Friday, December 16, 2016

A Not-Trump Post, catching up on the domestic side

It's a (tourist) trap!

Wow. Trump hasn't said anything about Taiwan in a couple of days. Almost afraid to say anything, in case I jinx that delightful streak.

Here in Taiwan domestic politics rolls on. KMT Chairman Hung is on a swing through SE Asia states, apparently to interact with the Chinese communities there. The go-south policy for the KMT always meant piggybacking on those communities, as a Keen Observer pointed out to me over Belgian beer and cheesecake at Panos the other night. Hopefully that will change with the new Administration.

I am not hearing things that make me happy about the NPP, the party to the left of the DPP. It really needs to get a party structure out there so it can compete, but people are observing that it looks a lot more like the personal fiefdom of Chairman Huang Kuo-chang at the moment, the way the PPP looks like the personal faction of James Soong. Freddy Lim has been urged to run for higher office but he wants to move on to other things at some point, which means that no one in the NPP will rival Huang. They may field more candidates in 2018, though, so we will see.

Oh yeah. Our tourism industry was so crushed by the drop in Chinese group tourists that it had a record-breaking year in 2016....
In 2015, Taiwan's foreign visitor arrivals totaled 10.44 million, up from 9.91 million a year earlier, according to government data.

With 20 days to go, 2016 is likely to see more than 10.66 million foreign tourist arrivals in Taiwan, according to Deputy Director-general Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰) of the Tourism Bureau.
Yep... rising tourism from elsewhere in Asia is offsetting the loss in group tourists; the government's efforts in SE Asia are paying off. Back in May the government was warning that Taiwan may not break the 2016 record.
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3 comments:

P. Petain said...

"Wow. Trump hasn't said anything about Taiwan in a couple of days. Almost afraid to say anything, in case I jinx that delightful streak."

Yes, we really don't need that idiot publicly stating the U.S. should alter their "one China" policy to better support Taiwan. To say that would cause tensions would be an understatement. Trump would be a bull in the China shop!

Matt Stone said...

So how much effect is Trump having?

If Wikipedia can be used as a barometer of world-wide interest, then here's an update on what's been happening since The Phone Call:

The blue line is 'Taiwan', green is 'One China policy', and red is 'President Tsai'.

Taiwan still hasn't settled down, after its astounding rise to over 180,000 in one day. There was another spike, to about 50,000, on 13/12, and it is still sitting on 20,000/day, which is around double its historic average. Tsai is also sitting at around double.

One China Policy is massively above average. It is sitting around 6,000/day, where previously it was often less than 200 or so.

https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&range=latest-30&pages=Taiwan|One-China_policy|Tsai_Ing-wen



Tommy said...

Reuters is now flat out stating that US policy is that Taiwan is part of China.