Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

PRC invades Taiwan with 'embedded' ads

Taiwan News Editorial

The quality and sustainability of Taiwan's hard-won democracy is now being increasingly threatened by invasive "embedded advertizing" and "censorship without borders" from the authoritarian People's Republic of China.

Since President Ma Ying-jeou took office on May 20, 2008, Taiwan's ratings for news freedom have deteriorated steady, as shown by the plunge in Taiwan's ranking from 32nd in 2008 to 47th this year in the annual reviews of global news freedom by the New York-based Freedom House.

Selling out to China betrays our democracy

Li Teng-hsin 黎登鑫

When Taiwanese voters elected their president in direct elections for the first time on March 23, 1996, Taiwan in practice became an independent and sovereign democracy. It reinforced the fact that the country is completely different from the one-party state of China.

Regrettably, China maintains that Taiwan belongs to it and constantly threatens the nation. Since coming into power, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has echoed Beijing’s “one China” principle and made every effort to push free and democratic Taiwan toward authoritarian China. If Taiwan one day loses its sovereignty, freedom and democracy, all Taiwanese, regardless of ethnicity or political stripe, will be helpless.

Taipei confirms ‘secret’ channels

Taipei Times

The Presidential Office yesterday confirmed that Taipei and Beijing have been using unofficial communication channels, adding that all matters concerning the exercise of public power must be handled by quasi-official conduits and supervised by the legislature.

Presidential Office Spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said cross-strait exchanges and communications consisted of official and unofficial channels.

Academics warn of danger to democracy

Taipei Times

Academics assessing the nation’s democratic performance during the first half of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) term yesterday urged the public “to provoke disputes” to revive the system of checks and balances that they said has been noticeably weakened under Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) rule.

“The nation’s democracy has been in peril these past two years and I have been wondering on ways to resolve it, and my conclusion is that intellectuals must use [their] knowledge to provoke [public] disputes,” said Liu Chin-hsing (劉進興), professor of chemistry at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.

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