Lien in desperate move: Ko= economic doom!

FormosaNation on Twitter, who has been doing a great job tracking the Taipei mayor election, passed this glorious moment around. Here is Sean Lien, the KMT mayoral candidate for Taipei, announcing that if he isn't elected, the economy is doomed. People on Twitter pointed out that his solution is the same as Ma's: more China. That might have played in 2008. It won't play now. The government's insistence on failed China policies has backfired on one of the KMT's most critical claims in maintaining electoral superiority: the claim that it can deliver on the economy. Clearly, with Ma in office nearly six years, and the legislature controlled by the KMT, this was the time to show that was true. It's obvious to everyone that has failed.

Surely the Lien Campaign has to be one of the worst run campaigns in the history of the island's democracy.

For ordinary people, economy is in the dumps. Polls consistently show that Taiwanese are willing to take higher-paying jobs in China. I met a friend who is a buyer in the electronics industry this week, and he was telling me that Chinese electronics firms offer pay 3-5 times higher, or more, to lure key staffers to China. Once they have squeezed their knowledge out of them, they dump them after a couple of years. That higher paying jobs are widely available in China shows how hard the government has worked to keep wages low -- perhaps one purpose of this policy was to force Taiwanese to move to China.
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Daily Links:

• Good letter in TT on how nationalization laws are a humanitarian crisis
• Cold Front coming
• Interview: How to start a business in Taiwan
• Wed Nov 12, UCLA program on Sunflowers and Hong Kong
• Land based anti-ship missiles: good for US and its Asian allies, all DPP defense blue papers published to date h/t to Michal T, long may he reign.
• CPI piece on the Senkaku mess
• Taiwan's pivotal place on Asia's territorial chessboard
• Tear gas and the betrayal of Hong Kong
• WaPo editorial says Beijing's Hong Kong policy blew chance to provide pro-annexation forces in Taiwan with "a powerful argument".
• Bowring: How Hong Kong Elites have thwarted democracy for 150 years
• Latest polls from TISR: Winner will be...  DPP: South + Taichung, Ilan, Keelung, Penghu, KMT: New Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City and County, Miaoli, Nantou, Changhua, Taitung, Kinmen, Matsu + maybe Chiayi City Indep: Taipei (Ko), Hualien (Fu)

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