Category: Taiwan

Tabloid Journalism Trumps Politics in Taiwan

After reading the summary of Taiwan’s 2004 media space, make absolutely sure to read this translated article (plus comments) at the blog ESWN.

The most important thing to remember when reading this article, which is not made clear until the very end, is that the Libery Times (as well as its English languge subsidiary the Taipei Times) are ideologically in the pan-green, or pro independence, camp.

A detailed analysis of the Apple Daily-versus-Liberty Times consumer markets showed that the differences occurred in certain age groups and between urban-rural areas. Within the 30 to 34 age group, Apple Daily has 21.8% versus Liberty Times at 18%; within the 40 to 60 age group, Liberty Times is ahead. In the metropolitan areas, Apple Daily leads at 21.2% and Liberty Times only leads in the smaller towns and villages. Overall, the readership of Apple Daily is concentrated in the 12 to 39 age group, and that was the first time that Liberty Times got defeated in this group.

According to industry analysts, the traditional ecology of Taiwan newspapers has been thoroughly disrupted after Apple Daily entered the market two years ago. The two traditional large newspapers — United Daily News and China Times — were completely beaten by Apple Daily and Liberty Times in this survey. The “excellent tradition” of those two newspapers are slowly fading. The measures taken by the two newspapers in terms of editorial improvements have proven to be totally effective, so that the youth advantage of Apple Daily will continue to hold in the future.

Taiwan media primer

The government prepared Taiwan Yearbook 2004 has all sorts of great information about contemporary Taiwan. I particularly liked the media section, which is a great summary particularly for those of us who don’t know enough Chinese to actually read the daily newspapers.

　Newspapers in Taiwan can be divided into two broad categories: general and specialized. General newspapers tend to cover political, economic, social, cultural, sports, international, local, entertainment, leisure, and travel news. The four papers mentioned above belong to this category, as do the Central Daily News 中央日報, China Daily News 中華日報, Taiwan Daily 臺灣日報, Taiwan Times 臺灣時報, and Merit Times 人間福報. Of these, the Central Daily News and China Daily News are operated by the Kuomintang 中國國民黨 and are less competitive as a result of their political subjectivity. Established in 2000, the Merit Times is Taiwan’s first general-interest newspaper founded by a Buddhist group and positions itself as a defender of straight news reporting.

Taiwan protests to UN for `misinforming’ exhibit

From the Taipei Times:

DPA , NEW YORK
Sunday, Aug 14, 2005,Page 3

Taiwan on Friday protested to the UN for naming the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as one of the world body’s founding members in a 60th anniversary exhibit.

Taipei’s representative in New York, Andrew Hsia (夏立言), wrote to Shashi Tharoor, the undersecretary-general for public information, accusing the UN of “blatantly deviating from history and misinforming the world.”

The Republic of China (ROC) — later known as Taiwan — was the government in power in China at the end of World War II and one of five powers that began the process of creating the UN, which was founded in 1945.

Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) communist forces forced the government to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, and communist China was awarded the Chinese seat at the UN in 1971.

Hsia protested because an exhibition at UN headquarters on its 60th anniversary includes a poster with names of the 51 countries that signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945. The People’s Republic of China was named one of them.

“I hope that this mistake has been unintentional and ask for your prompt attention and action to have it corrected,” Hsia said.

The other UN founders were the US, the Soviet Union, France and the UK.

Notice that the article says “The Republic of China (ROC) — later known as Taiwan .” Despite a recent movement to change the name, this country is in fact still officially known as the Republic of China. It is known as Taiwan almost universally in informal circumstances, but the article’s wording implies that an official name change has taken place.

This article is apparently a product of the German wire service, Deutsche Press-Agentur. Unfortunately, unlike similar American services, it is subscriber only, and there is no way for me to check and see if the original article contains this statement or if it is a result of editing by the customer (the Taipei Times).

