50-Year War of Words

TAIPEI, Taiwan —  The radio show called “Special Communications” was an unlikely hit, given that it consisted of announcers reading strings of numbers for 15 minutes.

Taiwan used the mind-numbing program in the 1980s to send coded messages to its spies in mainland China. But like many Taiwanese propaganda broadcasts, it could also be picked up locally. To the surprise of many at the government-run Radio Taiwan International, the show soon developed a cult following among Taiwanese.

Listeners, particularly former soldiers, started sending fan mail saying how much they enjoyed it, how it made them feel like secret agents and how they’d deciphered the code. “I’d think, how absurd,” said Chen Hsiao-ping, a 25-year veteran at the station. “Here I am reading this stuff, and I don’t even know what it means. How could they possibly understand?”

The glory days of “Special Communications” may be over, but Chen and her colleagues at Radio Taiwan still have plenty of work, as do members of the propaganda team at China’s Central People’s Radio Station, which is busy beaming programming the other way. Last year marked the 50th anniversary of mainland radio propaganda broadcasts into Taiwan and the 55th for Taiwan in the opposite direction.

Over the decades, the weapons have changed, the tactics refined, the ideology softened. Shows on investments, popular culture and tourism have largely edged out biting criticism and political dogma.

But, like two old soldiers locked in a wrestling grip, the broadcasts press doggedly on, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, outlasting even North and South Korea’s loudspeaker battle across their tense demilitarized zone.

“This isn’t just a broadcast,” said Cheryl Lai, president of Radio Taiwan International. “This is war. China sees it as a hot war. We see it as a cold war. But it’s still a war.”

Chen, the broadcaster, grows animated as she recalls her early days at the station. Recruited in 1978 at age 18, she was tested, her family and friends screened and her ideology reviewed for any hint of communist sympathy before she got a job as “professional political warfare agent,” as presenters were then called.

For most of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, propaganda airwaves in both directions were filled with hard-core screeds, slogans and denunciations. Around the time Chen joined, however, the Taiwanese intelligence service had a new psychological weapon against China -- Teresa Deng, a Taiwanese singer known for her gentle love songs. A new program mixed Deng’s music with soft-sell messages about the island.

The show, which lasted a decade, proved hugely successful among mainlanders battered by the tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and even inspired a catchphrase among them -- “I like the little Deng, not the big Deng” -- a suggestion that the singer’s popularity rivaled that of Chinese leader Deng Xiao- ping, who briefly served as Premier Chou En-lai’s deputy at the time.

Taiwan even floated balloons in China’s direction that were equipped with timers that, once set off, would burst the balloons, raining down leaflets and Deng cassettes. “Unfortunately, it was quite dependent on the wind,” said Hsiao Yu-jeng, a Taiwanese propaganda scriptwriter.

Another Taiwanese show during this period, dubbed the “Black Hole Program” by staff members, was so hush-hush that regular announcers weren’t even supposed to know of its existence. Eventually word leaked out that the project was producing fake “mainland” broadcasts, designed to trick Chinese listeners into thinking they were generated from Beijing, even as their content subtly undermined the communist regime’s messages.

A few hundred miles across the Taiwan Strait, the Central People’s Radio Station in Beijing also was working overtime to score points, shape minds and reach Taiwanese listeners with its worldview.

For about a decade after the national service began broadcasting Aug. 5, 1954, Taiwanese listeners who tuned in heard Communist Party summaries, production statistics and bitter denunciations of the Taipei government. Broadcasts encouraged Taiwanese to go on strike, rise up against their “American toady” government and renounce capitalism before a worker’s revolution swept Taiwan.

Mainland planners were also careful to include softer programming, particularly during big holidays such as the mid-autumn Moon Festival, to help temper the martial music and angry political attacks.

Any hint of softness vanished with the advent of the Cultural Revolution, however, as broadcasters were swept up in the social turmoil.

“The tone was so incredibly harsh that even mainlanders didn’t want to listen, let alone the Taiwanese,” said Chen Guo- xiong, a 40-year veteran of Taiwan propaganda at the Central People’s Radio Station.

Chou started to realize how severe the mainland’s propaganda broadcasts sounded to Taiwanese ears, and on Aug. 15, 1972, he initiated two key changes. Weather reports started to include Taiwan, and programs signed off with, “We wish you a good night, our Taiwan countrymen.”

