by Brian Hioe

語言:
English
Photo Credit: Fu Kun-chi/Facebook

A HINT OF the dynamics of the upcoming legislative session can be seen, with the KMT digging its heels against several DPP initiatives.

First, the KMT has taken aim at the Executive Yuan’s budget for publicity to promote government initiatives. The KMT has criticized the increase from 590 million NT to 900 million NT of the budget for next year, framing this as an attempt by the DPP to create a “green party-state”.

In particular, the KMT has suggested that such funds will be used for media friendly to the DPP. The KMT, then, likely intends to continue to attack the DPP over the approval of Mirror TV’s broadcast license, as the first new television network to receive such approval in over a decade. The KMT has alleged that the approval only took place because Mirror TV leans pan-Green.

The KMT has taken this stance because of the Tsai administration declining to review the broadcast license of CtiTV in 2020. CtiTV is one of the newspapers and television networks owned by Tsai Eng-meng, the founder of the Want Want Group. Tsai acquired such outlets in the early 2010s, making no secret that his interest in acquiring media platforms was to advance positive views of China in Taiwan, with pro-unification aims in mind. Tsai, originally a foodstuffs entrepreneur, had made his fortune on the basis of factories in China.

As such, in 2011 and 2012, the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement rose to protest what was termed Tsai’s attempts at enacting “media monopoly in Taiwan”. The Anti-Media Monopoly Movement proved to be an important predecessor movement of the 2014 Sunflower Movement.

Attacking Mirror TV would, in many ways, be retribution over the fact that Mirror TV aimed to take over the channels that CtiTV originally operated on. After being taken off air, CtiTV later moved to streaming.

Photo credit: Fu Kun-chi/Facebook

The National Communications Commission (NCC) that regulates Taiwan’s media has increasingly been targeted by the KMT since then. The KMT seems to feel especially vindictive over the appointment of academics, including legal and media experts, who participated in the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement to the NCC and Constitutional Court.

More broadly, however, the KMT has leaned into the narrative that the DPP has sought to crack down on opposing political views. Actions by the DPP including seeking transitional justice over past crimes of the authoritarian period, stripping the KMT of assets retained from property seizures during the White Terror, or corruption charges faced by KMT politicians have been accused of being products of the DPP’s “Green Terror.”

In the meantime, the KMT has also signaled that it intends to attack efforts by the DPP aimed at clarifying UN Resolution 2758 by way of a legislative motion. The DPP has framed this move as intended to combat efforts by China to muddle international understandings of UN Resolution 2758, as though this meant international consensus of Taiwan being part of China. This could be an issue that the KMT leans into, with the KMT legislative caucus staging a walkover about the issue today.

The Lai administration has sought to emphasize that this move is in coordination with the US’s own stance on UN Resolution 2758, rather than some move aimed at enacting Taiwanese independence. Nevertheless, the KMT is expected to frame the legislative motion as a putative effort by the Lai administration at Taiwanese independence. This would be in line with how the KMT has sought to depict the Lai administration as dangerously pro-independence, not only to induce the Taiwanese public to vote for it in order to maintain cross-strait stability, but to try and alienate the Lai administration from international allies, but depicting it as a provocateur of cross-strait relations.

Such moves do not surprise from the KMT. At the same time, this means that the KMT will continue to lean into familiar narratives in the upcoming election cycle, framing itself as the only political party in Taiwan able to communicate with the CCP. Consequently, the KMT is expected to lean into claims that Taiwan’s future economic development still should occur through links with the Chinese market and that, besides being able to dial back tensions, only the KMT can negotiate with China about trade.

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