I've been watching DPA for some time now, and the way it presents the news regrettably has not changed........the latest piece refers to Taiwan independence activists as separatists and attempts to blame them for the fall in the stock market (no, I kid you not).
Taiwan stocks shed more than 3 per cent over political uncertaintySince Taiwan was never part of China, independence supporters here are not "separatists." Only Beijing uses that term for the democracy and independence side in Taiwan's politics. Sad to see it here. But more on that....
Taiwan stocks shed more than 3 per cent Thursday, over possible Taipei-Beijing tension arising from upcoming anti-China demonstrations. The TAIEX index fell 150.89 points, or 3.19 per cent, to close at 4,579.62.
Analysts attributed the fall to the plunge of major Asian stock markets - with South Korean shares dipping more than 9 per cent and Japanese shares down more than 7 per cent in mid-morning trading - and possible cross-strait tension arising from anti-China protests planned Saturday by Taiwan separatists.
On the stock market, the DPA's title unblushingly attributes the stock fall to political uncertainty. What political uncertainty? There is no "uncertainty" here! The government is stable, the opposition party peaceful, and the public is hardly in a riotous mood. The DPA has created instability where none exists! Sorry folks, but a large peaceful rally does not display "uncertainty". Quite the opposite! It shows the stability and order of the political system here.
Note that the "analysts" are unnamed. Who were they? A-chen the taxi driver? The KMT central standing committee? And also observe DPA's bizarre logic on the market. Based on the information given in the text, we can see that....
...the Taiwan market fell 3%In other words, the fall in the Taiwan market was less than half that of the other markets. So why didn't the headline read Taiwan separatists buoy stock market, prevent large fall? After all, that's what the DPA's evidence says. The claim by unnamed "analysts" that political rallies occurring two days in the future cause the stock market to fall is ridiculous, and appears to be little more than a reported smear with no balancing information.
...the Japan market fell 7%
...the South Korea market fell 9%
But those "separatists" are also smeared in another, uglier way. Look at the last sentence:
The separatists are opposed to President Ma Ying-jeou's seeking peace with China, accusing him of sacrificing Taiwan's sovereignty to improve ties with China, which they said would eventually lead to Taiwan's unification with the mainland as a Chinese province.How about that opening phrase, where "separatists" are portrayed as opposed to "peace." It's good that an explanation follows, but it practically accuses the "separatists" of supporting a situation of non-peace -- inviting the reader to envision the "separatists" as terrorists, if not warmongers. The reality is that it is China, not Taiwan independence supporters, that wants war and threatens it repeatedly.
DPA's home page is here. It says....
Virtually every newspaper in Germany is a customer of dpa and all the country’s national television stations which broadcast national news take the main German language service “dpa-Basisdienst”. Almost all the regional radio stations in the country take this service too.Ugh. For the editorial board at HQ, write info@dpa.com. There is another email, presse@dpa.com, but if you carefully look at the email, there appears to be a mistake, a [p] left off the address. UPDATE: press@dpa.com and resse@hbg.dpa.de do not appear to work. info@dpa.com appears to have gone through.
UPDATE: J Michael Cole complains about the same thing.
[Taiwan]
19 comments:
That paragraph makes no sense. I don't understand how they can be separatists AND fear that Ma will make Taiwan a province of China at the same time.
For them to be separatists, wouldn't Taiwan have to already be a provice of China?
Come on,you dont know any thing about Taiwan independence, though you live in Taichung. DO you know the official full name of Taiwan is Republic of China?
"...the Taiwan market fell 3%"
Well, the stock market can only fall a maxmium of 3.5% these days. But actually, the restriction is even more severe than that because the restriction is a 3.5% fall on every single stock in the Taiex. That means, it would take every single stock falling 3.5% for the overall stock market to fall 3.5%.
This is the most shocking policy I have seen the Ma-Liu government announce. Just a month ago, they were contemplating allowing shorting of all stocks in the Taiwan stock market. Although big, international investors don't have a very good name right now, it would pave the way for foreign investment to come back to Taiwan. Shorts provide liquidity in the market and can counteract bubbles.
