Flag Flap!

Occupy Regent Street! This photo has been making the rounds... Since the private organization that hung the flags of the various nations on Regent Street in London kowtowed to Beijing (why?) and yanked down the ROC flag, replacing it with the Chinese Taipei rag, there's been a huge response in Taiwan. Good. But even better, the international media has quietly responded, with EPSN, BBC, and other media orgs using the ROC flag rather than the Chinese Taipei rag to represent Taiwan in their Olympic reports, plus some play in the international media for Taiwan's plight (FocusTaiwan: government regrets... Lord Faulkner of Worcester rips the organization that bent over for Beijing). (Old post: China's foreign policy in sport)

Issues that highlight Taiwan's lack of international space galvanize locals. In a culture obsessed with rank and scores, nonexistence is the unkindest cut of all. Taiwanese crave recognition. Cursed as I am, I can't help observing, though, that this flag affair shows how thoroughly the KMT has gotten locals to incorporate its symbols into their hearts. Perhaps someday it will also show how locals have reconfigured the meanings of such symbols and made them their own: everyone says its Taiwan's flag.
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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.

Year-end Elections: DPP makes gains

Lots of bad news this week for Mayor Jason Hu of Taichung. But first, a quick look at the north, where the DPP's Su and Tsai are hot on the heels of their KMT counterparts. The prediction market at NCCU, usually fairly accurate, said that...

On a scale of NT$0 to NT$100, bidders felt the probability of DPP candidate Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) winning the Taipei City poll grew from NT$45 to NT$48 yesterday. The bidding price of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) jumped from NT$51 last month to NT$53 yesterday.

In Sinbei City, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is making good progress since announcing her candidacy on May 23. Her price has grown from NT$42 to NT$49.43 yesterday.

The likelihood of her KMT opponent, former vice premier Eric Chu (朱立倫), winning dropped from NT$59 to its lowest level over the past two months at NT$49.87 after Tsai announced her candidacy. It rebounded to NT$52 yesterday.

This dovetails with other information, including public polls and previous election returns, that shows that the elections in the north will be tight and difficult to predict. It's going to be a fascinating next few months.

Tsai and Chu are running in The City Formerly Known As Taipei County, Xinbei (New North City). Here's the data from the Taipei County magistrate elections for 2005, 2001, and 1997. Note that in 1997 there was no PPP and an independent candidate grabbed a significant portion of the vote, and in 2001 the New Party was the only Blue party. I don't see a real trend there, except that each party appears to have a base corresponding to about 40% of the electorate. Those middle 20% votes are going to be bitterly fought over.....

2005

• KMT: 988,739 (54.87%)
• DPP: 798,233 (44.30%)

2001

• New: 820808 (48.2%)
• DPP: 874495 (51.3%)

1997

• TOTAL BLUE: 576,418: KMT: 543516 (38.7%), New: 32902 (2.3%)
  
• IND: 257582 18.3
• DPP: 571658 (40.7%)

One thing I'd really like is more information on is demographic changes since the last election. Have middle class pro-KMT government workers moved out to Taoyuan, changing the demographics of the county? Has the building boom attracted more light Blues into Taipei County? Or what?

Meanwhile, with the southern municipalities of Kaohsiung and Tainan widely seen as DPP locks, Taichung had been thought to be a KMT shoo-in given the popularity of Mayor Hu and the money being spread around the city due to public construction. But the local government's intimate involvement with organized crime was dramatically highlighted in a hit on a gangster in Taichung city at which four police officers were present (the Liberty Times claimed today that new revelations say 9 policeman were present, playing Mahjong with the target, and the hitter was probably from China). ETaiwan News said (via ESWN, who has video links):

Taichung's convenient geographic location and the business-friendly environment has made the central city a favored location for organized criminal gangs to set up operational bases. The police force is both insufficient large and equipped and law enforcement has never been effective. Murders, shootings, kidnaps and fights among gangsters have been rampant in Taichugn under Hu's administration, but the "Achilles's Heel" has been the failure of the city government to enforce stricter discipline and effectively investigate and crack down on alleged corruption between the police and the organized crimes.

