Reporters from around the world are converging on Taiwan as the island prepares to vote for a new president in less than 10 days. However, those coming in from mainland China face especially strict barriers on reporting on the January 13 presidential and legislative elections.
A Taiwanese immigration official, who declined to be named, said mainland journalists on short-term permits “can only observe” but are not allowed to write anything about the elections, even if they clear the application process to visit the island.
The rule, which was not in place during previous elections held every four years, caused a mainland Chinese reporter of the South China Morning Post to cancel plans to fly to Taiwan.
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Journalists of non-mainland background from the same organisation, however, were not affected. The rule also does not affect mainland reporters currently based in Taiwan, who are allowed to cover the election.
The reporting restriction, which appears to specifically target mainland citizens, comes against the backdrop of a spike in distrust and hostility between Taipei and Beijing in the lead-up to the widely watched election.
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The move has also raised questions about freedom of the press in the democratically governed island, which is also one of the key talking points in the campaign language of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Observers put the latest events down to cross-strait distrust or the Taiwanese ruling party’s lack of confidence.
A Beijing-based scholar, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the lack of mainland election observers suggested a “deep-rooted distrust” across the Taiwan Strait.
A politician from the mainland-friendly opposition party Kuomintang (KMT) suggested the reporting restrictions indicated the DPP’s lack of confidence.
“If I were the DPP, I would allow mainland journalists to report in Taiwan,” the KMT politician said. “Why don’t they have such confidence?”
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According to the immigration official in Taipei, mainland Chinese media outlets “are permitted to post their reporters in Taiwan for up to six months on a rotation basis. They are free to go anywhere in Taiwan”.
But this relates to official arrangements for long-term stationing of reporters in Taiwan, not short-visit permits granted for election coverage.
Official figures from Taipei show eight mainland media organisations sent 15 journalists to Taiwan for long-term stays in the first eight months of last year, after a dip in their numbers from 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
“As for individual reporters, they can only apply to visit with an invitation from an institution or organisation in Taiwan. But after they are allowed in, these people can only observe – they are not permitted to report or cover news events,” the immigration official said, adding that this was a reciprocal arrangement with Beijing.
More than 235 overseas journalists from 113 media organisations gathered in Taiwan to cover the last presidential elections in 2020, according to figures from local authorities.
Another Taiwanese immigration official said the rule relating to special permits was implemented because of the “sensitivity” of the elections.
Under this rule, entry to the island is not guaranteed as the Taiwanese government must work on a case-by-case basis, with decisions depending on “national security considerations”, the official added.
In September, the Taipei-based Commercial Times reported that a veteran mainland journalist had their permit application rejected by Taiwanese authorities and was told to apply after January.
Also, for the first time in decades, no academics from mainland China will travel to Taiwan to observe the elections this year, the Post has learned.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which charts cross-strait policy, said the restriction had been imposed by Beijing. “According to our understanding, disapproval by the mainland authorities is the major reason [the academics] cannot visit this year,” a council spokesman said on December 7.
But the mainland’s corresponding Taiwan Affairs Office denied Beijing had any role in this, with a spokeswoman accusing Taipei of inciting anti-Beijing sentiment as an election ploy.
The elections will take place against a backdrop of years of strained cross-strait relations, since Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning DPP was first elected president in 2016.
Her tenure has been marked by increased engagement with Washington and other Western governments, prompting Beijing to step up military, political and economic pressure on the island, particularly in the past year.
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Beijing, which sees Taiwan as breakaway territory awaiting reunification, sees such moves as a challenge to its sovereignty. The US, along with most countries, does not regard Taiwan as an independent state but is opposed to any change of status quo by force.
Officials in Beijing have portrayed the coming elections as a choice between “war and peace”, urging Taiwanese voters to “stand on the right side of history” and warning of the risk of war if the DPP stays in power.
Taipei, meanwhile, has warned Beijing not to interfere in the elections, either through military threats or economic pressure. It has also accused Beijing of running disinformation campaigns aimed at swaying the vote.
Vice-President William Lai Ching-te, the DPP presidential candidate, is the clear favourite in the race. Almost all opinion polls have consistently placed Lai ahead of the main opposition Kuomintang’s Hou Yu-ih and Ko Wen-je of the smaller Taiwan People’s Party.
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The attitude to journalists from the other side has always been seen as a bellwether of relations across the Taiwan Strait.
In 1987, a Taiwanese newspaper sent two reporters on assignment to mainland China, defying a KMT government ban on formal contact with Beijing. It was the first such interaction since the two sides split in 1949, when the Communists’ victory in the Chinese civil war saw the then-ruling KMT flee to Taiwan.
“Their small step will lead to a giant step in history,” the newspaper, the Independence Evening Post, said at the time.
Four years later, two reporters from mainland state media agencies Xinhua and China News Service visited Taiwan to report on an incident involving disputes between the two sides’ fishermen.
Formal cross-strait media exchanges were gradually established in the early 2000s, but have gone through ups and downs in keeping with political relations.
With tensions growing in recent years, a wider range of people-to-people exchanges have also been affected.
Under Tsai’s predecessor, the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou, mainland reporters would visit Taiwan for one-time trips or short-term election coverage, as they could apply to visit as tourists and Taiwanese authorities would turn a blind eye to their reporting work.
However, this stopped when Beijing imposed restrictions on individual mainland tourists visiting Taiwan in 2019, with Taipei also imposing similar curbs on solo travellers from the mainland.
Mainland reporters have not been able to visit Taiwan as tourists since then.
More from South China Morning Post:
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