Under the current policy, liquidity these past couple of days has fallen to the lowest level in 7 years and is only a third of its normal volume. What is liquidity and why should I care? Liquidity just means when you need to convert to cash, you know you can sell. Liquidity has a price, which you can easily see in the higher interest rates you get from CDs, which you get because you give up liquidity. Mutual funds invested in Taiwan need liquidity because investors may buy and sell at any time and thus they need to be able to buy and sell TAIEX stocks at any time.
What is so utterly shocking, is this policy shows the government is not serious economically either in its expertise or in its willingness to implement reforms that may hurt in the short-term. In fact, they are even willing to regress if they think it might score a few points in public opinion! There is nothing good that can come out of stopping the stock price of a company with falling prospects from falling. It's like putting makeup on a bleeding gash.
I think there was a lot to dislike about Ma, but my estimation is that many Taiwanese temporarily suspended all that because they wanted to see economic reforms. What we have seen instead is a lot of supposed economic experts completely bumbling economic policy.
Here's a little advice for those looking to move in on the stock market on cheap valuations--as long as the restrictions are in effect, stay far, far away from the TAIEX. The US or other markets would be a much better bet.
According to the German version of the page the correct address would be: presse@hbg.dpa.de
Taiwan or at least the western part was part of Qing Dynasty China before 1895 wasn't it?
Describing the 1025 demonstration this afternoon, DPA had a wire story that referred to the opposition as "right wing" separatists. How odd that a wire service based in Germany, of all places, would be so ignorant of the meaning of "right wing," to say nothing of the insult this represents to all those, Taiwanese and foreigners, who support Taiwanese independence. Sent them a quick e-mail; the later version of the story had dropped the "right wing" and referred to the DPP as "pro-independence." Don't know if this was the result of my e-mail, but at least something made the people down in Berlin see the light.
Just submitted a comment to The Earth Times where DPA's article appears. Don't know how long it takes for it to show up though:
"The fact-twisting imagination in this article is amazing.
Since Ma Ying-Jeou became President of Taiwan in May, TAIEX index had been suffering daily percentage drop often larger than the dropping trend of other countries. Many attributes this to Ma's incompetence.
Now, one day before Taiwanese anti-Ma demonstration, TAIEX dropped only 3.19% while the stock markets of S. Korea and Japan, as the author pointed out, dropped 9% and 7%, respectively. If there's any connection between Taiwanese anti-Ma protest, the only conclusion ANY reasonable person could reach is that the anti-Ma protest actually prevents TAIEX from dropping like it used to.
I wonder why the authoer, DPA, couldn't even see the ironic conflict between the fact he/she pointed out and the conclusion he/she reached.
The author also misled readers by painting the demonstration as an "anti-china" one. In fact, it's an "anti-Ma" protest."
Clearly this was taken off the wires from another agency by the dpa. Remember that most wire news being circulated begins as a government press release, and simply get regurgitated verbatim. I notice the typo errors in the article seem like Chine-speaking errors.
DPA doesn't hesitate to displays its bias in articles below :
Taiwan separatists protest government's pro-China policies
Taiwan separatists protest government's pro-China policies (Roundup)
The titles say it all.
I think someone in dpa's English service might be Beijing's Manchurian Candidate, writing stuff like that...
Working as a journalist in Germany, where dpa is definitely the most important news agency, I never noticed expressions like "seperatists" in the German service when it comes to Taiwan. My impression always was they more or less use the same half-flawed standard paragraphs that every other agency also puts at the end of their texts to "explain" the situation.
I will check it out and make sure next time I have access to all of dpa's German news bulletins, but until then my best guess is that what you noticed is a problem of dpa's English service only. Let's hope I am not mistaken.
Another thing: our chancellor just had talks with the Chinese government, and apparently they "lectured" Mrs. Merkel on Tibet and Taiwan. Wonder what that might have been about...
