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Muddying the waters
KENNY COYLE exposes the confusion and misinformation at the heart of Western media coverage of China and Taiwan
TURMOIL AHEAD: People walk in the rain ahead of the approaching Typhoon Muifa in Taipei, Taiwan, September 12 2022

WESTERN news media consistently counterpose China and Taiwan as distinct and even mutually exclusive entities.

The historical, cultural and even constitutional realities are quite different, if admittedly rather complicated to outsiders.

Let’s take the most basic point first. In most Western media accounts of the China-Taiwan issue, China is synonymous with the territory under the direct control of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but usage of the term Taiwan is sometimes deliberately ambiguous.

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