The Chinese Communist Party's four means to bribe Taiwan media

Epoch Times
Date: July 28, 2019
By: Epoch Times Staff

Recently, 23 Taiwanese Internet media outlets simultaneously published a critical article of Tsai Ing-wen’s government,. The report originated from the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), arousing public concern regarding the CCP’s infiltration into Taiwanese media.

The Communist Party’s infiltration into Taiwanese media, which is at once both secretive and open, can be broadly divided into four categories. Among them, the most threatening is to construct an information supply chain through PR companies’ united front business for Taiwanese media.

Reporters Without Borders, an international NGO, has released its 2019 ranking of press freedom, ranking Taiwan as having the second best press freedom in Asia only after South Korea. In recent years however, taking advantage of Taiwan’s press freedom, the CCP has influenced the direction of media coverage in Taiwan through various channels, thus affecting the public perception of the CCP regime among Taiwanese residents.

The ways of the CCP’s infiltration can be divided into four categories. In addition to the well-known methods of bribing media with advertisements and inviting journalists to visit China, the CCP has also used PR companies in recent years to comprehensively influence Taiwan media and strengthen the scale of its united front work. It also controlled channels in Taiwan’s public entities through special means to directly influence the people.    [FULL  STORY]

South China Morning Post
Date: 28 Jul, 2019
By: Cary Huang  
 

• Never has the question of whether to align with Washington or Beijing been more important for voters in the island’s presidential race
• The polls are set to become a proxy battleground for the two competing powers as well as a stress test for a delicate triangle of ties

Since their debut in 1996, Taiwan’s presidential elections have been a showdown between the self-

ruled island’s independence-leaning camp and those favouring unification with China

.There will be no exception this time as incumbent president Tsai Ing-wen faces off with Han Kuo-yu, the popular mayor of Kaohsiung, in January 2020, when legislative elections will also take place. The presidential races offer choices that divide the electorate along multiple lines – idealism or reality, confrontation or compromise, politics or economics. They pit mainland migrants against Taiwan natives, the old against the young, among the island’s 23 million people.Unlike in other democracies where local issues largely determine the outcome, Taiwan’s polls are often more about relations with the world’s two major powers – China and the United States – as the island relies on America for its security and on the mainland for business. But this time, the debate carries extra weight because of a series of developments under the presidencies of Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Tsai.

There have long been ups and downs in the triangle of relations between Washington, Beijing and Taipei. Currently US-China ties are at their lowest point since former US president Richard Nixon’s ice-breaking trip to the Middle Kingdom in 1972. Mainland-Taiwan relations are the worst since the two sides began semi-official contact in the mid-1990s. However, the relationship between America and Taiwan is at its strongest since Jimmy Carter ended official US-Taiwan contact in 1979
[FULL  STORY]

Badly burned corpse found near Taiwan's Provincial Highway No. 13 Sunday morning

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/07/28
By: Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The body of a yet-to-be identified woman was discovered near a construction site along Taiwan’s Provincial Highway No. 13 in Miaoli County early Sunday (July 28).

The corpse, which had suffered from severe burns making the person unrecognizable, was discovered Sunday morning around 8:00 a.m. by workers heading to the construction site. Workers immediately called police who rushed to the scene to begin an investigation.

Preliminary findings indicate that the woman likely chose to commit suicide by means of self-immolation. A report from CNA states that an abandoned vehicle and a suspected suicide note were found approximately 100 meters from the body.

However, no documents indicating the woman’s identity were found on the scene nor in the car. Police are attempting to reach out to the public to find the woman’s family and help with identification.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/07/28
By: Stacy Hsu

Taipei, July 28 (CNA) Following the official nomination of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) by the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) to represent the party in the upcoming presidential race, civic groups urged the public Sunday to protect the country from Beijing's "one country, two systems" model by voting against "pro-China" presidential candidates.

Representatives of the groups issued the warning at a press conference at a venue close to Banqiao Stadium in New Taipei City, where the KMT held a national party congress Sunday morning to officially nominate Han as its presidential candidate and deal with other party affairs.

"Both Han and KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) have expressed their intention to sign a cross-strait peace agreement with China, a document that will acknowledge Taiwan as being part of China and reduce its future to a domestic issue of Beijing," said Taiwan Citizen Front Founder Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強).

Lai was referring to remarks made by Han during a joint interview he gave to Taiwan-based foreign correspondents in February, at which the mayor said it is inevitable that Taipei will negotiate a peace agreement with Beijing.    [FULL  STORY]

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH: The Kaohsiung mayor said that he sees next year’s election as a battle between life or death for the ROC and between cross-strait peace or war

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 29, 2019
By: Ann Maxon  /  Staff reporter

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday officially nominated Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓

國瑜) as its candidate for next year’s presidential election.

