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Plead again for Establishing a WMO by UN!

7/31/2021

Dr. Wordman

On October 24, 2020, the author published a column, entitled, Time to Establish a World Media Organization (WMO), (www.US-Chinaforum.org and www.US-Chinaforum.com) proposing that the UN needs to establish a WMO to define rules about public media and to regulate its operation and propagation in the domestic and international community for the benefit of maintaining a peaceful and culturally enriched global community. World media has blossomed tremendously in multimedia since the Chinese first invented the printing and German first created the printer machine; the world media industry has made a quantitative assault of the explosive information revolution on human being, unfortunately coming with many pitfalls and a giant devil being released in the explosion. The author had characterized the problematic media into four categories: 1, rhetoric (between nations and social communities), 2, fake news (openly generating false information), 3, dangerous speech (inciting hate crimes and terrorism) and 4, information security (media collection of private and personal data for illegal use across national boundaries). The author argued that the above concerns (their impact on world peace caused by world media, for example the amount of fake news regarding corona virus and vaccines had led to bad decisions causing thousands of unnecessary deaths) dictate the establishment of a WMO in no less importance than WTO and WHO.

In this article, the author shall plead again to establish a WMO urgently based on recent development of ‘media’ crisis such as the clash of national media organizations (and national government) with the conglomerate cross-nation socio-media platform and services. These incidences and their underlining causes not only reinforces the author’s argument in his previous article for establishing a WMO, but also presented strong evidence in terms of economic instability between the national media and conglomerate media services in their long term interest in serving the national and global communities. The incidence may seem to be simple as the Australian national news media demanding a fee from the social media for their news items based on a national law passed by Australia, but the social media platforms offer their services to users free of charge and would not like to pay a fee if not justified. The two giant conglomerate media companies involved are Facebook social media and Google search engine

It is true that news corporations have cost collecting and producing news articles, hence they like to have some returns for their investment, however, their subscription model simply does not generate sufficient revenue without other supplemental income such as ads (limited scale compared to social media). The giant international news corporations have broader international news sources and audiences but the national news organizations have very little leveraging power compared to the international giants such as Murdock’s News Corp. So there is no surprise that Google has striven a deal to pay News Corp but not likely to pay for Australian news. The value of news is based on two factors: 1. Truthfulness and quality of news and 2. Multiple varieties of sources rather than a monopoly for a wide international audience. Currently, the mass media’s reputation on both is poor which is correlated with their poor subscription income. The giant mass media corporations have shown to be biased and rigidly divided as seen in the U.S. The small national news corporation such as Australia News tends to be nationalistically biased as seen from their reports on Australia-China trade issues. When news are biased and monopolized nationally or internationally (conglomerate), news becomes less valuable to the world community. For example, an Australian fake news on Xinjiang Uighur story will not go very far beyond Australia, certainly not to the 1.4 billion Chinese, so why should Facebook even allows such fake news never mind paying for it.

Similarly with search engines, if the search results are biased and monopolized by any agreement between a search engine company and conglomerate news corporation, global netizens will prefer to get from the organic media; hopefully, social media will maintain that responsibility of supporting only truthful postings and true users' opinions. The news media should be aware of the YouTube (owned by Google) model where users are literally free to post any authentic video news. So the various news corporations must compete with that free media, especially in ‘truthfulness’ and ‘quality’ of their news item. Unfortunately, news media including giant corporations and YouTube have indulged in using fake titles to catch users eyeballs. In reality, this eventually hurts the news media reputation hence the value of their news products. So there is a real need of regulation and code of conduct for the World media Industry (a media morality) for their own survival and true usefulness.

