Wang Wang: The Power Shift from the King of Rice Snacks to a Media Behemoth

30-Second Overview: The story of the Wang Wang Group is one of the most dramatic transformations in Taiwan’s corporate history. It began as a canning factory in Yilan, leveraging technical cooperation with Japan to develop rice snacks, which swept the island in the 1980s and successfully entered the Chinese market. However, when founder Tsai Ing-min purchased the China Times, CTV, and CTV News in 2008 under his personal name, Wang Wang ceased to be merely a food brand, becoming entangled in the center of controversies surrounding cross-Strait politics, press freedom, and media monopoly. This article explores how the enterprise transformed from "snacks for children" into a "beast that influences democracy."

In 1976, Tsai Ing-min, a wealthy youth from Dihua Street in Taipei, assumed the general manager position of his father’s business, "Yilan Food," at just 19 years old. At the time, he was completely unfamiliar with financial statements, incurring a loss of NT$100 million in his first year, and was mocked by the business community as a "prodigal son" ¹. To wash away this stigma, he repeatedly visited the major Japanese rice snack manufacturer "Iwatsuka Seika," waiting outside their doors for two years until he moved founder Masao Ezuguchi, securing the crucial technology license ². In 1983, the "Wang Wang" brand was officially born; the logo of the "Wang Zai" boy, striding proudly with eyes rolled back, subsequently became a collective memory spanning the two sides of the Strait.

From Prodigal Son to Cross-Strait Rice Snack King

Tsai Ing-min attributes Wang Wang’s success to "divine blessing" and "daring to charge forward." In 1992, seizing the timing of China’s reform and opening-up, he established his first factory in Changsha, Hunan. He adopted a strategy of "free sampling," allowing hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren to taste Wang Wang Snow Cakes for free, rapidly opening up the market. By the late 1990s, Wang Wang had become China’s largest rice snack manufacturer, and Tsai’s wealth surged accordingly, allowing him to retain the title of Taiwan’s wealthiest individual for many years.

📝 Curator’s Note: Wang Wang’s rise is less a business myth and more a microcosm of Taiwan’s first generation of businesspeople accurately capturing the "China dividend."

However, this business model, heavily dependent on the Chinese market, laid the groundwork for future political controversies. Wang Wang’s success in China fostered deep relationships with local authorities. In 2009, Global Views Monthly revealed that Tsai Ing-min had met with Wang Yi, then Director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, prior to acquiring the China Times Group. The report, titled "Report to the Director, We Bought the China Times," triggered collective anxiety in Taiwanese society regarding the infiltration of "red media" ³.

The 2008 Acquisition That Reshaped Taiwan’s Media Landscape

On November 4, 2008, Tsai Ing-min, acting in his personal capacity, invested NT$20.4 billion to acquire the China Times Group, which was facing a financial crisis. This transaction defeated Jimmy Lai of Next Media, who also intended to acquire the group ⁴. Tsai admitted during public hearings that he had previously found joy in running food businesses, stating that he bought the media to "fight a battle for personal integrity," hoping to prevent outsiders from misunderstanding him as merely a profit-driven businessman ⁵.

However, events took a different turn. After the establishment of the Wang Zhong Media Group, its editorial policy and Tsai’s personal stance became highly synchronized. In 2012, during an interview with The Washington Post, Tsai made remarks such as "I know it wasn't true that that many people died" regarding the June 4 Tiananmen Incident, causing a major uproar ⁶. Subsequently, the Wang Zhong Group faced accusations from academia and civil society that the acquisition of the Zhongjian System TV stations would create a "media beast," leading to the outbreak of the "Anti-Media Monopoly Movement," a key moment in Taiwan’s democratic history.

📝 Curator’s Note: When a seller of senbei begins selling opinions, Taiwanese people discovered that behind the sweetness of snacks may lie the bitterness that affects the operation of democracy.

Cease and Desist Letters and Lingchi: The Privatization of Media Power

Wang Wang’s most controversial conduct lies in using media as a tool for personal attacks. In 2009, the Wang Zhong Group sent legal cease and desist letters to scholars and journalists who criticized its acquisition, such as Kuan Chung-hsiang, Cheng Hsiu-ling, and Lin Hsing-fei. This was an extremely rare precedent in Taiwan’s press history of media suing critics ⁴. Additionally, then-Legislative Councilor Yeh I-ching was subjected to targeted attacks by Wang Zhong-affiliated media for over 30 news items across three consecutive days after she demanded Tsai Ing-min submit authorization documents in the Legislative Yuan. Yeh described this as "lingchi" (death by a thousand cuts) ⁷.

This "those who follow me prosper, those who oppose me perish" style ultimately led to the full-scale outbreak of the "Reject China Times" movement in 2012. Tens of thousands of students and citizens took to the streets, protesting media monopoly and speech censorship. Tsai defended himself in public hearings as a "dog in the water," claiming he was undergoing "ideological review," but the public saw a power holder with newspapers and TV stations attempting to redefine Taiwan’s journalistic professionalism ⁵.

After the Pivot: Wang Wang’s Position in Contemporary Taiwan

To this day, the Wang Wang Group remains a multinational food giant, but its social image in Taiwan has completely detached from the simple snack brand of the 1980s. In 2020, CTV News Channel, due to repeated violations and internal control failures, ultimately failed to receive license renewal from the NCC and was removed from cable television, viewed as a delayed conclusion to the anti-media monopoly movement.

In recent years, Tsai Ing-min has begun operating the self-media account "Wang Bo Jiang Gu" (Uncle Wang Tells Stories), attempting to reshape his personal and corporate image through storytelling. Meanwhile, his second son, Tsai Wang-chia, has gained attention from many young netizens on social media with a humorous and down-to-earth image. This PR strategy attempting to "depoliticize" is striving to find a new foothold in Taiwan’s highly polarized society.

📝 Curator’s Note: We still eat Wang Wang senbei, but now with every bite, what may surface in our minds is not just the taste of childhood, but a deep reflection on the power structure behind that boy with rolled-back eyes.

References