Wed night Short Shorts and Links

Tea drying in Nantou.

Enjoy some links, midterms inbound and I am busy....

• DON'T MISS: Clarissa Wei is the real thing. Her piece on the Struggles of Writing about Chinese food as a Chinese is brilliant.
• DON'T MISS: Jerome Cohen on what journalists can do for the detained Taiwan activist in China
• Latest global Taiwan brief
• Shipping giant Yang Ming is in trouble. Two months ago giant S Korean shipper Hanjin declared bankruptcy. Is it infectious?
• In a case widely watched by Taiwan's active online ecology, famed Youtuber sued for copyright infringement.
• Taiwan to grow 2% this year. Meaningless if none of the gains go to ordinary people.
• Low salaries are killing Taiwan's tech industries, warns Ralph Jennings in Forbes. That is true both ways -- you can't keep talented faculty in Taiwan to create talented workers because of the low university pay, and industry-university cooperation frameworks are ineffective. I remember years ago our language center at a local university was ordered to do industry-academia cooperation projects, as if you could conjure productive cooperative synergy by fiat. 
• Powerful KMT figures collecting pensions they don't deserve? Who could have imagined that?
• Oh noes. Arms sales to Taiwan could increase tensions. What will Beijing do? Hint: What does it always do?
• Senator Grassley shifts position on opposition to Taiwan's position ractopamine. Perhaps there will be some agreement on meat imports from the US soon. 
• Solid piece on Chiang Ching-kuo's legacy from The News Lens
• Brian H with yet another post warning that Trump can sell out Taiwan at any moment, using his bizarre S Korea misunderstandings as evidence (also here, here, here, here). There's no sign of that yet, and it is hard to see what these warnings accomplish, except to make their writers look overwrought (like Drezner's silly ZOMG TRUMP COULD SELL EVERYTHING piece in WaPo just before Trump-Xi chocolate cake lovefest) and desperate to be in position to say I-told-you-so at some point in the distant future. In case you were wondering what Brian's brilliant solution is, read his manifesto calling for Taiwan to align itself with marginalized peoples everywhere to fight US imperialism. If the marginalized peoples will sell us fast attack boats, submarines, base hardening technology, and sixth generation fighters, I am all for it. Otherwise, no. Brian's position is a common one on the Left, one I have complained about on this blog many times: it focuses on US imperialism while ignoring China's identical imperialism. This inability to hold a mirror up to one's own beliefs is why so many of us progressives on the island have given up on the Left when looking for guidance on the clash of hegemonic empires in East Asia. Oh, and the Administration has said that Taiwan policy isn't going to change. Why not wait til it changes? We're only a few months in, and many key positions remain unfilled.
• Meanwhile, despite the betray-at-any-moment Trump, the Administration announced that it would continue to support Taiwan's observer status at WHA. Such symbolic moves will likely continue.
• Brian H is at his best in pieces like this one on the confluence of anti-drug and anti-gay activism that show his robust local knowledge and understanding. 
• WaPo's Emily Rauhala has evolved into one of the best foreign correspondents on things Taiwan. Here she is on gay marriage
• The curious rise of scientology on Taiwan
• New book on the 1895 cessation of Taiwan to Japan
• Latest CRS report on PRC maritime disputes/expansions/EEZ

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