“This was a huge turning point,” said Wang Xuemei, a radio professor with China Media University. “Not only did it send the message that we care about you. It was also very useful given that many Taiwanese live off the sea.”

The change was welcomed not only by Taiwanese listeners but also by some mainland announcers.

“It was a real relief, like having a conversation rather than shouting through a bullhorn,” said Liang Jihong, a senior editor in Beijing for China’s Taiwan service. “You still had your voice at the end of the day.”

On the Taiwanese side, announcers were required to carefully enunciate every word exactly as written, given the likelihood they were being heard on cheap Chinese radios far from transmission stations.

News voices on both sides had to be strong and serious. Feature voices could be softer. Music also was carefully chosen, with symphonies used for criticism and pop music for feature programs. Sweet female voices for shows aimed at soldiers. “Soldiers are strong and manly, so they need soft things to move them,” Liang said.

Sappy, wavering or seductive voices were unthinkable. In 1979, a Taiwanese anchor read a news broadcast in a highly emotional voice and was summarily fired. “Our voices represented Taiwan,” Chen said. “If they were shaky, someone might think Taiwan was shaky.”

Occasionally the broadcasts took on an ironic tone. After the 1969 American moonwalk, the Chinese were very upset because, according to their ideology, capitalism was supposed to be collapsing.

Playing off this insecurity, Taiwanese propaganda scriptwriter Kuo, who declined to give his first name, wrote an ironic drama called “Mao Tse-tung Lands on the Sun.”

“A moon landing isn’t such a big deal, we’ll have Mao land on the sun,” one of Mao’s aides says. “How can he do that given the high temperature?” the other asks. “It’s all right, he’ll land at night,” the first one counters.

It is difficult to assess the number of hearts and minds converted over the years by either side through these various campaigns. Nor has much scientific effort been expended to do so.

Occasionally, however, there were big propaganda coups. From the early 1960s through the early 1980s, both sides used radio broadcasts to lure fighter aircraft and ships across the strait with promises of glory and gold.

Taiwan was generally more aggressive and cumulatively threw more money at the program -- paying out more than 2 1/2 tons in gold bars. Periodically, it broadcast a menu of rewards that included the number of gold bars, based on what machine the defector arrived in; how the purse would be divided if two soldiers came together; and what job was guaranteed in the Taiwanese military -- always at a promotion over current Chinese rank.

Both sides lured more than a dozen aircraft and several ships. The record reward on the Taiwanese side went to mainlander Sun Tianqin, who received 770 pounds of gold for flying over in a MIG-21 jet in 1972.

“Whenever a defector came over, all of Taiwan got excited,” broadcaster Chen said. “We were especially proud and felt we were on the front lines of a war without missiles.”

One of the biggest purses for traveling the other way went to Taiwanese pilot Huang Zhi-cheng, who arrived in the mainland’s Fujian province in 1981 in an F-5E, for which he earned the equivalent of $800,000 at today’s exchange rates.

As China started reforming after 1978 in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and its gradual opening to the outside world, the character of the broadcasts on both sides started to change dramatically. The tone softened. And there was a growing emphasis on service programming, including shows on tourism, changing business regulations, shared Chinese culture and links with relatives on the other side.

Today, people-to-people contact across the strait has exploded, leading to a huge increase in the number of Chinese women married to Taiwanese men and of Taiwanese businessmen living on the mainland. Still, relations at the governmental level remain tense, part of the reason each side continues to spend millions annually on propaganda.

Broadcasters on both sides say they’re working to connect with a younger, more affluent “me generation” in a world where listeners have less time and more entertainment options.

“We’ve made our programs more diverse; we’re releasing news much faster, have more cultural programs and are adopting a milder, more service-oriented approach,” said Han Changjiang, head of the Taiwan Center at the Central People’s Radio Station.

At Radio Taiwan headquarters, security guards have replaced soldiers at the gate, although the old guardhouse remains in place with its foot-thick walls. In Beijing, two People’s Liberation Army soldiers vigilantly block the entrance to the Central People’s Radio Station. But once inside, the atmosphere is relatively relaxed.

Both sides say they expect broadcasts to continue for years to come.

“This will endure at least until the two sides are unified,” said the mainland’s Chen Guoxiong. “No one can replace us. We are doing something glorious, something that is pleasing to our ancestors.”

Magnier was recently on assignment in Taiwan. Special correspondent Tsai Ting-I in Taiwan and Bu Yang in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.