The article I linked earlier:
Taiwan separatists protest government's pro-China policies
that appears on M&C (http://www.monstersandcritics.com), shows up on The Earth Times too, with "separatists" in the title being replaced with "pro-independence groups":
Taiwan pro-independence groups protest government's pro-China policies
Note that the url behindstill shows the original word "separatists", which, I belive, shows that the word "separatists" was put there by DPA, not by M&C.
The contents of two articles are identical, with the "right-wing opposition" remark in there.
There is nothing wrong with being "right wing." In fact, most European countries are now being run by "right wing" parties. The DPP is probably not right wing, though, so describing it that way is not too factual.
Also, it is very possible to be "right wing" and also support Taiwan independence. I don't know what party that would be and if they are in the opposition, perhaps the TSU?
Red A
In my opinion, simply seperating parties into right and left wing is too simplistic. A better way might be a X-Y scale representing economic/political stances. So on the economic scale, you can have pure communism to the extreme left, and pure capitalism to the extreme right. On the political scale you can have conservative to the right and liberal to the left. So you can have a party of different combinations like capitalistic liberal etc. And you can sort of position all the different parties around the world into this scale.
Taiwan is even more complicated due to its national identity crisis and indepedence/unification stances. So you can add a Z-axis to the scale to represent this.
But even this type of scale is too simple to represent the complexity in Taiwan politics. Take the KMT for example. Many view their economic policy as more open/capitalistic, but is that really the case? During their administration, a lot of big cooperations are government owned, and runned inefficiently for years. Some of them only go through more privatization recently under DPP admin. They said they are open, but mostly they only concern about open market with China, and often ignore the importance of trade with the US, Japan and SE asia. But they seem to have more friendly ties with big cooperations, which is often viewed as a trait of a more economic "right wing" party. Many say KMT is more conservative...but are they really? I think they are conservative about Chinese culture. But do they even understand Taiwan's traditional value etc? Also, on opening up (surrendering) to China, they are charging full speed ahead. That's not what a conservative party would do usually. Plus Ma often do those running/biking/swimming with short/tight pants to show off his "sexy" body...is that conservative?
So is KMT really a capitalistic/conservative/unification party? Probably close, but not 100% because DPP seems to have done more in privatization, trying to trim down government size etc, and being more cautious in dealing with China. I am sure you can only scale the party, but you can't really describe them with one word description. Because a lot of them are somewhere in between.
But indeed I can see there is room for a more capitalistic/conservative/indepedence party in Taiwan...and I imgaine if this party can gain a foot hold in the political arena DPP and this party have the potential to completely wipe out KMT. But the problem is...the current political environment doesn't allow this party to exist at all, I think.
Also, it is very possible to be "right wing" and also support Taiwan independence. I don't know what party that would be and if they are in the opposition, perhaps the TSU?
Huh? It is not only a possibility but a reality in the US. People who support Taiwan independence are majority "righ wingers."
Here's a little advice for those looking to move in on the stock market on cheap valuations--as long as the restrictions are in effect, stay far, far away from the TAIEX. The US or other markets would be a much better bet.
First, I don't like Ma's policy on this, either. However, I think Ma's focus, so is the public's focus, on TAIEX is wrong. I am worry about TW dollar valuation even more.
P.S. I blame Chen fully on screwing up Taiwan's financial system. :) I am biased.
Humm...Arty, I am pretty sure 蕭萬長 was the one that screwed up Taiwan's financial system. Chen's administration is the one that tried to wipe his ass...whether he did a good job wiping the ass I don't know, depending on people's opinions.
arty you are a complete waste of a college education. You said previously you studied economics. Tell me how the Chen administration messed up Taiwan's economic system? Peng Huai-nan is probably one of the best central bankers in the world and was awarded for that several years in a row. Taiwan's current problems are almost all related to a global slowdown and ensuing export slowdown rather than stemming from bad loans. In fact, it was the DPP that fixed the bad loan problem left over by the last KMT administration.
