Chinese broadcasters are told to cold-shoulder BBC

THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Friday, Aug 07, 2009, Page 1

“BBC Worldwide has not received any official notification of a such a ban.”— a BBC Worldwide spokesman

The BBC’s ambitions in China, one of the fastest-growing television markets in the world, could be undermined by the Chinese government’s anger over a recent documentary about the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The Chinese authorities are understood to have ordered state-owned broadcasters in the country not to cooperate with BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, after officials were angered by the film, made by the respected reporter Kate Adie to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the pro-democracy protests. It is understood that domestic broadcasters, including China Central Television (CCTV), have been told not to cooperate with BBC Worldwide in buying programs or becoming involved in coproductions. BBC News is believed to be unaffected by the row, however.

BBC Worldwide is expanding aggressively in developing markets, including China, as the corporation seeks to supplement the £3.6 billion (US$6.1 billion) a year it receives from the license fee paid by everyone in the UK who owns a TV set, with commercial income.

Those efforts have become more important since the BBC received a lower than expected license fee settlement from the Labour government in 2007 and in the light of recent promises by the opposition Conservative party to freeze the fee if it comes to power next year.

BBC Worldwide has offices in Hong Kong. Its coproduction with CCTV last year, Wild China, was a huge success.

BBC sources said they had heard that the Chinese authorities had told broadcasters not to cooperate with BBC Worldwide, although a spokesman said nothing had been communicated officially and they were still speaking to clients in the country.

“BBC Worldwide has not received any official notification of a such a ban,” he said.

A press officer at the Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing said he had not heard of any such decision.

Adie managed to secure a tourist visa to enter China, after having previously been refused one, in order to film the documentary Kate Adie Returns to Tiananmen Square, which aired in June. She had reported on the massacre for BBC News in 1989.

Hundreds of demonstrators are thought to have been killed when the army broke up the protests, and thousands more were arrested. The Chinese government refuses to discuss the protests, habitually referring to them as “the June 4 incident.”

The BBC also has ambitions for children’s programming in China that can be easily translated into local languages.

BBC Worldwide also publishes a number of local versions of magazines based on its TV shows, including Top Gear about cars, in the country.

Top Gear is one of several programming strands earmarked for growth by BBC Worldwide executives, along with BBC Earth (the collective brand for all the BBC’s natural history programming), the Doctor Who sci-fi series and Lonely Planet, the print and online tour guide business the corporation controversially acquired two years ago.

Clinton discussed other abductees with North Korea
　

MISSING NEIGHBORS: South Korea and Japan want to know what has happened to some of their citizens who fell into Pyongyang’s hands

AP , SEOUL AND BURBANK, CALIFORNIA
Friday, Aug 07, 2009, Page 1

Former US president Bill Clinton urged North Korea to free detained South Koreans and make progress on the issue of abducted Japanese citizens, South Korean and Japanese officials said yesterday.

Clinton made the requests to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during a rare meeting in Pyongyang on Tuesday that secured the freedom of two US journalists detained for 140 days for allegedly entering the North illegally, the officials said.

North Korea has been holding a South Korean worker at a North-South joint industrial zone since late March for allegedly denouncing its regime. Last week, the North also seized a South Korean fishing boat with four fishermen after it accidentally strayed into northern waters.

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said he understood that Clinton conveyed to Pyongyang that the South Korean worker and fishermen “should be released on humanitarian grounds.”

Moon said South Korea hasn’t heard how the North Koreans reacted.

South Korea said yesterday it had no plan to send a special envoy to the North to try to win their freedom, but it still hopes for their timely release.

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters that “Clinton urged Kim Jong-il to make progress” on the issue of abducted Japanese nationals. He cited an unidentified senior US government official as the source of the information.

In 2002, North Korea admitted to abducting 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s and using them to train spies. North Korea allowed five to return to Japan, saying the other eight had died.

But Tokyo wants a deeper investigation.

Clinton’s trip has rekindled concerns among some in South Korea and Japan that the two countries could be marginalized as Pyongyang favors direct talks with Washington on its nuclear program.

North Korea has quit six-nation disarmament talks and instead recently suggested one-on-one negotiations with Washington to defuse the nuclear tensions.

