Between bites of tomato and cheese, let's take a look at the blog buffet...
The Foreigner blogs on the death of an icon of my misspent youth: Gary Gygax. May you always find the treasure at the bottom of the great Dungeon in the Sky, Gary. Avid cycler David has the list of March cycling events. Poagao has a few musings on the election. The Real Taiwan blogs on the butt crack, the all too visible result of the popular low riding jeans. I think there oughtta be a law.... Islaformosa on the latest Taiwan Beer Campaign. Wu Bai was better.... My Several Worlds has some wonderful lush photos and descriptions of their latest east coast trip. Thirsty Ghosts on the success of a Taiwanese monkey trainer in Japan. Laowiseass blogs on the differences between young people in China and here. A local reporter narrates the exciting, gruesome tale of her first crime story. Mad Minerva blogs on Taiwanese encounters with Chinese.
MEDIA: Reuters has an in-depth piece on the Tsou people and their attempt to preserve their culture. Euronews, insulted by KMT accusations, refuses to send a correspondent here -- everyone lost on that one. Intel's chip investment in China, with technology far more advanced than Taiwan's, has powerful implications for Taiwan's cross-strait policy. Japan Focus has hosted a couple of excellent articles. One discusses the impact of Asian Drivers -- the effects of rapid economic growth and economic structure in China and India -- on the developing world, while another is a chapter from the monumental work by Giovanni Arrighi on states and markets east and west. Interesting insights in both works. Also on tap is a piece that compares Brazil's experience with income inequality in the 60s and 70s with China's today. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on the Pentagon's report on China's military build up. Our local biotech industry keeps rising. How about that quake Tuesday night? Woke me up in Tainan. Scary. WHAT'S NOT THERE: We are three weeks from a major election for the presidency of a global technology player and a key flashpoint, and coverage in the progressive media and on progressive websites is still....zilch. Sadly, lefties remained mired in Cold War readings of East Asian politics that make understanding of Taiwan and its democracy almost impossible. More on that later.
TIDBITS: The Ministry of Transportation has a very useful website in Anglais and Chinois that gives local and intercity bus and train times, and can be used to order tickets and plan routes. Set your calendar for April, when there is a Thai holiday party held in a stadium in Taoyuan; the Bushman will be playing there, along with 20,000 local Thais. Dates and times when I get 'em. For those of you into board and strategy games, Chaon has the links to a local company that sells them.
RESOURCES: The NCKU international student association has a website and forum, the brainchild of the remarkable Fili, with resources about NCKU and Tainan.
EVENTS: Jerome Keating launches his new book Taiwan, the Search for Identity on Friday March 7th at 2 pm at the Taiwan Society offices, at 2/f #5 Cingdao E. Rd; (roughly behind the former Lai Lai Sheraton). Members of the Taiwan Association of University Professors (TAUP) and North American Taiwanese Professors Association (NATPA) as well as the Taiwan Society will be there to make comments on the book topic.
FROM THE MINISTRY OF THE TOTALLY SICK: fun with Big Brother. Don't miss the comments either. TOTALLY HILARIOUS: Stephen Colbert interviews Jennifer Lee, author of a book on eating with Chinese food (via Peking Duck).
[Taiwan]
Regarding the butt cracks, Would the law require all women to show them off or to cover them up? Hahah. No need to answer...
ReplyDelete"Reuters has an in-depth piece on the Tsou people and their attempt to preserve their culture."
ReplyDeleteIn-depth? The exact opposite: Strange, sad and contradictory issues abound in the hills of Chiayi, but you won't find any of them in this story.
I bet those hills of Chiayi abound with stories. But what can you do?
ReplyDeleteMichael
As for you taiwan bars, jokes about butt cracks are quite cheeky.
ReplyDeleteMichael, I'm very disappointed that you repeat the pan-Blue Intel line that somehow building a fab in China means there is pressure on TSMC and UMC.
ReplyDeleteTSMC and Intel do both make chips. However, maybe this is surprising, but, they are actually in totally different industries. Intel doesn't let anyone use its fabs and isn't setup to work that way. It designs mainly x86 mainstream computer CPUs, though its broadened out somewhat.
TSMC and its customers pretty much make every other kind of chip in the world (and there are a whole lot of them... just take a look at the insides of your cell phone).
Last SMIC is a sorry ass company. They started out with hype and right after starting sucking and have continued to suck ever since. That's really, honestly, the best way to describe them.
Take a look at a comparison of the stock prices of TSMC, UMC, and SMIC here. You could look at it this way. The company that is "all-in" when it comes to China sucks the most. The company that broke Taiwanese law and went partially into China is second sucky, and the company that dipped its toe in is doing the best. You draw your conclusions.
The problem Taiwan faces is a clustering effect. Will China be able to build an industry cluster that competes with Taiwan's? If Taiwan allows advanced facilities to move to China and upstream downstream players move too, that is a huge threat to Taiwan. Even if you're competitive, but if your upstream downstream are all in China, you are forced to move to. It's sort of a momentum thing. You have it all or you have nothing.
Intel exists on its own. It is "vertically integrated" (well, this is weird to say since everyone use to be like this and TSMC founded a new business model when they said we only manufacture the chips and you do the design). It's a castle that doesn't interact with anyone else. They don't share their technology with anyone and that includes China.
