The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has its paper on the China stimulus online here. The media is also reporting government plans to stimulate the development of more industrial clusters, and to encourage consumer spending.The Wild Strawberries protest has entered its tenth day. The Taipei Times says that Ma has invited the students to negotiate with him. As if in response to the student protests, now going on in several cities, the Liberty Times said today that the jiao guan system, the posting of military officers to universities, is going to be revitalized and revived. In the martial law era these officers functioned as political officers who kept an eye on student political thinking. Today they do various administrative and counseling tasks, as well as teach the required courses in military science that all university students must take. Because this system is overwhelmingly and reliably pro-KMT and many within it worked to influence the students in that direction, the DPP had frozen the system and had been slowly reducing its influence and size. It is too early to say whether this represents a long-term move to politicize the university system, whose administrative apparatus already tends to be strongly pan-Blue, but it is not a hopeful sign. The media is also reporting that former Kaohsiung Mayor and DPP Presidential candidate Frank Hsieh is starting an alliance of lawyers to help future 'victims' of 'police abuse.'
The Solomons Star has a great article on the state of our democracy here. It's like reading news from that alternate universe I sometimes visit. Cindy Sui has a more measured but definitely good article on the Chen Shui-bian detention for BBC.
The net was abuzz with the report that Peru had referred to
If you find the political news too depressing, there is always this poetic article extolling the scenic wonders of Taiwan from Andrew Jeffords in the Financial Times.
[Taiwan]
10 comments:
1) The DPP to its great discredit did change some of its positions once it had the presidency. The Parade and Assembly Law is a good example of that.
2) However, opposing the Jiaoguan system isn't an example of DPP just making a powerplay. The DPP didn't oppose the Jiaoguan system at high schools and universities because they were reliably pro-KMT. They opposed it because they are precisely "political officers" (fully military with ranks and everything) that have no business interfering in civilian matters. It's not who they support, it's just ridiculous regardless of who they support. The whole idea of officers that are missioned to endear themselves to students and to get to know students while "teaching" a values class is creapy and crazy. If there's a real need for someone to talk to students, hire some counselors. And get the military the fuck out of academia.
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Has anyone found the page at the APEC site that shows PandaMa's portrait and referral as "President"?
I've looked all over that site, but I can't find it.
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As a two-time CSB supporter, self-described light green, I will conceded that I consider APEC calling Ma "president" is a very small plus for Taiwan, albeit under the name "Chinese Taipei". Hopefully this will lead the world to realize that Taiwan is not a part of China, with our own government, president and VP.
In any event, if Ma's policy of mutual non-denial leads to that greater recognition, then I think we should see where this policy leads us. Thoughts? Please no flame, just curious what others think.
There are two APEC sites:
http://www.apec.org
http://www.apec2008.org.pe/
I searched them both but couldn't find any reference to the President of Chinese Taipei. If anyone finds it please take a screenshot!
The problem with 'mutual non-denial' is that it is meaningless nonsense. The CCP denies that Ma is a president and Ma finds that ok. That's self-denial.
Ma somehow hopes this term will gain the same kind of traction as '1992 Consensus' - repeated so often that it stubbornly becomes some kind of fact.
Ma said this latest 'success' is due to his 'no independence, no unification, no use of force' policy. I'd love to know how that differs from the 8 years of the DPP. Just another buzz phrase to bamboozle the masses.
I'd wait and see the truth behind this web site business. I can see how the CCP will throw Ma a few peanuts on the economic side to keep things ticking along, but I'm pretty certain they will not allow any new precedents to be set in terms of sovereignty. They've consistently followed the 'give them an inch and they'll take a mile' philosophy.
It didn't take long for the Peruvian APEC site to remove information on their member economies.
This page
used to have a link called "General Aspects of the 21 Economies" which did list Ma Ying-Jeou as President of Chinese Taipei; you can see the Google cached page here.
Using the info David provided above, I did a Google search for:
site:www.apec2008.org.pe/ OR site:www.apec.org "Ma Ying-jeou"
That search gave me two results, but their links both led to error pages that read "The page cannot be found." Here, however, is the cached version of the English page.
Here are the screenshots of both the English and Spanish pages, in case even the cached versions disappear:
English
Español
Tim Maddog
Interesting how that buzz about Ma being called "President" will last much longer than the actual appearance of the word on the APEC web site, eh? Who could have predicted?
Also interesting is how the video at the top of that Cindy Sui piece on BBC has no sound (to offend sensitive Chinese ears) and how it links at the end to a video saying that Zhang Mingqing was "attacked."
Tim Maddog
I went down to visit the Wild Strawberry demonstration. While I was only there a short time, my impression is that it is not a student demonstration. There may be some students there, and many people involved look to be young, but none of the people I spoke with seemed to be students. The group I spoke with appeared to be Taiwan independence activists. They asked me about Quebec independence and explained that a new country needs its own culture. Aside from showing me their petition, there seemed to be little discussion of violation of their right to speech.
An update to my earlier comments: those cached pages have since disappeared.
Doing that Google search (link above) again, gives a page which currently reads:
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Likewise, the representative of Chinese Taipei, Lien Chan, who replaces Ma Ying-jeou, Leader of the Economy,arrived to Peru approximately at 9:00 pm.
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How ya like that horse manure? Here's a screenshot for when that one disappears.
Tim Maddog
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