The US has said it is willing to hold direct talks with Pyongyang — but only on the sidelines of the six-nation nuclear talks consisting of the US, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.

Moon dismissed concerns about being sidelined, noting the US informed the South that Clinton’s private trip was aimed at securing the freedom of the two US journalists.

Kawamura also stressed that according to the senior US official, Clinton did not discuss North Korea’s nuclear issue with Kim.

The chartered plane Clinton took to North Korea was reportedly lent by Hollywood mogul Steve Bing.

Bing, a Clinton friend and the owner of Shangri-La Entertainment, not only lent his Boeing 737 jet for the mission but also footed an estimated US$200,000 in fuel, catering and other costs, ABC News reported.

Would the Control Yuan be missed?

Friday, Aug 07, 2009, Page 8

When the Control Yuan stood idle for just over three years from early 2005 following a pan-blue boycott of former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) list of nominees, commentators regularly expressed concern about the lack of checks and balances in government.

The watchdog body finally got back to work last year following the election victory of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the approval of his nominees by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-dominated legislature.

Since then, however, the body that is supposed to uphold the integrity of government hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory, producing numerous contentious and seemingly pointless verdicts.

On top of the contentious cases was the failure to censure a single law enforcement official over the excessive use of police force during the visit of Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last year and the initial failure last month to impeach former Government Information Office staffer Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) after he admitted penning anti-Taiwan articles during office hours. An embarrassing U-turn on the Kuo case was performed only after a public outcry.

On the pointless side were motions like the one last month that censured the Ministry of National Defense over former army captain Justin Lin’s (林毅夫) defection to China — an incident that occurred more than 30 years ago.

Contrary to Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien’s alleged comments in December that members should ignore unimportant petitions, or “little farts,” to concentrate on “big impeachment cases,” the Control Yuan seems obsessed with tackling inconsequential cases of graft among former government officials — people who, even if impeached, suffer no direct consequences.

While it is true that evidence of corruption often only comes to light after a particular official has left office, there is no point to such investigations if, as in the case of former vice minister of economic affairs (MOEA) Hou Ho-hsiung (侯和雄), no action can be taken.

The phrase “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted” seems to be the most accurate description of the Control Yuan’s current purpose. It would be better advised to pass on any allegations of malfeasance to prosecutors.

To be of any value, the Control Yuan needs to monitor and tackle corruption within the current administration, but the lack of current investigations indicates either that the present government is as clean as Ma promised, or that there is a lack of mettle within the Control Yuan to investigate incumbent officials.

Members of the Control Yuan are supposed to be independent and beyond party control, but as the pan-blue boycott of Chen’s candidates and the legislature’s rejection of nominees deemed sympathetic to the pan-green side showed, the polarized politics in present-day Taiwan means government institutions cannot live up to constitutional standards.

The Control Yuan is responsible for censuring government officials at all levels, monitoring the government’s actions and protecting human rights, but if it is to be anything more than a paper tiger, then it should be truly independent. This is quite clearly not the case.

One solution could be to get rid of the Control Yuan altogether. After all, can anyone honestly say it was missed during its three-year hiatus?

What’s behind Taiwan media bias?
　

By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Friday, Aug 07, 2009, Page 8

Since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May last year, financial analysts have shown an alarming tendency to attribute rises on the Taiwanese stock market to “closer relations with China” or the signing of agreements between Taipei and Beijing, while drops on the local bourse have often been blamed on rallies organized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Those assessments — which are picked up by news wire agencies and newspapers — often ignore macroeconomic variables and regional trends that explain stock fluctuations far better than local political developments.

For example, a modest rise on the Taiwanese stock exchange on July 27 was far more likely to have resulted from global optimism about a financial recovery than the “election” the previous day of Ma as chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). And yet, news agencies — quoting or paraphrasing analysts from global financial institutions, both “local and international,” as a reporter at a major wire agency told me during a telephone interview on July 29 — wrote that the 0.79 percent rise was the result of Ma’s election and a congratulatory missive from Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).

That very same day, every market in Asia was up, not because of developments in Taiwan or even warming ties across the Taiwan Strait, but because investor sentiment was turning optimistic, as a number of wire agencies reported.

This begs the question: Why are financial analysts and news agencies attributing fluctuations in the Taiwanese stock exchange on local-specific events rather than general macroeconomic trends?

