ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 investigates how Taiwan’s increasing economic dependence on China combined with the Taiwanese state’s continued non-interventionism in the national economy to degrade Taiwan’s press freedom in the contemporary context of China’s economic rise (2008–2016). Particularly, under the contemporary trend of China’s economic rise, Taiwan’s growing economic dependence on China engendered the development of deeper economic linkages. Thereby, China’s political and economic forces, compared with the state and market forces in Taiwan, obtained much more influence over Taiwanese media. Striving for financial interests in the Chinese circulation, advertising, and capital markets, many Taiwanese media capitalists adjusted their media corporations’ financial and organizational structures and news editing routines to conform to the “hidden rules” conveyed explicitly or implicitly by Chinese authorities. Some even expanded their media ownerships in Taiwan to support Beijing’s unification strategies and, moreover, introduced the authoritarian, developmental model of the media from China to justify the aforementioned institutional changes in Taiwan. In combination, these developments led to the deterioration of media concentration and the emergence of external-oriented self-censorship in Taiwan.
