The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday said that 23 entertainers have been warned about actions deemed by the government to constitute “cooperation” with the Chinese authorities, in the first investigation of its kind.
“What we are investigating is not the content of the posts themselves, but your acts of cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] and its government and military,” Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said.
The posts Liang referred to were those shared on March 7 and 8, when some entertainers reposted an image-and-text post from China Central Television (CCTV) — a Chinese state-run broadcaster — that read: “Let’s repost this together! This is the only designation for Taiwan! #ChinaTaiwanProvince#”
Photo: AP
“There is no doubt that CCTV is a party-run media outlet — it is part of the CCP, and its government and military,” Liang said.
Some of the entertainers who echoed Beijing’s narrative of Taiwan belonging to China also made similar posts during its two “Joint Sword” military exercises around Taiwan last year, Liang said.
As for the entertainers’ responses, he said many claimed their posts were handled by management companies, while others said they were unaware such actions contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
“Some also said that after this investigation, they would not do the same thing again,” he said.
Paragraph 1, Article 33-1 of the act stipulates that people are prohibited from engaging in “any form of cooperative activity” with agencies in China that are “political parties, the military, the administration or of any political nature, or which are involved in any political work against Taiwan or affect national security or interests.”
Asked what made the actions “cooperative activity,” Liang said: “This matter [referring to those reposts] is, objectively speaking, an act of cooperation.”
“Unless you can prove that you strongly disagreed with your company’s actions and voiced opposition ... such conduct will still be deemed an act of cooperation from an objective standpoint,” he said.
Shifting responsibility to managers was “hardly justifiable,” Liang said, adding that under the Civil Code, managers act as agents on behalf of entertainers, and therefore the entertainers themselves must bear responsibility for actions taken in their name.
“In this investigation, we believe the process has been completed with the notification and verbal warnings issued to the entertainers involved,” he said. “However, if similar incidents occur in the future, regulations would certainly be applied.”
People who contravene the act can be fined NT$100,000 to NT$500,000 (US$3,267 to US$16,337), with repeat penalties possible.
However, National Chengchi University College of Law associate professor Bruce Liao (廖元豪) in May last year said that applying Article 33-1 to entertainers could create freedom of speech-related concerns.
“To put it more bluntly, even if someone said they wanted to cooperate by promoting pro-China or pro-unification views ... such speech is still 100 percent protected under our Constitution and laws,” he said.
The acts of cooperation targeted by the government should only be those involving contraventions such as leaking state secrets, which are the kinds of offenses that can legitimately be punished, he said.
“If you say that anyone cooperating with China would harm national interests, to be honest, only people with significant power could actually do that — ordinary people simply could not,” he said.
“Freedom of speech protects the right to say things that might sound unpleasant or uncomfortable,” he said. “Offensiveness has never been a legitimate reason for the law to punish speech.”
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