Reporting the cross-strait relationship: A comparative analysis of news coverage of the CCP’s 19th Congress by two Taiwan TV stations - AND - Taiwanese consciousness: The evolution of a sociopolitical construction

Essay 1: Due to unresolved cross-strait tension between China and Taiwan, Taiwanese media paid special attention to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s 19th Congress regarding China’s cross-strait policy towards Taiwan. By comparing the news of Sanli-E Television (SET) and Chungtian Incorporation (CTI), this paper studies how and why these two TV stations reported CCP's 19th Congress differently, aiming to connect their different perspectives with the political economy of each station. This paper uses two metaphors to demonstrate CTI and SET’s different reporting stances: the former aims to reinforce a strong image of China, whereas the latter attempts to further articulate the idea of Taiwan being a separate entity from China. These two media's different coverages resulted from the different interests, it is shown that Chinese capital’s influence on Taiwanese media has increased. Accordingly, this paper argues that China's policy would surely transform Taiwanese media's political position gradually. Essay 2: The intertwined relationship between Taiwan and China has long impacted on Taiwanese society and led to a critical debate around the political identity of Taiwanese people for nearly forty years, and the issue has remained unresolved. By using integrative literature review as the methodology, this paper divides modern Taiwan history from Japanese colonialization period to present Taiwan into five time periods, and studies Taiwanese political consciousness through a social constructionist viewpoint to explore the social context and various factors that provoked the development of Taiwanese subjective identity and the different characteristics involved in each stage. In conclusion, this paper argues the influence of political circumstances informs the constant evolution of a socially-constructed Taiwanese political consciousness against the backdrop of a pervasive Chinese national and cultural hegemony. This research should help contextualize and historicize the existing debates around Taiwanese and Chinese identities and consciousness in the contemporary sociopolitical moment both on the island and beyond.