Broadcasting Corp of China president Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) yesterday announced plans to organize training for 1,000 Internet celebrities to counter a similar program launched by China.
China has reportedly launched a program to train 1,000 Taiwanese Internet celebrities to bolster its influence on the nation.
Jaw, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member, said that the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) fears regarding China’s influence via the Internet has been exaggerated, and the DPP has proven itself adept at using the Internet to influence others, citing the “1450” controversy.
The term “1450” — derived from a situation in 2019 in which the Council of Agriculture budgeted NT$14.5 million (US$512,802 at the current exchange rate) to hire four online content curators — has been used to sarcastically describe netizens allegedly paid by the DPP to criticize its opponents online.
Jaw said that 1,000 video streamers, podcasters and content creators on similar platforms would be trained to counter the Chinese project.
Hopefully, their influence would counter China’s efforts, he said.
“This is my first policy to involve young people,” he said.
Expressing lofty ideals and grand schemes to young people achieves nothing, Jaw said, adding: “You need to make them feel like they can contribute to society.”
Hopefully, the government would use his idea, as it has more funds and could work at a greater scale, he said, but added: “That which you will not do, I will.”
If the Chinese have good intentions, then it is an excellent idea, as China has a large market, Jaw said, adding that should the DPP be alarmed by Beijing’s plans, it should do something constructive in response.
Training content creators would provide them with a source of income, although the proposal is not aimed at “1450” influencers, he said.
“That program was an underhanded ploy, while I am proudly proposing a policy that benefits the nation,” Jaw said, adding that the two could not be more different.
Jaw, who last month rejoined the KMT after quitting the party nearly three decades ago, has said he plans to seek its nomination to run in the 2024 presidential election.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS