Censorship in Taiwan

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Censorship in the Republic of China (Taiwan) was eliminated in 1977. The media is generally allowed to broadcast what they choose as long as it does not contravene slander and libel statutes.

1 History
2 Modern era
3 See also
4 References

[edit] History

In many of the martial law period of the Republic of China in Taiwan (1948-1987), the Kuomintang, as a one-party authoritarian state, exercised strict control of the media. Parties other than the Kuomintang were banned and media advocating either democracy or Taiwan independence was banned. Li Ao, a famous political activist in Taiwan, nationalist, and intellectual, had over 96 books banned from sale. Writer Bo Yang was jailed for eight years for his translation of the cartoon Popeye because the translation was interepted as a criticsm of leader Chiang Kai-shek. Taiwanese-language media was also banned, and children who spoke Taiwanese in school were physically punished.

[edit] Modern era

Today, the democratic Republic of China does not practice censorship, though in the local elections of 2005, CDs with videos ridiculing candidates were confiscated in accordance to the Election and Recall Act. Some influence over the media was exercised by the defunct Government Information Office (GIO) as well as by media properties controlled by the Kuomintang.

There are no longer restrictions on the use of non-Mandarin languages in schools or in the media, though the official language of instruction is still Mandarin. As a result of the past language policy, numerous young people in Taiwan do not have fluency in the mother tongue (e.g. Taiwanese, Hakka, or one of the Formosan languages) of their parents.

However, there is some controversy as of 2006. The current governing party in the Republic of China (ROC), the Democratic Progressive Party, has refused to renew the broadcasting licences of certain television channels (reminiscent of the FCC in the United States), suggesting that the broadcasters were not in compliance with broadcasting standards. Curiously enough, some of the channels who failed their broadcast license renewal are perceived by some to favor the opposition party, Kuomintang, in their news and current events programming.

There have been additional incidents involving print media as well. According to Reporters Without Borders, "Shen Yeh, editor of the tabloid weekly Scoop was sentenced to more than two years in prison in July 2002 for distributing to his readers a secret video of a woman politician, Chu Mei-fung, having sex with a married man."

Also, "On 2006-03-20, security police went to the Taipei offices of Next Magazine and to its printers and seized copies of the next day’s issue, saying it 'threatened national security.' Some 160,000 copies were seized, but the magazine was still on sale at news-stands because the staff had secretly managed to print more copies elsewhere."

The authority for censorhip in Taiwan since 2006 is the National Communications Commission (NCC), the Taiwanese equivalent of the American FCC. On Jun 26, 2006, news reports said the Council of Honorable Justices of ROC had their constitutional review result that part of the National Communications Commission Organization Act [1](e.g. Article 4) is unconstitutional, and there will be two years after which this law is invalid.