Anon, it may be the pan-Blue line tha the Intel fab means something, but the pressure is definitely being felt by the DPP, whatever the reality is.
ReplyDeleteMichael
Thanks for the great comment, BTW, anon. Much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteFrom the technical point of view, even though Intel is not an open foundry, by building a foundry in China Intel will allow the Chinese even more access to gain (read "steal") advanced technology.
ReplyDeleteTaiwan has to keep moving fast lest it loses its semiconductor technology edge with China.
Re Jerome Keating's book launch - just a reminder that the street signage will not say "Cingdao" East Road, but Qingdao East Road. ~sigh~
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking! Xie-xie! As for Taiwanese encounters with Chinese, my family could tell you STORIES.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a wrinkle too: third-party encounters. Some of my American friends have encountered mainland Chinese. The American (i.e., not Asian) friends have heard about Taiwan from me, but if they say something about it to the PRC people, the mainlanders will start lecturing them too (and saying things like, "Oh, you've been brainwashed by Taiwan splittist propaganda," etc.)
Ah, well. Equal opportunity browbeating?
Cheers,
MM
I read the Mad Minerva entry. I found her answer to be a cop-out. The guy asked her where she was from and she replied: "My family is from Taiwan." Why didn't she say she was American instead? Given her response, I think it was not beyond the pale for him to ask her whether she considered herself Chinese or Taiwanese. It's a question Taiwanese have been asking themselves for quite a long time.
ReplyDeleteJerome Keating is terribly psycotic - even attacked me in one of his emails and also proclaimed "people like you (me) that claim the KMT is a better choice for Taiwan than the DPP should go get couseling, see a psychiatrist" He even posted the phone numbers of several "help" centers in Taiwan for psycotic or socially challenged people in Taipei.
ReplyDeleteJerome Keating is way, way past his due date - His writtings are incoherant rants (like mine) but people embrace him simply because
"Hes green".
I would never buy Jeromes book because as with Jeromes statement for me to go see a shrink because I did not love the DPP like he did - What comes out of Jerome's Brain is an aberation of the truth. A 100% biased, pro DPP meth-rant distilled through absolute hatred for the KMT party.
Very few folks seeking the truth would read Jerome Keatings writings. There is no truth when one takes sides and writes about the opposition.
Fuck you Prince Roy. I am Taiwanese American and I guarantee you that in the encounter described by Mad Minerva, the question was asked with malicious and politically charged intent. She copped out because many Taiwanese don't want to pick a meaningless fight with a Chinese stranger that you can bet 99% (actually, my personal experience meter reads that at 100%, but I'll let you have the 1%) of the time has some ideological bone to pick with you.
ReplyDeleteA cop out? If you are my friend or even if you are not and you ask me in a genuinely curious manner whether I think I'm Chinese or Taiwanese, I will give you an honest answer. If you are a stranger and EVERY other encounter I've had with someone Chinese that asks me a question like that ends up the start of a provocation, then what the FUCK do you think is an appropriate response?
I can't believe you work for the State Department.
Yes, Chinese just don't get it, it is so deeply ingrained. I was reading an interview about a Chinese teacher in Canada who was doing some community work, and suddenly in the midst of this interview, after she said she was apolitical, out came The Line: we have to stop saying we are Toison Chinese or Taiwanese Chinese, and accept that we are all Chinese.
ReplyDeleteIt's like a religion.
Why does anyone have to "accept" that they are Chinese? What a ridiculous, authoritarian, and highly political command!
Sorry, I have to go now to work on my acceptance speech for being Italian....
Michael
Trace: People embrace Jerome Keating because he is a knowledgeable, smart and experienced Taiwan resident who speaks the truth, not because he is "Green".
ReplyDeleteI think for the most part, if the KMT would stop trying to sabotage democracy/civil governance here (perfect examples, the 2 step vote, boycotting referendums, Lein Chan's trip to China the day after the ASL was passed, not passing the budget on time, not allocating $ for the military, etc. etc. etc.), many people wouldn't care about "color". It would come down to who is intelligent and who can guide Taiwan through the rough water we are about to enter.
Regarding Intel:
ReplyDeleteOne of the reason's Costa Rica spilt with Taiwan was it's "blooming" commerce with China. However, 95% of it consists of "exports to Intel", meaning intra-company, international part deliveries. So, the geopolitics of big business does affect Taiwan. Intel may be a self-containing unit, but it still serves its purpose as an useful excuse.
Furthermore, if those big players decide to leave Taiwan out, for strategic economic reasons -which have little to do with politics and a lot with cost cutting- then the island will be marginalized more and more. If it is left out of the global loop, we're in deep trouble.
@richard
ReplyDelete1) Intel wouldn't be investing in China if it thought its technology would just be stolen. They aren't a charity.
@ticoexpat
2) Well, but Intel and AMD never ever built fabs in Taiwan, so I still don't get why you see it as a loss. The whole original argument was that the Intel fab was somehow competitive with Taiwan's fabs. Taiwan is so much higher up on the value chain than Costa Rica is. Manufacturing in terms of putting together the chips on a single circuit board has almost all moved to China, so it's not going to give China any more of an advantage in that piece of the process than it already has. So I don't see your point.
What Taiwan could do that would be useful and more appropriate is try to get Intel to have an R&D center in Taiwan. That would be something Taiwan wouldn't want to miss out on and where it has a natural comparative advantage as opposed to many other countries.