Playing Catch Up

In the summer I always feel it is strange to see junior high and high school kids out and about. Usually they are suffering in some kind of summer school. One hardly sees them by day, only when crowding the trains late at night. Thus are Taiwanese socialized into the brutal, exploitative work schedules Taiwan bosses routinely employ.

I took a couple of weeks off from this blog to reduce post-surgery stress (see the post below this one). Let's catch up....

The big news while I was resting was the great power outtage. Actually I had no idea it occurred, since my part of Taichung suffered no outtage, and I was probably reading and playing computer games. A mistake by a China Petroleum employee cut off the supply of gas to the Datan gas plant for two minutes, triggering a massive blackout, with people trapped in elevators. Over 6 million were affected. The KMT naturally attacked the Administration, ignoring the fact that the lax attitude towards procedures and safety at government-owned firms is the product of KMT control.

Brill is introducing the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. Solid editorial team, looks like it will be great. Can't wait.

The KMT is so desperate to stop the Forward Looking Infrastructure plan it flooded the legislature with 10,000 motions against it, paralyzing the body. The KMT is terribly worried that its carefully nurtured patronage networks in the hinterland will swing over to the DPP once the DPP government gets the money taps turned on. On the lighter side, a former hit man claimed Ma Ying-jeou, when Chair of the KMT, paid him to kill Alex Tsai, KMT ideologue. Also on the lighter side, longtime party apparatchik Wu Den-yih, now Chair of the KMT, promised to reform and moderate the KMT. Yeah, like that will happen: reform of the KMT has been a theme of party insiders and outside critics alike for at least 15 years now.

Asia Nikkei also published a hit piece on Tsai Ing-wen this week, both malicious and incompetent:

The Tsai government aims to get the island off nuclear power in 2025, and only three of six nuclear power plants are presently in operation. The mass blackout Aug. 15 came amid growing concerns that slow-starting operations at fossil fuel plants, which are supposed to provide alternative power sources, may lead to an energy shortage. While human error was blamed for the blackout, Tsai's government took the worst of the heat.

Sliding approval

A June poll by civilian broadcaster TVBS Media found Tsai's approval rating had fallen to 21%, the lowest since she took office in May 2016, while disapproval was triple that at 63%. The blackout will further erode support, say many including Fan Shih-ping, a professor of political science at National Taiwan Normal University.

Note that the article says we have 6 nuke plants, though we only have four. Perhaps it meant six reactors, though with the 4th Nuke there are eight in Taiwan. As proof of Tsai's slumping ratings, we get a poll from a pro-KMT broadcaster owned by Chinese investors -- from June. One could just as well have cited the high approval ratings for Tsai's diplomatic policies, which are more recent. The article mentions the pension reform and the backlash from pensioners, but doesn't mention that at least one poll has found the pension reform pushed up Tsai's ratings (from July). The Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation has her approval at 28%. It's pretty obvious that the TVBS poll is nonsense.

The disgraceful blocking of the entrance of Taiwan's athletes into the Universiade Games by pension protesters was widely condemned in Taiwan. Mayor Ko of Taipei made himself more popular with a smart comeback to criticism. He will be tough to beat in the next election: approval is at 60% right now (link).

There was a minor kerfuffle a couple of weeks ago over Steve Yates' remarks in a recent interview, caused by a well-meaning by misleading commentary on it. Tom Lee wrote a commentary for the Taipei Times in which he stated that Yates said:

If Taiwanese were willing to trade their lives, assets and sacred honor for Taiwanese independence, they would win the support of the international community, but the nation is not ready for that.

Unfortunately, Lee mistranslated Stephen Yates' remarks. The Youtube video is here, the key passages start around 13 min and go to 20 min.

Yates did not say "they would win the support of the international community" -- he actually made a completely different point, that the Founding Fathers of the US didn't ask the England or France or the international community for help,they just decided on their own to do it. He added that "if Taiwan had this consensus.... [gesture] but we're not there yet."

It would have been great if someone had checked Lee's translation against the actual video. New Bloom then ran with that translation with another one of its tiresome attacks on America and American officials who support Taiwan. If Brian thinks that "it is hard to know how Yates comes off as a “friend of Taiwan” at all" he is welcome to sit down with people who actually have known Yates for years and learn why so many people in this movement Brian so very recently joined consider Yates to be a friend of Taiwan. I will be happy to introduce him.

J Michael Cole sent around a good example of fake news circulating in Taiwan:

The faked image on the left has Tsai Ing-wen's photo above the urinals, as if to say the military hates her. The original is on the right. Expect a flood of this garbage in the next election cycle.
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MOAR LINKZ

• Taiwan GDP growth beats expectations. None of that is reaching the working people, however, so it won't help Tsai in the en
• Video: 1960 color footage of Taiwan
• Great piece at Taiwan Sentinel on Rail Transport and neglected public transportation in Taiwan
• Tech factory that was the site of 4 deaths forced employees to work 34 days in a row. Punishment? US$600 fine. What a joke labor law enforcement is. 
• Hilarious Video in Chinese: How to be Taiwanese
• The Tibetan and Mongolian Affairs Commission is going to bite the dust. Will the MAC go in Tsai's second term?
• Japan Times says China should respect the will of the Taiwanese
• Taiwan's lost commercial cinema of the 50s and 60s, found.
• Commonwealth on the brain drain. TIME on same. Japan Times on same.
• Tricky Taipei on sexism in Taiwan
• Taiwan gov't to fund 30,000 tech start ups in the next few years
• Ketagalan Media: Does Taiwan Need More Foreign Talent? Also: interview with people building a database of US government documents on Taiwan. Also. N Korea and Taiwan's Readiness
• DPP lawmaker calls for geothermal power
• Taiwan to submit LOR for F-35 fighters. This may be maneuvering for something lesser, like F-16s. Ask for too much, get F-16s as a realistic consolation prize. 
• Owner blocks ambulance because she did not want man dying in her house and lowering its value.
• AmCham on Taiwan's Smart Cities
• Jenna on white people writing about Taiwan
• Still no justice for alleged fish poisoning by Taiwanese firm in Vietnam?
• Thomas Shattuck on the US looking to the Far East for dealing with the monuments put up by White Supremicists in the 1910s and 1920s. Those are victory monuments honoring not Confederate leaders of the lost war, but the Southern winning of the peace via Jim Crow, ethnic cleansing of blacks, theft of black land, re-enslavement of blacks via debt slavery, and similar.
• Everyone on the Taipei Dome review committee has been listed as a defendant in the investigation. This case occurred during Ma's tenure as mayor, and may come back to him again.
• A predictably pro-nuke piece from Qz.com on Taiwan's electricity needs.
• Indian Analysis: Trade Ties and China Threat Bring Taiwan and China closer

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