Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Although widely seen as leaning strongly toward President Ma Ying-jeou's rightist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government, the vernacular "China Times" tossed a spanner into Ma's push to secure rapid signing of a bitterly controversial "Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China.

An opinion poll of 802 persons on March 22 published in the China Times Tuesday showed that while nearly 74 percent of those polled knew about the ECFA talks, nearly 70 percent still said they do not feel familiar with its contents after nearly two years of high-profile government propaganda and social debate and a similar poll of 1,105 Taiwan citiznes surveyed by the DPP's Public Survey Center showed that 78 percent said the KMT government has not clearly explained the content and influence of the proposed ECFA.

Taiwan and China are two countries separated by some 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait; they are close but so far apart in so many ways. Take today for example, it is ironic that as Google is leaving China because it no longer wishes to be part of its censorship of news and information, in Taiwan, Portico Media is launching WOW (Watch our World) tv. With WOW tv, Portico presents what it terms a "bouquet" of channels for Taiwan on Chunghwa Telecom's IPTV (Internet Protocol television) MOD (Multimedia on Demand).