The Taipei Times, as the English language sister newspaper to the pro-independence Chinese language daily Liberty Times, is itself unabashedly pro-independence. While I generally sympathize with their politics, they do seem to have a history of playing a bit loose with the facts when it serves their political ends-a tendency that leaves me less than 100% trusting of their coverage. Bias may be appropriate in the editorial pages of a newspaper, and even in choice and manner of events covered, but I simply don’t believe that publishing genuinely misleading copy is helpful in the long run.

Does anybody out there have access to the DPA news feed, who could find the original unedited version of this article?

I should of course mention that the factual basis of the article would be pro-Taiwan enough without this manipulative phrase. It is absolutely true that it was the Republic of China, and not the People’s Republic of China, that was a founding member of the UN, and it is irresponsible of the UN to put out such incorrect information.

If you thought politicians in your country were immature

From Penghu links to be `case by case’

Speaking at a separate event, TSU Chairman Shu Chin-chiang (蘇進強), however called the government a “liar” in front of DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) at an activity held by the Hand-in-Hand Taiwan Alliance that both men attended yesterday morning.

Shu’s remarks immediately made the atmosphere awkward.

[…]

Sitting beside Shu, Su looked embarrassed and did not respond to his criticisms.

The two men did not talk to each other and left the news conference separately.

Romanization in Taiwan

I just spotted this article on romanization in Taiwan at a good and brand-new Taipei related blog with the unfortunately bland name of Taipei, Taipei. This article he(she?) links to, as well as the blog post on Taipei2 do a good job of introducing the problem of completely un-standardized, incompetent romanization of place names in Taiwan.

At least the situation seems to be improving in a way. Here in Taipei, all official signs now use standard Hanyu pinyin.

Let’s look at the way 古亭 has been romanized. The MRT stop is labelled “Kuting.” But because the apostrophes are routinely omitted in Taiwan, it is completely impossible — even for the relatively few people who are familiar with Wade-Giles — to know if the name is really Ku-ting (Guding ㄍㄨ ㄉㄧㄥ), K’u-ting (Kuding ㄎㄨ ㄉㄧㄥ), K’u-t’ing (Kuting ㄎㄨ ㄊㄧㄥ), or Ku-t’ing (Guting ㄍㄨ ㄊㄧㄥ). (Note that hanyu pinyin, Guting, has no such ambiguity and works well to show the correct pronunciation.)

That’s four equally likely possibilities — and that’s without considering tones, which are an essential component of Chinese. If tones are included in the computations, there are 64 different possible pronunciations of the two syllable “Kuting” — hardly a useful representation of 古亭.

As it so happens, I live right by 古亭 MRT station, and it’s official romanized name is, of all things, Guting! Exactly what it should be. The Taipei city/county government has, sometime in the past few years, rewritten all of the signs in proper Hanyu pinyin.

Another example that those of us currently living in Taipei luckily do not have to deal with.

But Tamshui is the historical Taiwanese name for the city.

No. Tamsui (no h) is the correct historical spelling, reflecting the Taiwanese name for the city. Tan-shui would be correct Wade-Giles, and Danshui correct hanyu pinyin. Of course, the “Tam-shoo-ee” pronunciation formerly used on the MRT is quite beneath contempt.

Like Guting, 淡水 is now rendered in the correct Hanyu pinyin of ‘Danshui.’ It may not match 17th century Dutch maps, but it sounds closer to the Chinese pronounciation, and it’s consistent with, for a start, the way people write Chinese words in the Roman alphabet in the other 99% of the planet that isn’t Taiwan.

Unfortunately the problem persists in other areas of Taiwan. For example, I have seen the character 中 romanized as, zhong, chong, chung, jhong, and now thanks to Taipeitaipei, the inexplicable ‘jhorg.’

How on Earth is this inconsistency helpful to anyone?

Bears, oh my

As the New York Times reports that my home state of New Jersey is gripped by the furry paw of a bear epidemic…

State biologists estimate that as many as 3,400 bears now roam New Jersey, the nation’s most densely populated state, and say a hunt is the most effective way to control the increasingly troublesome population. Two bears were killed last weekend in Sussex County in northwest New Jersey after one broke into a house and another broke into a shed.