Part of the answer lies in the general belief that Ma’s KMT is pro-business, while the DPP is against business (ironically, during his second term, former president Lee Teng-hui [李登輝] of the KMT was far more radical in his opposition to cross-strait economic liberalization than former president Chen Shui-bian [陳水扁] of the DPP was during the first two years of his first term). Still, given the DPP’s pro-independence ideology, the perception that the pan-green camp is not “business friendly” — especially on cross-strait investment and integration — is almost universal, which invites the belief that its actions are aimed at derailing efforts to increase cross-strait financial cooperation launched by the Ma administration.

These perceptions alone, however, do not explain why financial analysts would deliberately attribute stock exchange negatives to the DPP and positives to the KMT. Something else must be at play, such as institutional biases or self-interest.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the nature of Taiwanese investment in China changed dramatically after a revaluation of the New Taiwan dollar severely increased the cost of manufacturing domestically, forcing Taiwanese companies to increase their investments abroad. Cultural and linguistic affinities, along with cheap labor and investment incentives, made China a logical choice. Over the years, the size of the Taiwanese companies investing in China also increased dramatically, as did the nature of the products that were manufactured there. In recent years, powerful companies in the electronics and computer sectors, among others, have established a foothold in China.

At least part of the billions of dollars required by those companies to develop business operations in China likely came in the form of loans by financial institutions and other private investors, who have an interest in seeing those investments prosper. Anything that threatens the return on investment — such as tensions in the Taiwan Strait, the threat of embargoes or war — is therefore unwelcome by banks and investors who have a stake in stability.

Given, as we have seen, the DPP’s pro-independence mandate and Beijing’s claims on Taiwan, the DPP has therefore come to be seen as a “destabilizing” factor, while the KMT, which favors cross-strait economic integration and warmer ties with Beijing, is now perceived as a “stabilizing” force. For Taiwanese companies operating in China (many, though not all, are either pro-KMT or silent about their pan-green political inclination lest they be singled out by Chinese authorities, as has happened in the past) and their financial backers, the KMT is seen as a far safer option when it comes to safeguarding their financial interests.

What this means is that the same financial institutions that lend money to Taiwanese companies operating in China will tend to produce, or develop intimate relations with, analysts who rather than being neutral, will politicize their assessments in a way that reflects the financial priorities of their masters. If this means portraying the KMT as business-friendly, or overemphasizing local developments in a way that favors the KMT as a means to explain fluctuations in the financial market, so be it.

Equally important is the fact that many Taiwanese firms, for reasons ranging from insuring their business interests to raising enough capital, have formed multinational corporations (MNCs) with other countries to operate in China. Usually on a bigger scale, those MNCs require huge amounts of capital that can only be obtained from major financial lenders (according to statistics, 400 of the Fortune 500 multinational companies have made direct investments in more than 2,000 projects in China). Given the stakes, those lenders will also seek to ensure that their investments are shielded from the possibly disruptive consequences of rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

Consequently, MNCs and their international financial backers will tend to disparage the DPP while encouraging the KMT to consolidate stability by accelerating economic integration with China. (This view in part stems from the contentious theory in political science that increased trade between two entities will, over time, reduce the likelihood of conflict or war by raising the cost of conflict.) Maximizing investments and protecting financial interests register far more with those multinationals and financial institutions than the question of Taiwanese sovereignty, which is the raison d’etre of the DPP.

Lastly, we must turn to the convergence of the business sector and the rise of media conglomerates for possible conflicts of interest, which could also account for the bias against the DPP in news reporting. Over the past decade or so, the number of leading companies in the information sector has drastically narrowed.

News organizations like Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones and Bloomberg have branched off into other sectors and bolstered their empires through mergers and acquisitions. Thomson Reuters, for example, which has more than 50,000 employees and operates in 93 countries, now operates in the scientific, tax, accounting, legal and media sectors, with revenues last year totaling US$13.4 billion. Like any other major company, Reuters Thomson has sought to expand in China, hoping to tap into the potential 1.3 billion customers there. One recent example of this is the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters, which in September last year formed a partnership with the Investment Promotion Agency of the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China to create a “World Innovation and Investment Promotion Platform” to boost the soft infrastructure of China’s high-tech zones, Xinhua/PRNewswire reported on Sept. 10.

