WaPo has an article on the recent offer by China to negotiate with Tibet, and the usual noises of criticism by China's colonial officialdom of the Dalai Lama.....look at the opening paragraphs:Less than 24 hours after China offered to meet with an envoy of the Dalai Lama, state-controlled news media on Saturday kept up their campaign of denunciations of the Tibetan spiritual leader."The behavior of the Dalai clique has seriously violated fundamental teaching and commandments of Buddhism, undermined the normal order of Tibetan Buddhism and ruined its reputation," the Communist Party's People's Daily newspaper reported.
China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, published an interview with Lahlu Tsewang Dorje, a Tibetan who fought on the Dalai Lama's side in a failed 1959 uprising, according to the paper, and later became a top political adviser to the Chinese Tibetan authorities. "I think the Dalai clique is our enemy and we should fight until the end," he was quoted as saying.
The tone of the articles raised questions about China's seriousness in preparing for negotiations with the Dalai Lama over restoring stability to Tibet, which has essentially been under government lockdown since deadly rioting in Lhasa, its capital, on March 14.
Rather than stepping back from its hammering of the "Dalai clique" for instigating the violence in an attempt to split the country and sabotage this summer's Olympic Games, China continued to hit hard. "The Lhasa March 14 incident is another ugly performance meticulously plotted by the Dalai clique to seek Tibet independence," said the Tibet Daily, another Communist Party newspaper.
And of course, the reporting on other nations' reactions and on the "analysis" offered by WaPo:
The official New China News Agency reported Saturday that the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the head of the European Commission had all praised China's offer to meet.
"It's too early to tell if the meeting will produce results or is just for PR purposes in advance of the Olympics," said Mary Beth Markey of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet.
Note the sympatico tone towards Tibet, the detailed citing of officialdom's position on the Dalai Lama, in which every bombastic word is captured, followed by the analyst who implicitly argues that the whole 'talks offer' is just pro forma nonsense for public consumption ahead of the Olympics.
Contrast that with the media presentations on Hu Jintao's "peace offer" to Taiwan last year (my post on some). Large numbers of newspapers used positive terms -- "peace offer", "olive branch"......Hu "reached out to" Taiwan's people. Consider the NYTimes presentation on the "peace offer" of a few days later, after it was rejected by Taiwan....
Instead of positives about the Dalai Lama, we get negatives about Chen Shui-bian, including a needless quote from a Chinese diplomat. There is no suggestion in any of the media presentations on this issue that Hu's offer might be pro forma. At most, they observe the precondition which Taiwan will not accept: that Taiwan is part of China. That such a precondition might be made in an insincere way is a question never raised by any of the media pieces, though bloggers all over the world were able to see it clearly. This is totally unlike the Tibet article, where insincerity on China's part is practically assumed -- indeed, in the NYTimes article about Hu's "peace offer" the only suggestion of insincerity is about the DPP:Mr. Hu's remarks were the latest sign of a more sophisticated Chinese policy of trying to reach past Mr. Chen's hostility to appear nonthreatening to Taiwan's voters. But Chinese officials remain vitriolic about Mr. Chen himself, irritated by his persistent advocacy of greater independence for Taiwan.
Through more than seven years in office Mr. Chen has inched closer and closer to a formal declaration of independence without actually changing the island's Constitution, flag or legal name, the Republic of China.
''Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country; Taiwan is not part of China, nor is Taiwan a local government of the People's Republic of China,'' Mr. Chen said during the interview, reiterating a formulation that he has been using lately to the irritation of Beijing officials.
In an interview last month, Wu Jianmin, a top Chinese diplomat for two decades and the president of the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry, said of Mr. Chen, ''His problem is he loves to make trouble.'' He added, ''People don't like tension, and he likes tension, and whenever he can he does what he can to increase tensions.''
Mr. Chen's continuing criticisms of Beijing have made Mr. Hsieh appear more moderate. That has prompted questions here of whether Mr. Chen and Mr. Hsieh, who have worked together for two decades, are secretly coordinating a policy of seeming to take divergent policies toward the mainland to ensure Mr. Hsieh's election.
Clearly the independence side in Taiwan's politics has a serious problem with its international image.
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Clearly the independence side in Taiwan's politics has a serious problem with its international image.