The controversial case of four police officers hiding in a gun shop while the murder took place revealed the dark side of the local police force and the failuure of the city's police commander to promptly report this incident to Hu revealed a grave lack of internal discipline and exposed Hu's powerlessness. The eruption of this scandal coincided with the KMT's nomination of Hu for mayor of the merged Taichung municipality and triggered a plunge in his approval ratings from 56 percent in March to 46 percent and the gap between Hu and DPP nominee Su Chia-chyuan has considerably narrowed even before Su has truly launched his campaign. Su may well take advantage of Hu's woes by highlighting his own robust administrative record in cracking down on crime during eight years as Pingtung County mayor and his experience as interior minister.

Taichung's lawlessness is proverbial, but voters have never appeared to be influenced by the crime rate. The Taipei Times piece on the prediction market noted:

Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) continued to lead in Greater Taichung, but the gap is narrowing, especially after the shooting of a gang leader in the city late last month. The market showed that since the DPP nominated Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) on May 23, the probability of the DPP candidate winning grew from NT$35 to NT$37.

The possibility of Hu winning dropped dramatically from NT$77 to NT$67 after Su Jia-chyuan announced his candidacy. Hu’s price further plunged to NT$60 yesterday following the shooting.

However, Hu still has a solid lead, though the DPP claimed that internal polls show Hu's lead had fallen from 18 points to 14 as a result of the shooting. Lots of time before the elections, and I've been hearing some interesting trends that could shape the election here in the Chung.
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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!

Is there a coordinated effort on Chinese-Taipei?

Taiwan expert June Teufel Dreyer reported a couple of weeks ago that when she contacted American Airlines for a flight here she was informed that the new name of Taiwan was "Chinese Taipei" and that it was part of China, so she would need a visa. This appeared to be an isolated incident, until this was reported in Taiwan News (via Pacific Magazine)...

A protest by Taipei led Australia to quickly change the name for Taiwan on an official government Web site, Taiwan News Online reports.

According to the report, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 7 found that the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship's Web site listed Taiwan as "Chinese Taipei," a name the island only uses for the Olympics. The ministry immediately asked Australian officials, in Canberra and Taipei, to change the country's name to Taiwan.

The name was changed at the Australian Web site to "Taiwan" the next day, Taiwan News Online reports.

Taiwan uses its official name, Republic of China, when dealing with its 23 diplomatic allies. The name "Chinese Taipei" is reserved for the Olympics and for international sports events because of a past agreement, but Taiwan does not approve of the name for other uses, the report said.

Once is luck, twice is coincidence....is there a third time?

[Taiwan]

Ma turns Taiwan into China?

Did Ma label Taiwan "China." According to a Taipei Times report, he did:

The delegation led by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on a state visit to the Dominican Republic — one of the nation’s allies — was referred to as “China, Taiwan” on embassy signs used to identify it.

An official with the embassy told the Taipei Times the signs were produced by the office as had been done in the past.

The flags of both countries were placed at the top of the signs, with the words “Special Mission” and “China, Taiwan” printed in Spanish underneath.

Ma’s delegation arrived in Santo Domingo late on Friday night and left yesterday morning. During their stay, members of the delegation were transported through the city in vehicles bearing the signs.

A veteran newsman who has accompanied Taiwan's Presidents on trips overseas to Latin America says that this presentation has misconstrued the Spanish designation to produce China-Taiwan. In fact, according to this newsman, this is a rendering of Chine-Taiwan which is quite common in Latin America, the hyphen implying equivalence. As is typical in representations of Taiwan in the media, people refer to Taiwan in a variety of ways. The reporter apparently mistook a common designation for another step in the creeping annexation of Taiwan to China.

[Taiwan]

Sovereignty endangered too.....

You diabolical bastard! You can't put an animatronic animal in a zoo! - Why not? - It's not real! So what? It gave you a thrill. People come from all over the world...who have never seen a panda in their whole miserable life. It's not a real thrill, is it? It's artificial! Having pandas in England is artificial, for God's sake! What do you want me to do? Put everyone on a plane and fly them to Africa? Africa? - They come from China. - Not this baby. This was handmade in Belgium. I don't want some cheap Chinese panda.