As Mark Garlinghouse, vice president for Asia Pacific at Thomson Scientific, said: “The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters has long been a recognized information partner of top Chinese universities and government institutes such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s largest government research institute … We also provide patent, scientific and technical information to … well-known Chinese companies.”

This is just one example among many of media companies diversifying their business and entering lucrative marketss with both the private and government sector in China. As incentives increase, and with the promise of lucrative contracts with the cash-heavy Chinese authorities always in the background, it is likely that pressure — subliminal or as the result of direct external persuasion — will eventually build for those companies to “adjust” the information they provide in their news coverage so that it dovetails with their business interests. Time Warner’s ownership of CNN, Disney’s ownership of ABC and General Electric’s ownership of NBC are all examples of conglomerates imposing added business pressures on news organizations.

It is quite possible that portraying the KMT-CCP dyad in a favorable light — at least on the financial front — while painting the DPP in negative terms is the latest iteration of this phenomenon.

As long as big business, MNCs and their financial backers see the DPP as a “destabilizing” threat to Taiwan Strait economic integration, we can expect that the media conglomerates that are increasingly beholden to (if not part of) those giant, multifaceted corporations will continue to disparage the DPP and favor the KMT via stock market analysis.

J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.

China ‘faces reality’ by clarifying bottom line
　

By Emerson Chang 張子揚
Friday, Aug 07, 2009, Page 8

After his “election” as chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said it was his personal goal to create peaceful conditions in the Taiwan Strait. Pro-China media in Hong Kong praised his comments, while Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) sent him a congratulatory telegram in which he encouraged Ma to help foster the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.

In response, Ma asked Hu to “face reality,” thus contradicting past comments about “putting disputes aside” and breathing new life into long-avoided issues such as the existence of the Republic of China (ROC) and the recognition of Taiwan as an equal political entity.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) went to a great deal of trouble in responding to Ma’s challenge. First, CCP war hawk Wang Zaixi (王在希), deputy chairman of China’s semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, rejected Ma’s challenge in a roundabout way to avoid damaging developments in cross-strait relations. He did not reject Ma’s request to “face reality” directly, but did so by expounding on Hu’s concept of building mutual trust. Based on Ma’s goal of peace in the Taiwan Strait, Wang said mutual trust among political leaders was key to long-term cross-strait stability, adding that without mutual trust between politicians, there could be no mutual trust between the two sides’ militaries. Wang said that other problems could then be solved, including a formal end to cross-strait hostilities and the signing of framework agreements aimed at encouraging peaceful development. This was how Wang “faced reality.”

Reflecting on his conclusions after “facing reality,” he then said that Taiwan’s status must be based on the “one China” principle and the “1992 consensus.”

Wang’s comments did not stray from the views espoused in the CCP’s 17th National Congress in 2007. Even recent talk about framework agreements aimed at encouraging peaceful development were based on the political report from the 17th National Congress in which the CCP called for a formal end to hostilities in cross-strait negotiations, peace agreements, a framework for developing cross-strait peace and for creating a new environment for the peaceful development of relations based on the “one China” principle. Wang’s reiteration of these ideas was aimed at reminding Ma that peace must be based on mutual political trust and was in fact a call for Ma to “face reality.”

Wang said that Hu’s idea of establishing mutual trust was crucial to peaceful cross-strait relations and cited the first of Hu’s “new six points,” which state that it is essential to recognize that China and Taiwan both belong to China. Wang said the current lack of mutual trust, including doubts about China among Taiwanese authorities and senior officials, was the reason why Hu has placed the establishment of mutual trust above everything else. Such comments clearly show that the CCP still doubts the intentions and tendencies of the Ma administration.

The CCP has made it clear that the party has a bottom line that it will not ignore in cross-strait peace developments. Under these circumstances, it will be hard for Ma to unilaterally bring decades of peace to the Taiwan Strait, which therefore weakens the necessity of his doubling as party chairman. It could also threaten Ma’s legitimacy as president of the ROC if he were to meet the CCP’s standards for mutual political trust. Therefore, unless the CCP adjusts its stance, Ma will be in a serious dilemma.

Emerson Chang is director of the Department of International Studies at Nan Hua University.