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the fire of a rocket over Japan by North Korea (1998), the abnormal weather patterns
(1997) and the U.S. pullout from the Kyoto Protocol (2001).
It is illuminating to see how China, Japan and Taiwan are mentioned not only by
their own news services, but by news from other national settings as well. For the sake of
comparison, this paper has also investigated how the above nations were perceived by
news sources other than its own. Table 2 lists results from the rankings of events in
relation to a nation/territory by its own agency and other news services.
(Table 2 About Here)
How each news service ranked events related to its own nation has been analyzed in the
previous paragraphs. The focal point here is in what ways China, Japan and Taiwan were
of interest to each other’s news services. First, China’s international diplomacy seemed to
be recognized by both Central News and Kyodo, and China’s WTO bid was also
considered by both to be of significance. Kyodo, however, also featured the death of the
late Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1997 in its top ten list of that year.
China’s military power caught the attention of both Central News and Kyodo, but in
different ways – the Japanese news source was interested in the Chinese nuclear tests in
1996 while its Taiwanese counterpart followed closely the mid-air collision between a
U.S. surveillance aircraft and a mainland Chinese fighter jet in 2001. The reasons should
be obvious: the Japanese have always been an adamant opponent of nuclear tests
worldwide, and the mid-air collision was a result of the U.S. effort to monitor Chinese
military exercise along the coast with Taiwan as the primary imaginary target. Both
Central News and Kyodo gave prominence to Beijing’s winning bid to host the 2008
Olympic Games (2001). When the Chinese exiled writer and political dissident, Gao
Convention