THIS TOM PLATE COLUMN APPEARS COURTESY OF THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, WHERE IT FIRST APPEARED 9 NOVEMBER: China’s new focused diplomacy, as viewed in an off-balance U.S., is close to remarkable. After all the past foreign-policy fog, through which it was sometimes hard to see where Beijing stood, we…
Category: Taiwan
TELEVISION: Fresh Off the Boat is a Fresh Look at the Asian-American Experience
ANNIE LUNDGREN WRITES – ABC’s newest primetime show, Fresh Off the Boat, reminds us that America’s complicated race relations can be funny, too. Set in 1995, the sitcom follows a Taiwanese-American family’s move from D.C.’s Chinatown to a white middle-class suburb in Orlando, Florida, where they learn how to fit in…
TAIWAN: Words Can Hurt
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES– Someone find Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je a public relations specialist pronto! The newly elected official is getting heat from Taiwanese and international media for tone-deaf comments made in the past week. On January 29, Foreign Policy magazine published highlights of a January 20 interview with the former trauma…
TAIWAN: Media Gets Burned With Cooking Oil
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – Media lesson learned in Taiwan this week: don’t let tainted cooking oil taint your responsibility in reporting. In light of recent reports on the sale of bad cooking oil in Taiwan, the media had a frenzy covering this controversy, including speculation causing an increase in worry for the…
TAIWAN: Red Shirts, Goodbye Skirts, and Other Taiwanese Media Quirks
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES — The media in Taiwan has been buzzing these past weeks, so here’s a quick rundown starting with Hong Kong. Although the media focuses on the events unfolding in Hong Kong, many sources such as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), New Tang Dynasty television (NTD), and BBC, reported on…
TAIWAN: Sunflower Student Movement Shines All Over the World
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – It appears that Taiwanese students learned a thing or two from the movements of their American and French counterparts in the 1960s. Instead of simple protest demonstrations at Cal Berkley, students in Taiwan had a larger stage in mind: the Legislative Yuan and Executive Yuan of the Republic…
POVERTY PROJECT: Measuring Inequality, How Asia Stacks Up
AUSTIN SZABO WRITES: When you want to know the economics of a country, you usually look at its gross domestic product — the amount of wealth it produced over the course of a year. But GDP tells only part of the story; it leaves out how the wealth is distributed.…
TAIWAN: Leaving China? Welcome to Taiwan, Ramzy
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – In the wake of New York Times reporter Austin Ramzy’s unceremonious departure from Beijing, neighboring Taiwan has warmly welcomed him for a temporary stay while he continues his coverage of the mainland. Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported that the government “welcomes international media enterprises and their staff” such…
CHINA: Why Beijing Needs to Take It Slowly
A BOOK EXCERPT. Adapted from “In the Middle of The Future: Tom Plate on Asia,” to be published here in the U.S. next month by Marshall Cavendish International. TOM PLATE WRITES: Asia did not achieve its current status on the world stage as an overnight success. Hardly. But despite millennia…
TAIWAN: Murder-Kidnap Creates a Flurry from Media
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – Taiwanese people and media are outraged by the murder of a Taiwanese national and kidnapping of the victim’s wife in the Malaysian island of Pom Pom. Throughout late November, Taiwanese and Malaysian media covered the incident from all sides, ranging from international paper press, television news coverage…
TAIWAN: Singer Desert Chang Deserted by Chinese Fans?
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES — It looks like Taiwanese singer Desert Chang has spark political tension with China. Again. It seems small things, such as raising a Republic of China flag during a performance, can rub some people the wrong way. Chang, a leading alternative musician from Taiwan, performed last week…
TAIWAN: Local Media Enthralled by Film Shoot in Taipei
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES — CUT! It out local Taiwnese news media! French director Luc Besson has had enough and wrapped up location shooting in Taipei ahead of schedule. This is due to the intrusion of local media on the sets of Besson’s upcoming film, Lucy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Scarlet Johansson…
TAIWAN: Plurk – or Tweet?!
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES — Taiwanese netizens are obsessed with social media and social media giants, Facebook and Twitter, do not fail to recognize this. This is in lieu to Facebook and Twitters announcements to further tap into the potential of Taiwanese markets. But why are these companies so eager to have…
TAIWAN: Does Taiwan Media Need Reform?
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – Taipei Times highlights the lack of a more diverse and critical media system. But wait, isn’t it one of the biggest newspapers in Taiwan? Recently, Taipei Times has published two articles stressing the media’s important role on uncovering news the government may have covered up, as…
TAIWAN: Yes, Young Man, You Could Be a Rape Victim, Too
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – Men are surprisingly alarmed to learn that they too can be victims of sexual assault. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education released a video three years ago entitled, If I Knew Boys Could Be Sexually Assaulted as Well. Uploaded to the internet about a month ago, the video…
TAIWAN: Is It Only ‘Transparently’ Corrupt?
BRIAN CANAVE WRITES – Transparency International has released its 2013 findings on official corruption and this year Taiwan took it on the chops. The annual assessments are widely respected, and can influence investment by foreign firms and the evaluations of other international agencies and nonprofits. For 2013, Taiwan’s politicians and…