Taiwan: Still Makin' One Thing Into Another

With all the focus on our IT industry here -- and Intel with another $500 million investment -- it's good to recall that in Taiwan real men still bash metal:

According to statistics compiled by Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI), Taiwan`s machinery exports reached US$3.851 billion or NT$122.1 billion in the first quarter of this year, up 13.4% or 9.7% from a year earlier.

Noteworthy is that after Taiwan`s legislative and presidential elections, Taiwanese companies, especially high-tech companies, have significantly increased their investment in production equipment on the island, with imports of machinery amounting to US$4.796 billion or NT$152.5 billion in the first quarter, surging 29.1% or 24.8% respectively from a year earlier.

Thanks to explosively growing orders from Europe, India, Russia, Brazil and other emerging countries, Taiwan`s major machine tool makers have run at full capacity throughout the second quarter of this year.

Speaking of making one thing into another, Ian Johnson in WSJ has a very interesting article on how folk deities in Kinmen, once fiercely anti-communist, are now being refashioned with the expected influx of Chinese.....

At least that's what their representatives say. The keeper of the temple of Lee Kuang-chi'en, a colonel in the Nationalist army who died fighting the Chinese in the 1940s, says Mr. Lee now wants to return to his homeland in peace. Su Ai-chih, a 67-year-old retiree and spiritual medium, says a woman who was drowned by Chinese soldiers and turned into a goddess has even asked believers for help in reconnecting with her family on the mainland. "The goddess possessed me and told me that she wanted to go home," she adds.

Temple keepers, mediums and others representing Kinmen's dozens of deities are confronting changing times. Relations have thawed considerably between China and Taiwan in recent years. Although Kinmen and neighboring Little Kinmen are still dotted with 44 anticommunist temples, many living inhabitants are less interested in waging military or ideological battles against their giant neighbor.

Finally, JapanFocus, generally a repository of high quality stuff, has a great article on the China vs Taiwan chequebook diplomacy in the Pacific:

Several Pacific Island nation governments are willing to “go with anybody” as long as it is lucrative. Selling votes at the United Nations is a common occurrence. Micronesian nations, as well as many Polynesian and Melanesian ones, regularly support virtually any resolutions proposed by the United States. Francis Hazel, director of The Micronesian Seminar, remembers how one day a television crew from Israel besieged his office in the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Pohnpei. "I wondered what they were doing in this city, which hardly appears on any world maps. Then I understood: the Israeli public was curious about this country which keeps joining the U.S., voting against all UN resolutions condemning Israeli actions in the Middle East."

But China and Taiwan are the biggest players in this game. They have been jockeying for position in the region with their willingness to work with any government in the region, no matter how corrupt or undemocratic, and to shower such friends with aid and grandiose gifts. China is, for instance, closely cooperating with the military government in Fiji. Government officials in the Pacific are being pampered and their incomes are boosted by countless lucrative trips to Taipei and Beijing, helping to support what is often described as a “per-diem mentality.” Kessai Note, president of the Marshall Islands, arrived in Taipei in June 2007 for a five-day visit (his sixth in the past five years), meeting Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian for a few hours, after which “the rest of his trip was private,” according to a report filed by the Asia Pulse news service.

Speaking of transformations, Taichung mayor Jason Hu is interviewed in Forbes, morphing from the Jason Hu we all know and love into a dynamic city mayor and foreign policy expert. Contemplating our rep for crime and corruption, the subway that still hasn't arrived, and the rapid changes in Kaohsiung, Taipei, Tainan, I-lan, and elsewhere in the last 15 years, all I can do is nod and go "uh-huh."

[Taiwan]