With one eye watching the unfolding mess as Captain Chen steers the SS DPP into an iceberg, the Olympics and the continuing struggle over sovereignty are still ongoing... Leslie Hook blogs for WSJ from Beijing on the suppression of Taiwan at the Olympics:

Many athletes and fans chafe at these rules. At a Taiwan v. Japan softball game today, a group of Taiwanese tourists completely eschewed the official Olympic flag, instead wearing hats they had designed themselves for their trip to the Olympics. The hats, which are blue, red and white, are reminiscent of the Taiwanese flag, but different enough that they are still permitted inside venues. Each hat displays “Chinese Taipei” on the front, along with a baseball—their favorite sport. “It makes me sad that I can’t use our national flag in the stadium,” said Xu Mengjie, a 21-year-old university student.

A member of the softball team I spoke to was more diplomatic. When asked how it felt to hear cheers for “Chinese Taipei” rather than for Taiwan, she said “this way is better, it’s the right thing to do.” The physician accompanying the team, who gave his name only as Jim, said there were differing views within the delegation about how it felt to compete in Beijing. “They try to be good hosts, and try to treat us like family. But I think some people don’t feel that way.” It doesn’t help that in China the words for “Chinese Taipei” are often confused with “China Taipei,” making Taipei sound like a city in China.

Beijing may also be more sensitive to any hint of pro-Taiwan paraphernalia. As I entered the stadium my baseball cap—which sported the real Taiwanese flag—was politely confiscated. A volunteer told me by way of explanation that “Taiwan is not a country” and that “this flag is not allowed in China.”

The latest CRS report on China only has a small section on China's suppression of Taiwan's international space, but does put "recover" Taiwan in quotes. Hooray! On the other hand, we've stupidly agreed to accept pandas named "unification" and let them crowd out our funding that could go to preserving and researching local species. Hopefully they will go to a for-profit place that didn't do much of that anyway. Concerned Taiwan groups have called for public hearings, accusing the Council of Agriculture (COA) of making the decision behind closed doors. As Chen put it, it's "politics above ecology."

Meanwhile, in other aspects of our sovereignty, Jerome Keating had a blistering piece in the Taipei Times today on further Ma retreats:

This is the hypocritical obfuscation and fudge factor that Ma always hides behind. With this background, the foreign ministry recently floated the idea of using “Chinese Taipei” — the non-entity name given the Olympic team — for the nation’s application to join the UN.

What did Chen accomplish? Chen normalized the use of the word "Taiwan" to describe, well, Taiwan. This helped beat back Chinese attempts to squeeze Taiwan's international presence. On that front, however, it's been 100 days of surrender for Ma -- "Chinese Taipei" for our UN name is a step backwards even from using The Republic of China. Perhaps they have some sneaky plan for establishing the Chinese Republic of Taiwan as was suggested in the 1970s, but I doubt it. Meanwhile the money diplomacy that Ma has claimed would stop goes right on as Ma offers increased aid to Paraguay. The new center-left government there has ended 60 years of right-wing authoritarian rule and may switch recognition to China...

Oh, and remember Ma's campaign promise to keep Chinese labor out? Guess again:

“The government is determined to keep our fisheries strong. As such, various policy amendments and subsidies will be used to help fishermen,” Ma said.

The Executive Yuan has ordered that subsidies for fuel for fishing boats and electricity for fish farms be increased, Ma said.

Restrictions on Chinese fishermen working in Taiwan will also be loosened so they can help their employers with a wider array of tasks, Ma said.

The camel's nose is in the tent.....

[Taiwan]

American Airlines thinks Anschluss already happened

What a day yesterday! The Olympics opening ceremony, Russia goes to war with Georgia -- while there are US advisors in Georgia, and that nation is angling to become a NATO member, and Dem candidate John Edwards announces that he put the whole Dem party at risk so he could boink someone he wasn't married to and then lie about it during the primary process.

Big fun over here in Taiwan this week. Last week longtime Taiwan scholar June Tuefel Dreyer discovered that American Airlines thinks that Taiwan is part of China.