The nomination was passed at the KMT’s National Congress at the Banciao Stadium in New Taipei City, attended by more than 1,000 delegates.

In his acceptance speech, Han expressed gratitude to the party, supporters and Kaohsiung residents, and to the other primary candidates for showing good sportsmanship.

“People assume I am filled with joy [for the nomination], but in fact the responsibility weighs heavy on my heart,” he said.
[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Economic and Cultural Mission in Ankara dedicates musical event to cause of Hong Kong protestors

Anadolu Agency
Date: 27.07.2019
By: Riyaz ul Khaliq

Protesters in Hong Kong who are resisting the government’s move to legalize extradition to mainland China received solidarity and support Friday at a musical evening in Turkey.

The Taiwanese mission in Ankara hosted “Taiwan Night — Melody for Freedom”, which was dedicated to the people of Hong Kong and “East Turkistan”.

Popular pianist Kai-yin Huang performed classical and modern music along with Turkish singer Mert Ozdemir.

“Taiwan Night is dedicated to people of our neighbor Hong Kong. We admire their effort to protect their own basic human rights, freedom and democracy,” said Yaser Tai-hsiang Cheng, head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Mission in Ankara.    [FULL  STORY]

Han Kuo-yu pulled a surprise in Kaohsiung in November, but presidential race may be more of a challenge.Al Jazeera
Date: Jul 27, 2019
By: Randy Mulyanto

Taipei, Taiwan – Han Kuo-yu was largely unknown until becoming the mayor of Taiwan's southern city of Kaohsiung in November last year. But now, he is hoping his "outsider" status within an establishment party can help him become Taiwan's next president – even as China ratchets up its rhetoric on the island it views as its own. 

Han, who is due to make his first policy speech on Sunday, was chosen earlier this month as the candidate of the opposition and pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) to take on President Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in January's election.

The 62-year-old, who is seen as representing neither the mainstream KMT nor Taiwan's political establishment, on July 15 beat four rivals to the nomination including Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of tech equipment maker Foxconn.

At a rally in the capital, Taipei, on June 1, Han had told a crowd of at least tens of thousands of supporters that he would be a "president for the common people".
[FULL  STORY]

Student wrongly identified politician in photo as smuggling suspect

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/07/27
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Presidential Secretary General Chen Chu (left) with President Tsai Ing-wen in an archive photo. (By Associated Press)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Police are investigating a student for making false allegations about a link between the top suspect in the recent cigarette smuggling scandal and Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊), reports said Saturday (July 27).

Two agents of the National Security Bureau (NSB) have been detained for using presidential overseas trips as a cover to smuggle thousands of cartons of cigarettes into the country. After allegations surfaced online describing one of the two agents as a confidant of Chen, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) launched an investigation and found they had originated with a student at a university in Chiayi County, the Central News Agency reported.

On Friday (July 26), the CIB questioned the student, who explained that during a journey home to Hualien, he had discovered a picture online which apparently showed Chen with the smuggling suspect. He had then posted it online with a comment alleging the link between the two.

However, the man in the picture turned out to be a local politician in Kaohsiung, where Chen was serving as mayor in 2010 when the photo was taken, CNA reported. The student had never made an effort to check the identity of the man in the picture and had just assumed he was the NSB agent, immediately posting it online with the erroneous comment, the CIB said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/07/27
By: Chang Ming-hsuan and Chung Yu-chen

Taipei, July 27 (CNA) Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Saturday ordered two types of cosmetic products manufactured by Tainan-based TJ Group removed from shelves nationwide after tests found them to contain asbestos.

The move came after the FDA was informed by its U.S. counterpart and Health Canada on July 3 that five foreign-branded beauty products being sold in those countries and found to contain cancer-causing asbestos were made by a contract manufacturer in Taiwan.

However, according to a preliminary investigation by the FDA, only four of the products were made in Taiwan, by TJ Group, which was ordered to immediately remove them from sales outlets across the country as a precautionary measure July 9.

As a follow up measure, the FDA then inspected TJ Group's factory in Tainan and released the results of tests it conducted on nine out of 12 samples from the plant Saturday.
[FULL  STORY]

FULL RESPONSIBILITY: Demerits were given to security officers found to have been complicit or negligent, with further action to come pending investigation results

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 28, 2019
By: Staff writer, with CNA

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday apologized over a duty-free cigarette smuggling

scandal that reportedly involved several agencies, and ordered that they fully cooperate with investigations.

Tsai made the remarks at the Presidential Office Building in Taipei after presenting awards to Presidential Hackathon winners.

She also apologized to the foreign affairs officials who prepared and accompanied her on a visit this month to the nation’s Caribbean allies, as the affair has overshadowed the significance of her trip.

In her capacity as president, Tsai apologized that her administration had not detected the longstanding malpractice earlier.    [FULL  STORY]