SPECIAL EVENT: Protests in Taipei and Kaohsiung, May 17. Get your butts out there! Consult maddog's excellent and informative collection of information for further details.
MEDIA: Taipei officials call for enforcement of online game ratings. Asia Times with a great, numbers-driven piece on the alleged growth in China this year. An exception to the dutiful annoucements of China's great growth so common in the mainstream media and in academic pieces. Another Pentagon official goes down in Bergersen/Kuo spy case. The government has blocked Chinese investment in Far EasTone for now. Thankfully. Guam sends delegation to Taiwan to foster ties. Chinese aid to Sri Lanka is behind rise in government killings of civilians this year? Taitung KMT primary eliminates highly controversial current county chief. Readers may recall that this was the woman who divorced her husband when he was indicted for corruption and had to step down, so she could run for his position. Current Taiwan representative in the US Jason Yuan says he has a green card by mistake. Excellent commentary on the "resignation" of SEF head Chiang in Taipei Times today understood in the light of cross-strait politics. The upgrades of Taichung and Taipei County to municipalities are not aimed at preventing DPP candidates from winning even though they cause delated elections, says the KMT. Taipei continues to run interference for Beijing in sovereignty disputes in the Spratlys and elsewhere. Because the KMT will annex Taiwan to China soon, any "ROC" claim becomes a PRC claim. Nice. Taiwan's foreign aid drops -- another diplomatic triumph for the KMT administration. TSMC to branch out into renewable energy. Cool article with lots of data on street vendors in Taiwan: rising by 130,000 over last five years. Despite warming relations, Chinese fishermen still poaching in local waters. Who could've imagined it?Echo Taiwan lists some pro-Taiwan forums, and worries that DPP has given up communicating with the outside world. Biking in Taiwan does Feiren's Xindian loop Global Voices on labor protest on Labor Day Red A finds story: man sees wife taped with lover on porn dvd. Stabbing results. A-gu wants to know who really booked the grounds on May 18 to block the DPP protest. See his previous post for a detailed look at the mess. Lao Ren Cha with lovely pics and text from Jiufen. Sponge Bear has fun with the games the KMT is playing with Japan Neil Wade with another hike and awesome pics. Laowiseass on China's manifest destiny fulfilled in Taiwan
RED ALERT: New Taiwan Railways train schedule due out June 16th.
ME: A letter supporting my WSJ Op-Ed in WSJ. w00t! (original op-ed). Thanks Zoe!
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!
There's a well-spoken regurgitation of Chinese-language pan-Blue arguments against Taiwanese identity in the comments on your editorial now. He kind of smears you, but his argumentation is just a good translation of others so he obviously has his biases. Might want to take a look.
ReplyDeleteI trust you saw the trade, Chinese electricity and industrial output statistics that were released in the middle of this week. Even the doctored Chinese statistics almost all came in below expectations. There is absolutely no sign of the V-shaped recovery that the government is swearing will happen. The thing that made me laugh is that only domestic consumption was higher than expectations, and that by not much. But when most of the economy is not state-owned, and when primarily state-owned enterprises are benefiting from the stimulus, the question arises: What Chinese consumers are buying? So domestic consumption is up even though the economy is not yet showing convincing signs of recovery and though the private sector is still hurting.
ReplyDeleteOh, Michael.. You're killing me with that gorgeous photo of steamed bao. There's none to be had anywhere near my campus! Do enjoy some real Taiwanese food for me.
ReplyDeletethose bao's are part of Chinese cuisine. It's time they are sent back to China.
ReplyDeleteAnon, Taiwanese don't like being defined by some ethereal, monolithic Chinese-ness. For those that it applies to, they constantly acknowledge their roots to China and were forced and boxed into a Chinese identity for a long time. If you look at music in Taiwan today, for example, they take Chinese culture as simply another palette that they can draw on to paint a new identity of their own choosing. The problem isn't sending things back to China. The problem is hammering Taiwanese constantly with some strange idea that they are INTRINSICALLY, UNALTERABLY CHINESE but then constantly adding all these rules, regulations, using all these educational and media instruments to CHANGE TAIWANESE INTO CHINESENESS.
ReplyDeleteThere are many examples of this, but for example, why is the KMT increasing the number of hours that school children here are learning Chinese (really classical Chinese literature, the equivalent of Latin and just as opaque)? Why does the KMT feel the need to remove Japanese colonial period architecture?
What's the deal here? Are Taiwanese Chinese or are they not? If they are, why do they need to be constantly reminded of it and why does this idea need to be constantly reinforced and promoted?
those bao's are part of Chinese cuisine. It's time they are sent back to China.---
ReplyDeletenope, they are part of siberian and central asian cuisine. Mongols and manchu imported it into China. back in time people used to freeze bao's for winter time or in a permafrost earth to survive the hard winter times. so used semi-nomads to take such "balls" with them on the travel because you save much time.