這位美國航空公司人員很有把握地說，台灣已經自己要求把名字改為中華台北（Chinese Taipei），「因此就意味著台灣是中國的一部分，簽證當然是必備的。」她聽聞大為震驚，再質問航空公司人員這項要求是否來自中國當局？得到的答覆更是斬釘截鐵：不是，台灣名稱改變的要求是來自台灣政府。

（..."now that it is part of China, a visa must be needed." I said Taiwan wasn’t part of China, it was a sovereign state. She replied no, that a while back---she wasn’t sure exactly when ---TW had announced that it was changing its name from Taiwan to Chinese Taipei.....she was reading to me from a set of directions she’d been supplied with.）

Dr. Dreyer was attempting to get a ticket to come here, when American Airlines informed her she'd need a visa since we're part of China. Others have reported similar experiences. News about this in Chinese from Maddog:

http://news.sina.com.tw/article/20080808/673486.html
http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2008/new/aug/7/today-fo5.htm
http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2008/new/aug/6/today-o1.htm

[Taiwan]

Shocked by Chinese Taipei

A squirrel on the NCKU campus.

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

Just last week the President and his KMT cronies were hailing the use of Zhonghua Taipei (Chinese Taipei) to designate Taiwan in the State media in China for the Olympics as a major diplomatic victory. And then today the Taipei Times announced that CCTV had used Zhongguo Taipei (China Taipei).

The Presidential Office yesterday expressed “shock” over China’s description of taekwondo Olympic gold medalist Chu Mu-yen (朱木炎) as being from Zhongguo Taibei, but stopped short of criticizing Beijing.

.....

On Friday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said official Chinese media had stopped referring to Taiwan as Zhongguo Taibei (中國台北, Taipei, China), using instead Zhonghua Taibei (中華台北, Chinese Taipei), calling the development a diplomatic victory.

Wang yesterday declined to speculate on whether Beijing would repeat the “technical error” while Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) is attending the Games.

Now, I know dear readers, that you are nodding to yourselves: "See? We knew those Chinese would renege on the deal faster than you can say USS Kitty Hawk." Alas, I fear they are keeping the deal...just not the deal that had been openly arranged between Beijing and the government of President Jellyspine Ma....

...for you see, had this been a DPP government, we wouldn't be fighting over Zhongguo or Zhonghua. We'd be drawing the line at Taiwan. So guess what? The CCP and the KMT have neatly arranged it so that everyone in Taiwan is now committed to Chinese Taipei!

That didn't take long, did it?

The term Taiwan has vanished from the lexicon of the sovereignty debate and will from now on be used solely to placate the domestic masses. No doubt it will be resurrected briefly for six weeks in 2012. In the meantime, we've become something like part of China. Not quite there, but this death by a thousand cuts diplomacy is really quite slick. Too bad the KMT can't manage the domestic economy as well as it can handle dismantling all that the DPP fought for over the last eight years.

The second use of this Name Game controversy was obscuring another one: notice that there was almost no local debate over the order in which Taiwan would march in the opening ceremonies. This is classic KMT strategy -- invent/use one controversy to obscure a DPP success or a KMT failure. Taiwan is now marching in the Cs, right after the Central African Republic and right before -- you guessed it -- China Hong Kong and China Macao. Feiren observed to me the other day: remember the Olympic Torch debate that had the Torch coming into Taiwan from a place that wasn't China? The order of Taiwan in the ceremony replicates the Torch path. Only thanks to the noisy controversy about noises, nobody really protested (except for one of Taiwan's Olympic athletes the other day. Someone gets it....and the DPP, of course).

Speaking of the Beijing Olympics, many observers have pointed out how China's use of the Torch to signal the vassalage of the states it passed through replicates Nazi Germany's invention and use of the Torch. But another Nazi-Beijing connection came out today with the story of how Albert Speer Jr, the son of the Nazi production czar, designed the Beijing Olympic venue with his father's plans in mind. Further commentary will now cease, since we have violated Godwin's law most severely....

