China accused of faking Taiwan media’s GBA coverage

Beijing-controlled media source ChinaTaiwan has been accused of making up statistics on the Greater Bay Area (GBA) for propaganda purposes, according to a report by the island’s Liberty Times Net.

ChinaTaiwan is a national Chinese news website managed by the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council of China.

ChinaTaiwan recently published a news story on Taiwanese media’s coverage of the GBA, including statistics on the topics included in their coverage. In the report, Liberty Times Net was said to have covered the GBA 38 times, ranking third out of nine Taiwanese media outlets included in the report.

However, the report did not mention that most of the Liberty Times Net’s reports in May consisted of reminders to Taiwanese residents about China’s propaganda surrounding the GBA and the ‘one country, two systems’ policy

Despite the fact that Liberty Times Net had been issuing alerts to Taiwan residents against GBA propaganda, ChinaTaiwan still mentioned the coverage as if Taiwanese media outlets were giving positive reports on the GBA, writing that “with the increasing frequency of cross-strait exchanges, more and more Taiwanese media are paying attention to the development of [the] GBA.”

The statistics in the ChinaTaiwan report selected the top five topics focused on by Taiwanese media: “GBA economy surpasses Tokyo and New York”; “Mainland invites Taiwanese businessmen to visit GBA”; “Fujian, Guangdong, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong to create the world’s largest economic zone”; “Guangzhou GBA 5G port innovation center”; and “Dongguan robot industry base created by Guangdong and Hong Kong.”

Liberty Times Net countered the statistics by showing that their own GBA-related reports in May included only negative reports against the mainland’s government- backed media.

“It can be seen that China uses Taiwanese media as a propaganda tool and does not hesitate to make fake statistics,” wrote Liberty Times Net. JZ