Regarding fake news, there is definitely a need for WMO to regulate the world media industry. The reporting of Corona virus with fake news has caused many death in the world, a matter the UN WHO has no tool to deal with. There are other examples such as false accusation of genocide of Xinjiang Uighur in China or misreporting of the India-China Himalaya border dispute. The sensational media reporting were used to generate higher popularity ratings for the ministers at the expense of economic impact to people even their lives. In Australia’s case, its exports to China were severely affected (China is Australia's number one export country) and the mobilization of tens of thousands of soldiers in Himalaya during winter was inhumane and wasteful (fortunately due to media constraint, China exercised control and war is avoided). If there was an organization like WMO, which was charged for regulating world media on their truthfulness in reporting, I think the behavior of journalists and world journalism will improve. That is the very reason, the author pleads again that we must urge the UN to establish a WMO, for the purposes stated above and hopefully will help the global media industry to prevent global monopoly, political interference and journalism corruption and encourage the world media, big and small corporations, to serve the global community truthfully. Most importantly, perhaps the UN will eventually have a voice power more useful than relying on organizing a UN military forces to deal with crisis or world injustice. After all, no matter what national government system one has, authoritarian, democracy or monarchy, the voice of people matters to the leader or ruler. The authority of WMO equipped with modern communication technology anticipating a direct reach to the world population may become the more effective regulating force to keep the world in peace and harmony than nuclear power.

Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.

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Taiwan's Future Lies in People's Real Awakening

7/24/2021

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Dr. Wordman

The tension in Taiwan Strait has risen as we are witnessing the U.S. - China relations deteriorating. Many political analysts tend to look at the Taiwan problem as a not solvable issue because of the U.S.-China conflict. Historians and political scientists alike generally understand that China has a historical mandate to unite with Taiwan to end the sad and shameful chapter – Taiwan, seized by Japan in 1845 and returned to China in 1945 after Japan surrendered in WW II, yet to unite with the motherland. The present separation between Taiwan and the Mainland was the result of a Chinese internal war, dragged on over 75 years with external interference. Russia backed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP now governing the Mainland) and the U.S. backed the regime retreated to Taiwan (governed under an evolving democracy with two major parties, Kuo Ming Tang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)). The current ruling party in Taiwan is DPP, which advocates independence for Taiwan. That goal is not achievable, because CCP would for sure use force to reunite with Taiwan. The U.S. does not want to see Mainland-Taiwan reunited making China stronger than she already is. Neither would the U.S. want to see Taiwan independent dragging herself into a war at a formidable high price and getting less control if Taiwan is truly independent. Thus the Taiwan problem is not a problem the U.S. is anxious to solve or able to solve. Under current situation, the U.S. can sell to Taiwan military gear for profit and have a hold on the Taiwan government. To China, the Taiwan problem has a clear simple solution. If Taiwan would declare independence or progress close to that status, China would use all her might to take over Taiwan with crashing force if necessary. Hence, the Taiwan problem is presently a real dilemma for the Taiwanese people. However, the problem is solvable by people in Taiwan with a real awakening of their historical mandate. How an amicable outcome and peaceful future are possible is discussed below.

Many strategic analyses on the Taiwan problem exist; Taiwan is generally included in a bigger U.S. strategy, such as Asia-Pacific or China policy. Bounded by U.S. - China Shanghai Communique – the one China Principle and international (UN) recognition, the U.S. cannot engage Taiwan as an ally-nation like Japan or South Korea, but Taiwan has geographically importance in the “First Island Chain' (FIC) strategy - from the Korea Peninsular to Japan, Taiwan, then to the Philippines containing China. Obviously, for FIC to be effective, the U.S. would like to have a hold on Taiwan (she did since 1949) and continue this hold through sales of 'defensive' weapons. Taiwan is mainly a supply source for the U.S. military in her FIC anti-China strategy. However, as China is rising in economic and military strength, the effectiveness of the FIC containment concept is in question. The current tension between the U.S. and China in the East China Sea (ECS) and South China Sea (SCS) is rooted in that question. The U.S. wishes to keep the FIC Strategy effective in containing China by extending the chain into the Indian Ocean by involving her ally Australia and possibly recruiting other nations such as India and Vietnam. However, China's development in naval forces has been very impressive, not only in terms of building carriers, battle ships, jet fighters and missiles but more significantly in strengthening some SCS islands in her possession with basic infrastructure for human habitation including even militarized runways and ports. The more pressure the U.S. is applying to China in ECS and SCS, the more 'defensive' China becomes (defensive weapons could immediately become offensive at war time). With China's overall mature and independent technology capability such as Beidou (GPS system), laser and space and her modernized air force, navy and army, the hawkish voice of reunification is understandably getting louder in China. This trend is definitely leading to a disastrous future for Taiwan if the people in Taiwan is not awakened to facts and reality.

