number of Taiwanese who could star in, or be involved in the production of, movies and TV series produced in China, as well as the limits on what percentage of the investment in such productions could come from Taiwanese investors.
China also introduced favorable employment terms for Taiwanese who traveled to China to work on such productions, the council said.
However, at the same time, China introduced restrictions that prohibited movies and TV shows from displaying certain things, such as “bizarre” crimes, “abnormal” sexual behavior, cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, brawling and materialistic behavior, among other types of content, it said.
China also claimed to have eased the restrictions on the importation of Taiwanese movie and TV content, but in practice it allowed very few films and programs to be imported, it said.
Beijing also restricted the percentage of TV content produced outside of China that could be streamed online there to 30 percent.
Taiwanese traveling to China for work should be aware of the risks posed by China’s tightening of restrictions on expression, it said, citing singers A-mei (阿妹), Deserts Chang (張懸) and Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜) as examples of Taiwanese artists who have been blacklisted in China over their statements.
The report suggested better cooperation between the government, academia and those in the TV and film industry, as well as the establishment of a platform to help producers with the distribution and marketing of their productions.
“What is needed is a cross-media platform that can expand the scope of Taiwanese TV and film, and can aid in bringing that content to viewers, free of any restraints imposed by foreign governments,” the council quoted the report as saying.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods