MAC Outraged Over Revealed List of Taiwanese Media at China Training

Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council file photo. (Credit: Song Bilong /Dajiyuan)

[People News] The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has increasingly made its infiltration operations against Taiwan more overt in recent years, often bribing Taiwanese media and pro-CCP outlets to sway public opinion. Intelligence cited by the Liberty Times indicates that several Taiwanese news organisations, including TVBS, the United Daily News, Want Want Group, the Central News Agency, the magazine Observer, the magazine Motherland, and various media personnel, recently travelled to mainland China to participate in the 7th Cross-Strait Media Summit organised by the CCP on May 12. The sight of them quietly seated in the audience for training has astonished observers.

Reports of Taiwanese media attending training in China have surfaced! The complete list has been disclosed.

According to the Formosa News Network, the organiser of this Cross-Strait Media Summit is the CCP's official media group, the Beijing Daily. Attendees included Wu Xi, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office, and Sun Junmin, a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee, among other CCP officials. The Liberty Times reported that, based on information from Taiwan's national security agencies, the Taiwanese representatives included at least: Luo Yinchong, director of the United Daily News' mainland center; Xu Tao, senior assistant to the chairman of TVBS; Zhou Xiwei, vice chairman of Want Want Group; Ji Xin, publisher of the magazine Observer; Qi Jialin, publisher of the magazine Motherland; and Lai Lianjin, president of Taiwan's Central News Agency. In addition to representatives from these media organisations, there were also academics and current affairs commentators, such as Yuan Juzheng, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University, and commentators Jie Wenji, Guo Guanying, and Lai Yueqian.

Those acting as accomplices to the CCP's external propaganda could face severe penalties.

Reports indicate that during the 'Cross-Strait Media Summit', while the representative from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spoke at length and openly criticised Taiwanese media personnel, the attendees from Taiwan surprisingly remained silent and listened attentively. This behaviour has left many Taiwanese citizens feeling dissatisfied, with some directly stating that the attendees' attitudes resembled that of 'listening to a lecture'.

In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) highlighted that the CCP summoned certain Taiwanese media to Beijing for 'training', encouraging them to 'jointly expose the separatist actions of Taiwan independence'. This essentially demands that Taiwanese media cooperate with the CCP in conducting cross-border suppression against Taiwan, employing intimidation tactics of 'using Taiwan to control Taiwan' to limit the freedoms of the Taiwanese people.

The MAC further stated that if the Taiwanese media present cooperated with the CCP as 'local collaborators' in punishing independence (for instance, by following CCP directives, misusing press freedom to accuse specific individuals of being Taiwan independence advocates, providing personal information of citizens, or disseminating bounty notices), they would be in violation of Taiwan's Anti-Infiltration Law, National Security Law, National Intelligence Work Law, and Criminal Law, with the most severe penalty being imprisonment for over seven years.

The MAC emphasised that the government supports 'healthy and orderly' exchanges across the strait, but the media should adhere to professional ethics and maintain equal dignity, and should not become accomplices in the CCP's cross-border suppression and threats to national security. For any local collaborators who cooperate with the CCP in illegal infiltration and undermine Taiwan's democracy, government agencies will certainly take strict legal action and will not show leniency.

This situation is creating public opinion that disrupts Taiwan's pro-American stance.

In a program aired on New Tang Dynasty's YouTube channel, some scholars highlighted that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) convened the newly appointed Kuomintang (KMT) chairperson Zheng Liwen and a significant number of Taiwanese media representatives in Beijing for the Zheng-Xi meeting. This move is seen as a preemptive action ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting, intentionally orchestrating a planned effort to shape public opinion, disrupt Taiwan's pro-American trajectory, and influence the internal dynamics of Taiwan's united front.

During an interview on the program 'Xia Ban Han Ni Liao' on May 12, Ming Juzheng, a professor in the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, remarked that the CCP privately acknowledges Taiwan's economic and social development as well as its democratic resilience, even contemplating the idea of transforming Taiwan into 'China's Switzerland.' However, despite this private acknowledgement, Beijing continues to disseminate extreme narratives through cognitive warfare, asserting that 'Taiwan is in decline, and China is achieving great success.' The objective is to undermine the confidence of the Taiwanese populace and implement 'cross-border suppression' against Taiwan. This represents a strategy of cognitive warfare and media manipulation. Ming Juzheng believes that the current costs associated with a military assault on Taiwan are prohibitively high for the CCP, which is now more inclined to leverage internal influence, media strategies, and economic pressure to fulfil its objectives. He urges the public to discern the 'true colours' of the CCP, advising against being swayed by superficial appearances, and emphasises the need for vigilance within Taiwan's democratic system against cross-border suppression. △