[Taiwan]

Excellent Article by Tkacik in Weekly Standard

John Tkacik and Gary Schmitt write a great article on the name rectification and Taiwan's sovereignty in the Weekly Standard (hat tip to Gerrit van der Wees of FAPA), as well as the numbing shortsightedness of the State Department:

Since 1979, when the United States cut formal diplomatic ties with the "Republic of China"--that is, the government of Taiwan--it has banned official U.S. government use of the term "Republic of China." Yet, in the Alice-in-Wonderland logic of Foggy Bottom, the State Department criticizes the Republic of China for using the word "Taiwan," even while addressing its statement to the "Taiwan authorities." Meanwhile, out at Langley, the CIA lists "Taiwan" in its World Fact Book not under "China," nor alphabetically, but at the end, after Zimbabwe. And under "Name: conventional long form" it says "none," when in fact the "conventional long form" of the name of Taiwan's government is "The Republic of China." So, while the State Department complains about the decision in Taipei to drop "China" in exchange for "Taiwan," the CIA is desperately trying to avoid using the term "China" in reference to Taiwan.

Next they point out the obvious: that the State Department is feeding Beijing's hunger for Taiwan:

China insists that Taiwan keep the name "Republic of China" in order to legitimize implicitly its claim that Taiwan is part of "one China" and, hence, part of its sovereign territory. By going along with this, the United States actually fuels China's sense of entitlement--or, more accurately, its resentment over the fact that it doesn't rule Taiwan.

Then comes a review of what everyone understood Taiwan's situation to be after WWII: its sovereignty was unresolved, the US position into the 1970s (much to the chagrin of the Chiang regime):

But the United States has not recognized Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan since at least April 11, 1947, when then-Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson, in a letter to Senator Joseph Ball, stated that "the transfer of sovereignty over Formosa to China [had] not yet been formalized." Taiwan, then called Formosa, had been a colony of the Japanese Empire from 1895 until the end of the Second World War, when Japan "renounced all right, title, and claim" to the island as a condition of Japan's surrender. When, in 1951, a formal peace treaty with Japan was concluded in San Francisco, China was not represented, because of a disagreement among the signatory powers as to which government actually represented it. The delegate of the United Kingdom stated for the record that the "treaty also provides for Japan to renounce its sovereignty over Formosa and the Pescadores Islands. The treaty itself does not determine the future of these islands," a position that all parties, except the Soviet Union, adopted. The Soviet delegate grumbled that "this draft grossly violates the indisputable rights of China to the return of integral parts of Chinese territory: Taiwan, the Pescadores, the Paracel and other islands."

After further review Schmitt and Tkacik note:

The State Department formally restated this position to the U.S. Senate in 1970: "As Taiwan and the Pescadores are not covered by any existing international disposition, sovereignty over the area is an unsettled question subject to future international resolution." And President Ronald Reagan, as part of his "six assurances" in 1982 to Taiwan president Chiang Ching-kuo, declared that "the United States has not changed its long-standing position on the matter of Taiwan's sovereignty." Every succeeding U.S. administration has reiterated its adherence to that assurance--though without spelling it out, which is probably why Foreign Service officers in the Department of State and staffers on the National Security Council have come to lose sight of this fundamental act.

It's important to understand this key fact: after WWII the sovereignty of Taiwan was generally understood to belong to no one, and this was the official US position for many years. That is why in the Shanghai Communique the US merely "acknowledges" the Chinese position.

They close with a sad anecdote:

At the press conference announcing the agreement, general manager Brian Cashman referred to Yankee pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, who last year tied for the most wins in the American league, as coming from "Chinese-Taipei." While doing so no doubt pleased his Chinese Communist hosts, it was undoubtedly an embarrassment for Wang, a national hero in Taiwan, to have his country tossed aside for the sake of the Yankees' commercial interests. Of course, the Yankees have not been the only ones to go down this road. And the real issue here is not whether the Yankees or Major League Baseball can sell a few more baseball caps and shirts in China. The real issue is that by playing this game we are not moderating Chinese ambitions toward Taiwan but fueling them.

Bingo. Every time the State Department kowtows to Beijing, it simply aggravates the situation. China has no right to own Taiwan, and it is high time the State Department internalized that fact.

[Taiwan] [US] [China] [Chinese Taipei] [Taiwan Independence] [Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)] Photos hosted at Flickr.