When hundreds of journalists did come to Taipei - the 679 foreign correspondents who covered the ROC's March 23, 1996, presidential election - most gave high marks to the atmosphere for reporting and for the apparent freedom of Taiwan media, a research survey showed. (1)
Pressures from Beijing on the world's supposedly independent press are the main reason foreign reporters stay away from Taipei unless the first popular election of a head of state in Chinese history is scheduled. Media like The Asian Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, Time and Business Week don't scare easily. They ignore Beijing's edicts and call its bluff. Beijing backs down.
Two can play the game of enticing foreign correspondents.
The Republic of China has a terrific political and business story and it should be told by independent reporters permanently based in Taipei, augmented by visiting correspondents. The government ought to seriously study how to attract foreign news organizations to base operations here, as Reuters has done.
Taipei, in the meantime is preparing itself for an all-out media onslaught from the mainland. The Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department, headed by Ding Guangen, is orchestrating a massive campaign which includes the "spiritual civilization" platform now being implemented on the mainland.
For example, Beijing is sinking US$10 million into a movie, Opium War, now being directed on location near Hangzhou. The plot tells of Britain's promotion of opium addiction in China and of the unequal treaty that turned Hong Kong over to London. The New York Times described the film, released worldwide the same day Hong Kong was handed over to the mainland, as an "unsubtle piece of Chinese propaganda" dedicated, as the shooting script states, "to a great moment in history" - the return of the Emerald City that Hong Kong has become.
The film is in the forefront of the campaign to stoke the flames of nationalism in the service of the Communist Party. Propaganda czar Ding, once paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's bridge partner, has crafted a program designed to imbue Mainland Chinese with nationalism, Confucianism and unrelenting faith in the party. This broad theme will be aimed later at Macao, due to be handed over to the mainland in 1999, and then at Taiwan, which the mainland hopes to absorb sooner or later.
Beijing has found that communism no longer sells among the masses but that nationalism does. The media are a major part of the battlefield in the war for the hearts and minds of Chinese-speaking Asia, and Taiwan needs to mobilize its resources for the fight.
