Sunday Short Shorts

The Taiwan into the UN protests were photo'd in the New York Times. Good work, folks.

There's been a great deal of public outrage at the bizarre molestation rulings....

In one case, Supreme Court judges rejected an appeal to convict a suspect accused of molesting a three-year-old girl because prosecutors failed to prove the alleged offense was committed against the girl’s wishes. The case was sent back to a lower court for retrial.

In another case, a judge ruled that prosecutors failed to prove a six-year-old girl had shown “strong will” in fighting off the perpetrator, and found him guilty of “having sex with a person under 14 years of age,” which came with a sentence of three years and two months in prison, rather than finding him guilty of committing “sexual assault,” which is punishable by three to 10 years in jail.

I'd like to think that the lads in the prosecutorial office are not that dense, and are trying to call attention to how stupid the laws are. I would bet that there are rules against public criticism of the law, formal and informal, by public judicial officials.

First time home buyers getting help from mom and dad. How bad is the bubble in Taiwan?:

That finding defies logic because, according to Construction and Planning Agency Director-General Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文), the average housing price in Taipei is 14.1 times annual household income, compared with 8.8 times in Japan.

This is how a bubble skims the savings from hard working savers....

Commonwealth Mag has another great set of stuff this week, with an article on what the next Chinese five year plan means for Taiwan businesses:

To make his point, Lin cites China's wind power industry as an example of how China distorts the market in its favor. Early in its industrial development, China adopted a policy of trading market access for technology transfer, so when China decided to fully promote wind power in 2005, the National Development and Reform Commission opted to protect domestic manufacturers by requiring that all wind power equipment used in the country have 70 percent local content. That forced wind power vendors from around the world to enter into joint ventures in China with local suppliers if they wanted access to the market, preventing them from fully reaping the potential benefits of the commercial opportunities there.

"Now that China's own wind power industry has grown strong wings, they canceled local content requirements this year and have turned the tables to move into the American and European markets," Lin stresses.

Chinese policymakers must marvel at how westerners walked right into their trap.
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