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Tsai was roundly condemned by Taiwanese of virtually all political stripes earlier this year after he told a Washington Post reporter that accounts of Chinese security forces killing hundreds if not thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators near Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 were vastly overinflated. The accounts are widely accepted in the West as well as in Taiwan. Tsai returned to the political limelight in September when he underwrote the voyage of a flotilla of 50 Taiwanese fishing vessels to a group of islands between Okinawa and Taiwan claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan. While the fishermen themselves said their action was meant only to underscore their fishing rights in the area, Tsai's China Times newspaper quickly followed through with an editorial calling on China and Taiwan to work together to pursue a joint claim to the islands. Under Lai's ownership, Apple Daily has emerged as one of Taiwan's most popular newspapers, leveraging a combination of sex, scandal and celebrity gossip to win over many of the island's readers. But it has also maintained a fiercely independent stance on political issues, differentiating itself from most other Taiwanese media outlets, which tend to be partial to one or the other of the island's two large political parties. Political scientist Lo Chih-cheng of Taipei's Soochow University said that if Tsai insists on Apple Daily cleaving to a clear-cut pro-China line, its sales could quickly plummet. However, he said, he still expected the publication to pull its punches on sensitive China-related issues including Tibet and human rights because Tsai, Wang and Koo all have extensive business interests on the mainland. Lai, who has a reputation as an anti-China gadfly, has clashed bitterly with Tsai in the past, most notably over their fierce competition to acquire the China Times Group in 2008. His desire to unload the Taiwan portion of Next Media began after he complained that Taiwanese officials
-- possibly for political reasons -- were making it impossible for him to run his Next TV venture at a profit.
[Associated
Press;
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