As Americans, with their immense baggage of a history smeared by racial conflict, try to play down and pass censure on the issue of "race", modern Chinese nationalism is founded on a bedrock of racialism that hopes to exploit the west's own vehicle for colonialism to further their own goals of territory and wealth.Today is the anniversary of 2-28, a massacre and subsequent terror that took the lives of thousands of educated Taiwanese, "tainted" and impure in Sunist racialist terms by their long association with the Japanese. This racialist view of what constitutes "Chineseness" continues to haunt Taiwan in countless ways, from its exploitation by Beijing in vain appeals to ethnic solidarity with the Taiwanese, who long ago took another path, to the two classes of immigrants to Taiwan: the favored Overseas "Chinese" -- and everyone else.
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Chinese nationalisms in both the PRC and the ROC, continue to use the dated and logically incongruous Sunist construct for defining "Chinese" and "Chineseness", as a shared system of culture, customs, language, history and people. The need to create uniformity in this model that might incorporate vastly different cultures, languages, customs, histories across a wide geographical area under a single national Chinese nationalist umbrella, took the form of a fascist style of state culturalism, in which the state became the creator and promulgator of a centralized and monolithic state Chinese culture. China is not a homogenous place by any means and the fear of regional nationalisms was, and still is, a real threat to maintaining the old Qing borders.
Andrew's whole post is full of links and insights, spend some time with it.
Quite different is another post a thoughtful reader sent a link to: The Taiwan Bubble Set to Burst. Apparently CLSA has recommended all seven Taiwan banks in its reports are SELL:
Banks are now in the late stages of their credit cycle. After over a decade of loose lending, Taiwan faces the prospect of a bursting housing bubble and a crisis in tech, where the companies are turning into zombies and refusing to die. Credit tightening should accelerate the seasoning process. We reiterate our SELL recommendations on all the market’s banks, especially since earnings should be front-loaded this year. For those who must be in the sector, we suggest Chinatrust for its credit-card franchise and prudent credit policy.One hardly knows whether to laugh or cry: Ma's election, ECFA, it was all supposed to save the economy. Think the Ma Administration will do anything real about it? I hear there's some deck chairs on the Titanic that need re-arranging....
Easy access to credit over 2000-10 led to overinvestment in commodity-tech such as Dram, panels, LED and solar. Housing now faces poor affordability and oversupply. Property prices rose 133% over the past 10 years, but vacancies increased from 13% to 19% over the same period.
Though the timing of the bust is hard to predict, credit tightening should accelerate the seasoning process. It will not only trigger failures and financial restructuring in tech, but also pressure mortgage borrowers and property developers. Tightening will lead to increasing demand for consumer-credit and home-equity loans, while trends in the unorganised money-market rate (ie, loan sharks) and dishonoured cheques suggest signs of trouble.
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Daily Links:
- Formosa Betrayed, definitive history of 2-28 in English.
- Two pieces on US-China: Minxin Pei in The Diplomat argues that US and China are set to clash. Meanwhile Reuters argues that oil rush in South China Sea will set off conflict.
- New Jeremy Lin meme: Linning.
- Kenting claims another foreign cyclist.
USC US-China Institute
03-02-2012: A Conversation with Ambassador Jason Yuan
Davidson Conference Center, Boardroom
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Cost: Free, please RSVP
Time: 11:00AM-12:00PM
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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! Delenda est, baby.
1 comment:
"Kenting claims another foreign cyclist."
I'm always amazed when I see your posts of you riding with your children on the roads of Taiwan. I don't think I would have the guts to ride a bicycle myself on mixed traffic roads in Taiwan - much less my kids.
Trails made for biker and walkers only - sure. But in the short time I was in Taiwan I heard about too many scooter deaths (either someone I knew or an acquaintance of someone I knew) to risk a bicycle which is much less noticeable, much less capable of accelerating out of trouble, and less capable of transferring momentum to a struck object in the event of an accident.
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