ARATS visit round up

The Financial Times says it all: Top China official to visit Taiwan.

The Taipei Times has a huge collection of stuff each day in a special feature. An article on taxi drivers parking to protest the Chen-Ma meeting. DPP Chair Tsai pens open letter. Taipei Times' review of world media outlets on the visit. Taiwanese bankers in China call for quick deal on cross-strait financial issues. The Taipei Times also editorializes on the heavy security surrounding ARATS Chairman Chen's visit, and the fact that in Taipei, ROC flags and other objects that might "offend" the colonialists from across the strait, like Tibetan flags, have been banned. In fact Taiwan News reports that police dispersed protesters for unfurling the national flag. On Monday a DPP legislator wrote a commentary on safeguarding Taiwan's national interests. The China Post has a complete rundown of the itinerary. AP reports on the protests over the visit, as does the Guardian and Reuters India. Good work, guys. TSMC calls for China, Taiwan cooperation on semiconductors. The DPP launched a three-day sit in to protest the visit. Taiwan News points out that Ma holds completely different positions on direct links than he did when he was head of the MAC.

MEDIA MOMENTS: Kudos to Ed Wong of the NYTimes for a very balanced article on the visit, and a miraculous rendition of the Formula:

The Chinese Communist Party sees Taiwan as a rebel province that split from China in 1949, when the KMT sought refuge on the island after losing the Chinese civil war, and must be brought back into the fold. Many Taiwanese prefer to maintain the current status quo of de facto independence, and some, especially members of the DPP, advocate formal independence.

Now that takes the same two sentences that all the others do, yet manages to get out both sides of the issue. Great work, Ed! Why can't all the media outlets do that?

Contrast the very fair NYT article, which manages to note that Ma is deeply unpopular and that many fear a sell-out, with former WaPo Beijing correspondent John Pomfret's bizarre WaPo blog posts on the Chen visit to Taiwan. It's OK right up to the moment it starts talking about the DPP, and then veers into a set of CCP talking points that have only the vaguest connection to reality, ignoring the widespread opposition to the feared sell-out, and Ma's deeply unpopularity for his "moderate" policies on China.

AFP reports Ma not to "budge an inch" on sovereignty. -- yet despite Ma's concrete downgrading's of Taiwan's sovereighty, for example, saying Taiwan is a "region", not a state, AFP does not report that. Instead we get a paean to Ma's greatness:

Relations with Beijing have improved dramatically since Ma came to power earlier this year and he has worked to boost business and tourism links with China following eight years of strained relations under a DPP government.

This paragaph is completely asinine -- it constructs a world where the DPP did not "work to boost business and tourism links" but instead "relations were strained" -- true enough, but nothing like the whole truth. In fact, with $100-$200 billion of investment in Taiwan, the DPP government was by far the most open to China in the island's history, and all the current negotiations simply follow paths blazed by the DPP. But nowhere does AFP acknowledge any of that reality. Nor does it recognize why relations "improved" -- because Beijing refused to talk to the pro-democracy side, and likes Ma the pro-China ideologue.

US Election: Reuters summarizes the respective positions of the two US candidates on Taiwan.

[Taiwan]