"100% Hong Kong-funded = 100% Chinese-funded"

Get ready for even more political bullshit. Democractic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators have finally figured out that TVBS -- which I not-so-fondly refer to as "BS-TV" -- is 100% Chinese-funded.

Here's what an article in Saturday's Taiwan News says about it:

Several outspoken lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party yesterday demanded the closure of TVBS Cable TV after claiming that the station was being financed totally by capital from China and was collaborating with China to topple the Taiwan government.

[...]

In response, the opposition Kuomintang warned that it would mobilize its supporters to recall President Chen [Shui-bian] if the DPP government dares to force the closure of TVBS over procedural problems.

Duh! How could anyone not know this about TVBS? If it looks like a Beijing duck, walks like a Beijing duck, and quacks like a Beijing duck..., you might just ask yourself "WTF?!"

My wife asked me Thursday night if I knew who the chairman of TVBS was. "Uhhhh, a Chinese official?," I guessed -- off the top of my head. The answer, she told me, was Norman Leung Nai Pang (Mandarin: Liang Naipeng), the former chairman of the Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority. Hong Kong, you must surely remember, reverted to Chinese rule back in 1997; therefore, making a distinction between Hong Kong and China in this matter is absolute nonsense.

Of course, that nonsense is exactly the defense TVBS is using. Even if it were a valid defense, they would still be violating Taiwan's law by having over 50% foreign investment.


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Quack!
TVBS News consistently refers to China as "the mainland" (dà lù) instead of just "China" (Zhongguó), as a Chinese-language search of their web site will reveal. In fact, TVBS has recently been using a very strange term to refer to China: "nèi dì" ("inland" or "interior") -- to "catapult the propaganda" of "one China" even further.

Counting ducks that have already hatched
A search I just did on TVBS' web site for those terms (all of which were entered in Chinese) and a couple others (which can be subtracted from the larger numbers) gave these results:

* Dà lù (mainland): 12,946
* Guómínda(ng (KMT): 5,864
* Zhongguó: 3,088
* Zhongguó Guómínda(ng (KMT): 34
* Zhongguó Shí Baò (China Times): 32
* Zhongguó Shí Yóu (China Petroleum): 6
* Nèi dì (Interior of the country): 151

Remember, China has somewhere around 700 missiles pointed at Taiwan. I suppose BS-TV considers us to be Taiwan's "Lucky Duckies."

Timing is everything
The DPP has known about this for quite some time, yet they waited until after the pan-blues passed a fucked-up bill regarding a National Communications Commission (NCC) whose party representation is proportional to that in the legislature. This means that if the pan-blues control the legislature, they also control the NCC. This in turn means that their control of the media will only become more extreme.

Why didn't the DPP talk about this before, especially in the bloody runup to this legislative mess? Why haven't they talked about it every day since they've known about such things? Are they, like so many Taiwanese, just suicidal? There isn't even a hint of self-preservational instinct in this sort of behavior.

[UPDATED for spelling (Leung's name) and proofreading errors (an extraneous "of") 8:20 PM Sunday]

Related links: (all in Chinese Big-5 encoding)
* TVBS: It's all legal
* Liberty Times: Legislator: 100% of TVBS' funds come from China
* Liberty Times: TVBS: Our stock holdings conform with the law
* Liberty Times: TVBS Chairman Leung Nai Pang is former head of HK Broadcasting Division

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Poopchutes: Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, TVBS, pan-blues, Leung Nai Pang, Norman Leung