Best & Worst of CPAC's Free Speech Ratings: Taiwan

Taiwan’s score of 90% earned it a place as one of the best countries in CPAC’s inaugural Freedom of Speech Ratings.  

Taiwan, or the Republic of China, founded by Chiang-kai-shek as an exile from communist mainland China, is a democratic nation ruled by a president and unicameral parliament.  

CPAC examined the case of Clara Chou and Tsai Yu-chen, two talk show hosts in Taiwan, who were sentenced to 18 months in prison for aggravated slander against a beauty pageant winner, in its Freedom of Speech Ratings. Chou and Yu-Chen accused the pageant winner of conducting an affair with the father of the current mayor of Taipei.   

The two talk show hosts were sentenced to 18 months in prison for aggravated slander. However, the case was a legitimate prosecution for defamation since Chou and Yu-chen knowingly spread false and malicious information. Since prosecution of actual defamation is allowed under the US First Amendment, Taiwan is not considered to have any political prisoners, and Taiwan receives a Freedom of Speech score of 90%. If it had a 

constitutional guarantee of Freedom of Speech analogous to the US First Amendment, 

Taiwan would receive a score of 100%. 

Taiwan’s lack of political prisoners earns it a strong 90% rating. CPAC is encouraged by the freedom movement in Taiwan as threats from China heighten.  

Read the full brief here.

Not every case of imprisonment for speech gets widespread media attention. If you are aware of a case in which a person was imprisoned for speech and received a harsher sentence than the political prisoner who we feature in the scorecard, please send the details of the case to slaird2@conservative.org. To meet our methodological criteria, the person must be 1) imprisoned or sentenced to prison for speech that would have been protected under the US first amendment, 2) a citizen of the country in which they are imprisoned, 3) received a sentence of imprisonment for at least one month OR were imprisoned without being sentenced for at least 3 months 4) not imprisoned for any actual crime during the same period for which they were sentenced for a speech crime. 

CPAC vehemently opposes the views of many of the political prisoners featured in the Freedom of Speech Ratings. Political prisoners are featured in the Freedom of Speech Ratings for the purpose of revealing the state of legal Freedom of Speech protection in their countries. Political prisoners are selected based on the objective facts of their cases; each selected prisoner is the person who received the harshest sentence in that country for speech that would have been protected by the US First Amendment. CPAC stands for the right to Freedom of Speech for everyone, even people whose views we vehemently oppose.