In March and April this year, I wrote three essays for Taiwan’s New News Weekly at its invitation. When I was visiting Taiwan in July, a journalist friend from the Central News Agency told me that, because of my essays, the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, a department under the State Council (of communist China), had harshly criticized the New News Weekly.
"Why do you handpick Jiao Guobiao when there are so many other writers in the mainland?" the Office demanded.
After I returned to Beijing, I asked the friend working for New News Weekly what had happened. He confirmed that what I had heard in Taiwan was true. "The Taiwan Affairs Office was even investigating who actually invited you to write the essays. So I was scared of asking you [to write for us] again," he said.
I used to have a good impression of the Taiwan Affairs Office, partially because a good friend of mine got a job at the Office after he received his Ph.D. degree. In my impression, it was an elite organization with no interest in mundane matters. I was surprised at how vulgar it had become. A simple matter as trivial as who wrote what article in a Taiwan magazine caused a stir.
The Degeneration of Taiwan’s Media
I still cannot figure out why the Taiwan Affairs Office dislikes me so much. I’m simply making a living writing these days. It looks as if the Central Propaganda Department has assumed the authority to disallow anyone in China from publishing anything I write, and the Taiwan Affairs Office has assumed the mission of preventing anyone from inviting me to write for any Taiwanese media. Under this bilateral attack across the Taiwan Strait, I could be starved to death.
This is hard to comprehend. Even if I die, the Taiwan Affairs Office would not make it to the list of beneficiaries, let alone inherit any penny from me. So why are they so anxious to see me bite the dust? Furthermore, I don’t have any enmity against the Taiwan Affairs Office.
Can it be that any given communist organization, wherever it is, no matter who’s running it, regards freedom of speech as its enemy?
During my visit in Taiwan, I attended a seminar titled "Why Taiwan’s Media Have Become so Degenerate," conducted by some Taiwanese journalism scholars. I had known little about Taiwan’s media, but I learned from the seminar that the degeneration has manifested in two aspects—smearing Taiwan’s democracy and embellishing the mainland’s autocracy.{mospagebreak}
One speaker pointed out that, according to Taiwan intelligence, at least 17 media have secretively received ill-gotten money from the Chinese authorities, who regard democracy and freedom as enemies.
Bowing to the Chinese Authorities
On the day I visited Mr. Wu Zhaoxie, key member of the Mainland Affairs Council (of Taiwan) and, in front of many Taiwanese media, I accused the Taiwanese journalists stationed in Beijing of being indifferent to the lives of the ordinary Chinese people as well as to democracy, freedom, and basic human rights there.
Since I denounced China’s Central Propaganda Department in 2004, journalists stationed in Beijing from the European nations, the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and other democratic countries have all interviewed me to show their interest in and concerns about freedom of the press in China. However, I have yet to be interviewed by any journalists from Taiwan.
Later my friend in Taiwan told me that the real situation of Taiwan’s media is far more complicated. For example, China Times and United Daily News, two major newspapers in Taiwan, are both obedient and submissive to mainland China, although they do not necessarily agree with the mainland’s suppression of its press. The journalists at these two media have protested many times but ended up in trouble every time.
The Taiwan Affairs Office plays hardball with Taiwanese media. Unlike Western media, which are backed by their embassies in Beijing, Taiwanese media have to behave carefully. Otherwise their journalists could face deportation, and their stations could be forced to close.
Taiwan journalists are orphans in Beijing. They have no one to rely on but plenty to make them suffer.
I told my friend, "If they want to close my station and deport me, so be it. Take Apple Daily (of Hong Kong) for instance. Although they are still not allowed to set up a journalists’ station in Beijing, it does not prevent them from being in high demand. As long as you are determined, you can do well, sometime even better, in reporting mainland news without being stationed there."
My friend could only shake his head in helplessness.{mospagebreak}
Forsaking Work Ethics
During my 10 days’ visit in Taiwan, I sensed deeply that many people resent most of the media’s mainland news reporting. In order to establish journalists’ stations in Beijing, they have forsaken the ethics of journalism. The manipulator behind the scene is the Taiwan Affairs Office, whose initial responsibility was reunification across the Taiwan Strait.
In my opinion, the Taiwan Affairs Office should be held accountable for the current bilateral status because day in and day out, they’ve been doing nothing but driving friends over to the enemy’s side. They have polluted the entire media industry in Taiwan and disgusted 20 million people in Taiwan.
Jiao Guobiao was an associate professor of journalism at Beijing University. His article "Declaration of the Campaign against the Propaganda Department of Central Committee of the Communist Party" criticizes that the Propaganda Department is the largest and most powerful protective umbrella for corruptions in China. The article was popular among Chinese people but angered the authorities. He was later dismissed from his post by the university.
Translated by CHINASCOPE from Apply Daily