“We are going to have a large population of bears way into the future. It’s a prolific problem,” said Martin J. McHugh, the director of the state’s Division of Fish and Wildlife. “Our aim is to reduce the growth of the population.”

Here in Taiwan we see what happens when bears are allowed to run completely rampant.

A three-year-old boy was critically injured yesterday after a caged circus bear nearly ripped off his arm in southern Taiwan, a hospital official said. Doctors performed emergency surgery to reattach the right arm of the boy, who was found lying in a pool of blood by the bear’s cage on a farm where a circus from Vietnam was performing, an official from Chi Mei Hospital said. Farm staff said the boy, who went to see the bear perform stunts like riding a bicycle, might have provoked the animal by trying to pat it. The incident occurred while his mother was talking to performers. The performance was suspended after the attack. The boy’s parents blamed the farm owners for the attack for failing to put up warning signs in front of the bear’s cage, local newspapers said.

Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

I have here an article from the July 18 Chuunichi Shinbun. For some reason it is no longer avaliable on the website (404 error), but luckily you can still see the original Japanese text in Google cache.

Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

Seoul- Kiyoshi Nakamura.

According to the issue of Korean Magazine ‘Choson Weekly’ which went on sale July 17th, a former representative (72 years old) of North Korea’s People’s Supreme Congress (basically their ‘parliament’) who recently defected to the South said in a statement to South Korea’s National Information Institute that the North “visited Taiwan for the purpose of exporting North Korean made missiles.”

When asked about the nuclear problem he said, “North Korea is manufacturing kiloton capacity nuclear weapons.” On the other hand, “The North has little confidence in their large nuclear weapons, and so are also manufacturing 500 kiloton nukes.”

According to the same publication, this representative was also a researcher at the “Oceanographic Industrial Research Facility”, which is a subsidiary of the Secondary Economic Association that covers the entire munitions industry. They primarily develop such things as missiles, and are responsible for production and external business.

The representative let known his desire to defect in May of this year, in a third country.

He was allowed into Korea by the National Information Institute, and investigations are continuing.

Has anyone seen this story reported anywhere else? I’m particularly asking you Korean-speaking Marmot readers.

Update: Adam, your correction is noted.

Typhoons

I’m sitting here with the rain pouring down outside my window, waiting for typhoon Matsa to come in full swing. I’m not actually praying for a day off tomorrow (like during the last typhoon), although if I seriously thought it would help I’m not completely averse to sacrificing a small animal. Not one of the wild dogs in the empty field next door though-they’re actually quite friendly.

Taiwan’s National Weather Bureau has a really amazing typhoon tracker on their website.

Update: Tv news says 明天不上班不上课

Japan to drop visa requirement for Taiwanese tourists

Today’s Taipei Times reports that advocates for Taiwanese independence are renewing calls for a formal declaration of a Republic of Taiwan and the promulgation of a new constitution. I found this quote particularly interesting.

“The good news that Japan has agreed to waive the visa requirement for Taiwanese tourists shows that Japan recognizes Taiwan as a nation,” Wang said. “It also shows that our promotion of correcting the country’s official name and writing a new constitution has made some preliminary achievements.”

As for the visa waver plan.

The bill was initiated by the head of the lower house’s legal affairs committee and passed with the support of the Liberal Democratic Party and its ruling coalition partner, Komeito, and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

As Japan does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the bill is necessary if Japan wants to offer a permanent visa waiver for Taiwanese citizens. Japan’s existing exit and entry regulations only authorize visa waivers for citizens from countries that maintain diplomatic ties with Japan.

It seems that from the Japanese side this is more about promoting tourism than endorsing Taiwanese independence, but it is true that with relations between Japan and China becoming increasingly tense, Japan has recently become more supportive of Taiwan. The bill passed unanimously, showing that whatever policy differences Japanese politicians may have, this was a completely non controversial decision.

As a side note, due to the English language Taiwanese press’s extremely helpful habit of including Chinese characters for proper nouns, I now know that Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) famous quote that there exists one country on each side of the Strait of Taiwan is written “一邊一國.”