Where are all the Blue cockroaches saying how great S. Korea and Hong Kong are today (that includes supposedly economically informed you Arty)? Tell me again how good it is for Taiwan to be relying on the Chinese tourist faucet that China can decide to turn on and off at will?
What I wouldn't give to see all these pundits put on a talk show watching taped watching clips of what they were saying a year or even just a half year ago and trying to defend themselves...
It's not just the "external" environment is bad. Some places were found to be in really big asset bubbles, like S. Korea's currency, like HK and China's stock and real estate markets. They are paying a huge price now for their mistakes.
Come on arty, say something that tries to make sense at least...
Tell me how the Chen administration messed up Taiwan's economic system? Peng Huai-nan is probably one of the best central bankers in the world and was awarded for that several years in a row. Taiwan's current problems are almost all related to a global slowdown and ensuing export slowdown rather than stemming from bad loans. In fact, it was the DPP that fixed the bad loan problem left over by the last KMT administration.
Do you want specific example? Let's see did Rebar crisis occurred under Chen's administration. Also some mergers of banks just look and fishy. You will find out soon at expansive of Taiwan's people's livelihood.
Come on arty, say something that tries to make sense at least...
For people like you, I feel sorry for. I hope you listen to me awhile ago and sell your retirement holding if it's in equity. Btw, I don't want you to understand. If people like you do understand. It is bad for me to make money shorting your life saving :). Btw, calling name (cockroaches) will not further your cause.
arty:
Rebar crisis occurred under Chen's administration. Also some mergers of banks just look and fishy.
Yeah? Which mergers? Oh, you mean Taishinjin? What? STILL can't find anyone to prosecute? Who's in power now? Are you still going to claim political interference?
Rebar was bad. He was also central in the power structure of the KMT. It also had zero impact on Taiwan's overall economy.
Anyways, I shouldn't expect more from someone as deep-Blue as you. Just look at how many Blue-suckers lost money in Taiwan's stock market. Let me remind everyone that Taiwan's stocks has fallen just like the rest of the world's but it first bubbled near and after the election, when the rest of the world was already hurting, then crashed afterwards.
This is directly the result of pan-Blues thinking that Taiwan could be different from the rest of the world. Ma's sorry ass Cabinet has signaled to the markets that Taiwan's performance is going to be WORSE than average.
Remember in making comparisons that Taiwan was not in any kind of bubble except a mild real estate one, so really, comparison to an average that includes countries with idiotic monetary policies (Korea, China, the US) really doesn't do justice.
I guess if you look at it another way, Blues have shown rare consistency and integrity in all this. They did, after all, put the money where their mouths were. But unfortunately, you were all very, very wrong about Ma and even if everyone in stocks in Taiwan lost money, you lost a lot more a lot more quickly.
It's interesting. I'm really, really curious what KMT party assets are invested in or were invested in throughout all this.
Rebar was bad. He was also central in the power structure of the KMT. It also had zero impact on Taiwan's overall economy.
Anyways, I shouldn't expect more from someone as deep-Blue as you. Just look at how many Blue-suckers lost money in Taiwan's stock market.
Deep-blue losing money? I invested in inverse ETF and hedge with slight forward ones. Sorry, I even shorted Taiwan stock...but don't get mad. :) Oh, btw, Rebar is DPP's doing but you can keep blaming on KMT. It is cool with me.
Remember in making comparisons that Taiwan was not in any kind of bubble except a mild real estate one, so really, comparison to an average that includes countries with idiotic monetary policies (Korea, China, the US) really doesn't do justice.
At least US, China, Korea, and etc. have a bubble to pop. Taiwan does even have one, yet it still popped. LOL. Btw, you do realize that the strongest currencies are Japan Yen, China RMB, and US dollars at this moment. I will repeat again, I am really worry about Taiwan's dollars!!! If you think Taidex is bad, here comes Arty's STUPID prediction: Wait a month...and you will realize what I am talking about Taiwan's currency (okay, I could be dead wrong here).
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