Besides selling limited and outdated weapons to Taiwan and passing ambiguous non-binding legislature in Congress to allow more interaction with Taiwan officials, the U.S. did little for Taiwan in the world arena such as curtailing small countries cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan or getting Taiwan into any significant international organizations. In the media, we see many political commentators (including former Secretary of State Kissinger) warning the U.S. not to cross the red-lines drawn by China. A recent article, entitled, “The Taiwan Temptation – Why Beijing Might Resort to Force”, authored by Oriana Skylat Mastro (July/August 2021 Foreign Affairs), provided key logical answers to why the Taiwan issue is not a problem the U.S. can solve or in this author's opinion the U.S. wish to solve. Mastro, a Center Fellow at Standford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, a fellow at American Enterprise Institute and an inaugural Wilson Center China Fellow, is an international security expert focusing on Chinese military and security policy. In her essay, Mastro first acknowledged the Taiwan problem being a China's internal problem and the One China Principle being recognized by UN and the U.S., then proceeded to give an in-depth analysis on why the U.S. would not like to see a 'Taiwan Strait War' and through five logical thought processes or main points she discussed why the Taiwan Strait War will not produce favorable outcome. (for the U.S. and Taiwan)

First, Mastro acknowledged the existence of different options for China to take regarding Taiwan issue; she felt that Xi would be more likely than previous Chinese leaders to force reunification with Taiwan. According to opinion survey, 70% of Chinese people think reunification by force is possible and 37% think possible within 3-5 years. Her second point is that the Chinese military is 'Battle Ready' after 25 years of modernization and recent anti-corruption efforts. She outlined four possible attacks: 1. missiles and air raids, 2. blockade and cyber-attack, 3. attacking U.S. military bases preventing any support for Taiwan, and 4. amphibious landing attack first off-Taiwan islands than Taiwan itself. Mastro concluded that Taiwan would be no match to Mainland in all three types of attack. In fourth, Taiwan might wish to receive some international support, but possibility small. Mastro quoted former Indo-Pacific Commander Philip Davidson saying: “in six years China could take Taiwan by force.” Her third logical analysis is whether Mainland would take a fast or slow action to reunite with Taiwan? Her prediction was China would take a gradual and slow process (a few months, low cost approach). The U.S. would not be able to do anything especially if China did not attack the U.S.

Then Mastro followed a wishful thinking logic (4th) to analyze the Taiwan problem. She thought that, the cost to China would be too high and Beijing would be isolated internationally and tied up for decades, were more American projections based on wishful thinking. She thought that China would avoid a protracted and high intensity scenario and would only attack with a confidence of a quick victory (Chinese citizens more than Americans are socially and economically prepared, willing to sacrifice). In her fifth logical analysis, she said, once China had the military ability to solve the Taiwan problem, Xi could find it politically hard not to do so and Xi might also think solving the Taiwan problem would not detract (but help) his “Chinese dream and rejuvenation” program. Taiwan is a 'no-exit' problem, because China has a ready solution waiting for the opportune time and the U.S. has no solution with no desire to solve.

This author agrees with Mastro's analyses above but must add one important missing point: Taiwan problem is solvable by the people in Taiwan provided that they will be awakened by the warning bells of war, recalling the memories of history from Japanese occupation, to WW II, to rising of a new and transforming China. The acute tension in the Taiwan Strait will force people to think. The brains washed by DDP propaganda will be awakened by facts and reality. In an awakening mind, calm and serious thoughts will arise: How and what kind of system can be built under the One China Two Systems Principle (One China means protection and two systems mean optimization). China needs different systems to practice and improve governance of all her people, land and water, and 56 minorities. Taiwan Strait Tension presents the Taiwan people the opportunity to solve the Taiwan problem, the historical mandate, for an amicable outcome and a peaceful solution.

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A Letter from President Biden

7/17/2021

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A Letter from President Biden

*To read our letter to President Biden, dated Feb. 1, 2021, visit http://english.us-chinaforum.com/weekly-forum/letter-to-president-biden

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