Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The Opinion of The Taiwanese Media on Pro-Independence and Pro-Unification with People Republic China During Tsai Ing-Wen Era

Abstract: Taiwan-People’s Republic of China (PRC) relations have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. These relationships are at the core of Taiwan's social and political life. The pro-independence and pro-unification social cleavage line affected by Taiwan-PRC relations divides Taiwan's political life into two separate camps. These camps are pan-blue coalition (pro-unification) and the pan-green coalition (pro-independence). In this study, the views of Taiwanese newspapers containing both camps on Taiwan-PRC relations are analyzed quantitatively. The study focuses specifically on the Tsai Ing-Wen period. Within the scope of the study, dictionary-based and sentiment analysis methods are used and the selected newspapers are examined with these principles. As a consequence of the quantitative analysis of these three English Taiwanese newspapers, it is shown that the media adopted a perspective similar to the views of the government and the DPP throughout the Tsai Ing-Wen period. Furthermore, sentiment analysis is done of the news from these newspapers relevant to PRC-Taiwan ties. It has been noted that the reporting regarding PRC-Taiwan ties in all three newspapers has a positive language.
Keywords: Taiwan, PRC, Text Analysis, Pro-Unification, Pro-Independence, KMT, DPP


RELATED LINK: http://daadtr.com/DAAD/ArchiveIssues/PDF/787eb20a-e1bb-ea11-810a-005056b0673e

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Protests in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is definitely different from other Chinese cities. Hong Kong was a British colony for more than 150 years - part of it, Hong Kong island, was ceded to the UK after a war in 1842. 
The territory was also popular with migrants and dissidents fleeing instability, poverty or persecution in mainland China.
Then, in the early 1980s, as the deadline for the 99-year-lease approached, Britain and China began talks on the future of Hong Kong - with the communist government in China arguing that all of Hong Kong should be returned to Chinese rule.
The two sides reached a deal in 1984 that would see Hong Kong return to China in 1997, under the principle of "one country, two systems".
As a result, Hong Kong has its own legal system and borders, and rights including freedom of assembly and free speech are protected.

However, the country is currently on the agenda with great uprisings. Protests have continued in Hong Kong since April. The reason for these protests is the act adopted by the Hong Kong parliament. This act would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China. 


The adoption of this law attracted the reaction of many people, especially young people. This reaction quickly turned into protests.


Western media soon began to follow the protests closely. Almost every day, many biased news about protests are shared. For this reason, CNN's news from May to August was examined.


First, the most used words were examined. The results of this research are as follows;

 [1] "after"          "also"           "and"            "are"            "arrested"       "been"           "bill"           "but"            "china"          "city"           "demonstrations"
[12] "extradition"    "for"            "from"           "had"            "has"            "have"           "hong"           "including"      "kong"           "last"           "long"       
[23] "monday"         "more"           "night"          "not"            "one"            "party"          "people"         "police"         "political"      "protest"        "protesters" 
[34] "protests"       "said"           "since"          "sunday"         "than"           "that"           "the"            "their"          "they"           "two"            "was"         
[45] "were"           "which"          "will"           "with"           "yuen"

Then, correlation analysis of some of the most commonly used words was examined. The first of the examined words is the China. The correlation analysis of the "China" word is as follows;

   mainland         mob         unlawful       station     between 
           0.98        0.98               0.98             0.97        0.96             
         movement      unrest                    accusations
               0.80        0.79                           0.76
   

As can be seen, one of the words with the highest correlation with China is unlawful. Then the correlation analysis of the word "police" was examined. The correlation analysis of the "police" word is as follows;

consecutive       march         weeks        people     kok          mong       
1.00                    1.00          1.00          0.96          0.92          0.92                 
demonstrators   extradition       support
          0.79          0.79                  0.79
       island         
         0.78       
As it is seen, the words that have the highest correlation with the word police are people, mong kok (one of the areas where protests continue) and arrest. Finally, the most commonly used words are shown in a graph.



Wednesday, December 12, 2018

PRC's African Aid

Forum On China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which was founded in 2000, is a platform for the PRC and most of the African countries to come together (Tulga, 2018). FOCAC is one of the most important parts of China's strategic plan for the African continent. FOCAC works for the development of all aspects of Sino- African relations as part of "South-South" cooperation. FOCAC became an alternative to the IMF, Bretton Woods, and the World Bank (Tulga, 2018).

Before the FOCAC, China Africa bilateral trade volume was 2 billion dollars (Wu and Bai, 2017). After the FOCAC, trade volume between China and African states started to increase and rose to 40 billion dollars in 2007 (FOCAC, 2012). This trade volume became $114 billion in 2010 (FOCAC, 2012). Chinese direct foreign investment to Africa also increased with the establishment of FOCAC. It was merely $500 million in 2003, but it rose to $ 9 billion in 2009 (Wu and Bai, 2017). The trade volume between China and Africa was $ 10.5 billion in 2000 (Wu and Bai, 2017). After the FOCAC, it started to rise (FOCAC, 2012). The volume of trade rose to 40 billion dollars in 2005 and in 2011 it became 166 billion dollars (FOCAC, 2012). After the establishment of FOCAC, in 2009, the PRC became the largest trading partner of Africa by passing the United States (Tulga, 2018).

This year's FOCAC meeting took place in Beijing, China. There was a news on South China Morning Post about this year FOCAC meeting on PRC's African Aid. According to Wong and Zhou (2018), PRC will double her financial aid and investment pledges to Africa. In this meeting, PRC's president Xi Jinping announced that PRC would waive the debts of the poorest African countries that have diplomatic ties with PRC.

President Xi said that PRC does not attach political strings to her investments to African statesunder the initiative, nor did it interfere in the internat affairs of African states. And, Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, said that Africa is not a zero-sum game. Africa's growing relationships with PRC do not come at anyone's expense.

The most important reason for these statements by the Chinese and Rwandan presidents is the debate among western scholars about whether China is neo-colonialist or not. Nowadays, PRC’s expanding role in the world and also the emergence of Chinese internationalization has been carefully analyzed not only by academics and business leaders but also by press professionals (Wang, 2010). China’s growing number of aid to Africa and its political and economic engagement with different countries are attracting more attention and analysis. Whether PRC is the neo-colonialist or not is located at the center of these analyzes.

In my opinion, it is too early to say that PRC is a neo-colonialist in Africa and we don't have enough evidence about this topic. But, in current case, according to economic data, we can not say that PRC is a neo-colonialist in Africa.



RELATED LINKS: 1) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327666346_The_African_views_on_China's_African_Policy
2) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323615624_African%27s_View_about_China%27s_African_Policy