inside each other for the fear of thespread of communism from the mainland into these two vital organizations. Any publicdissent, whether it was favoritism towards communism or criticism of the currentgovernment, was swiftly and harshly suppressed. Many people were silenced by thegovernment for their political ideals, to which most of them remained anonymous. However, the rumors of these actions and the fear they caused were enough to keep thelocal population in a state of obedience. In the years between 1960 to the mid 1970s,there were many high profile cases which caught the attention of the public. In a period of4 years, one person was sent to prison for attempting to start a political party, whileanother scholar was sent to prison for pro-independence ideals. (Rigger 1999, Pg71)Another aspect of the current regimes authoritarian tactics was the control isexerted over the mass media. It strictly controlled the number of licenses for newspapers,limited at thirty-one, of which the KMT had ownership of about a third. Many of thepapers were the mouthpieces for the government, praising the government and keepingsilent about the opposition. Many of the editors and owners of the larger newspaperoutlets had direct contact with members of the KMT, the purpose of which was to keepthe paper in line. Radio and television stations suffered more of the same control issuesfrom the KMT. Television programming was limited to the Mandarin language, with verylittle time allocated for programming in Taiwanese, as a way of bringing about the demiseof the Taiwanese language in favor of the Mandarin language. However, as seen today,the idea failed and Taiwan now a bilingual country. The programming that came acrossthe airwaves was strictly observed by the government, concentrating mainly on issues thegovernment chose for the public to be aware of, with very little information coming infrom outside of the country. (Rigger, 1999; 74).However it ...
