Min at The Utterance blogs on 90% of students can now enter college. Taiwan Echo has a great post at Taiwan Matters on Miss Fu and hearsay in Taiwan politics. Bushman on typhoon about to pummel the island this weekend w/maps and sat photos. Maddog points out how ridiculous the verdict in Ma favor's is. He also has the acquittal document online. ROC the Boat discusses the problems with Frank Ching's article in a Korean paper on Taiwan's UN entry. Taiwan Airpower goes back into the 1970s for Taiwan's campaign to acquire Harpoon missiles. Patrick Allard goes to a meditation center in Taichung. Kerim discovers that drivers exams are all about making money for the test center. Poagao attends a local protest to prevent the closing of a police station. bent has two excellent articles on the Ma Ying-jeou acquittal and Ma and the rule of law. That's Impossible, which has one good post after another, observes how A-bian has altered the international situation with respect to Taiwan in positive ways. fili is now in Taiwan! And he's exploring food. He's had a lot of great posts lately, be sure to have a look. Mark discusses Taiwan's economy vs. Korea's. Pinyin News on reclaiming taike. The Only Redhead blogs on "American time" in Taiwan.
MEDIA: Taiwan and Hong Kong are being marginalized by China. What should they do?
I Can't Wait Until We Get Costco: They treat the troops well as Taichung Dan notes.
[Taiwan]
According to the ATimes article:
ReplyDelete"Rather than wasting resources on symbolic gestures that prove Taiwan's sovereignty, such as its futile bids for membership in the UN under the name "Taiwan" that will be vetoed by China, Taiwan should focus on establishing itself as a beacon of democracy in Asia. As a thriving democracy that is economically integrated with the region, Taiwan can play a prominent role on the world stage irrespective of how many official diplomatic allies it has or how many international organizations it belongs to."
The position of the seems rather contradictory and seems to make the usual assumption that the only reason there is a separate Taiwan identity is because the government is pushing it. The author seems to forget that governmental policy is a reflection at least on some level of the electorate. Rather then being the driving force behind the development of a new identity, I'd say that the policies of the government (and the opposition parties for that matter) are merely a reflection of it, something a lot of commentators seem to forget. You can't demand on one hand that Taiwan be a beacon of democracy, while ignoring general public opinion on an issue this major simply cause it it is inconvenient for academics who think they have the world all figured out.