You know, I would agree that the "image" factor is the primary problem here if the corporate media were 'fair and balanced' -- but they are not. The last 8 years especially (in the U.S.) is testimony to that. Now, whether they are astonishingly lazy or they have an agenda to push, that is a separate question altogether in Taiwan's situation. But with the success of the KMT propaganda campaign in 2008 resulting in one-party rule, it is hard to see this distorted image in the foreign press changing anytime soon.
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Well, what is distorted and what not is a question of perspective and it's part of basic democratic behavior to respect the perspective of the other side, which implies that one should refrain from polemical words such as "propaganda" and not cover up one's defeat with the standard explanation we hear so often from many politicians, i.e "I am right, I just didn't get my message across." Maybe something was really wrong with DPP policy in the past 8 years.
ReplyDeleteBut my real issue is this "one party rule" ghost that is in the media. The implication always is that now we're back to dictatorship. Well, if one-party rule is bad, maybe even is a form of dictatorship, than the UK, the mother country of democracy hasn't been democratic very often in its several hundreds years of democracy, right?
Btw: I am convinced the KMT is, given its rampant factionalism, its best opposition party. Having the KMT in power is not having one-party rule, not under the conditions of Taiwan's current political system.
Maybe something was really wrong with DPP policy in the past 8 years.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt. Though I've noticed that people who say that never point out that the KMT's record over the last eight years is far worse. But that was not the thrust of STOP_MA's comments. Even more was wrong with KMT policy the last eight years, and there is no objective standard -- integrity, intelligence, experience, ability to get things done, proven success, pro-democracy attitude, etc -- by which Hsieh was not the better candidate. Yet Ma got elected. There is no way to explain that without the propaganda campaign actually conducted by the KMT and its media organs. Or do you think it is an accident that phrases like "Harvard educated lawyer" keep sliming their way into the international media.....
On one-party rule, the KMT itself describes its current position as one party rule, and points to Singapore as its model. How can it be disputed that they are one-party rule, when they themselves aver it? The implication is NOT that we're back to dictatorship -- no one has made that claim. The implication of one-party rule with Singapore as a model should be clear.....
it's part of basic democratic behavior to respect the perspective of the other side, which implies that one should refrain from polemical words such as "propaganda"
I agree. But democracy at heart rests on a commitment to truth, especially in public. "Propaganda" is not a polemical word but an accurate one when describing a Leninist party with an authoritarian bent formally committed to the end of a democratic and independent polity on the island.
Michael
"UK, the mother country of democracy hasn't been democratic very often in its several hundreds years of democracy, right?"
ReplyDeleteThe mother country of democracy is Greece. The US was democratic before the UK was.
"Maybe something was really wrong with DPP policy in the past 8 years."
I think we all know that there were things the DPP could have done better. However, the main "issues" of the election, namely that the DPP has run the economy into the ground and inflamed tensions with the US and China (actually the second is the minor issue), were both false. Taiwan's economy is not bad, although there are some areas where there could be improvements. And it was China that was responsible for inflaming tensions.
Having an opposition party that was in the legislature that did NO cooperating at all did not help. But the KMT message has been all the contrary.
KMT politicians understand Taiwan. Therefore, you can't explain their representation of the situation as anything but propaganda. And due to their media connections, the browbeating of an occupied US, and the overbearing nature of the Chinese, they WERE better at getting their message out to the media and getting their stories picked up across the board.
What didn't help was the war in Iraq, which basically gave Bush a several big flies to swat with only one fly swatter. He chose the biggest one -- Iraq.
I think most people here respect the democratic process, Anon, but they don't agree with the choice, and have good reasons not to. And that is ok, because in a society with freedom of speech, one is allowed to have a different opinion.
As for your propaganda claim, your criticism is not valid. Propaganda exists whereever there is politics. Clinton, McCain, and Obama are all swinging it around, for example, if you haven't noticed. So there is no reason not to say that the KMT's media machine, which amply distorted the truth, was not engaging in propaganda.
As for your note on one-party rule, the comment "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is so well remembered for a reason. The KMT might self-destruct one day. They may not. But I don't think fears about absolute rule of the main branches of government by one party are unjustified. I guess time will tell.
What China wanted is every country in the world to be it's "special administration region"! You can see it on the relays of the olympic torch.
ReplyDeletewell said Stop Ma.
ReplyDeletewell said Michael.
well said Thomas.
We need a Richard Gere for Taiwan.
ReplyDeleteI think both parties are guily of propaganda campaigns for this election...just that the DPP's wasn't strong enough to gain it an advantage.
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