Fun With the News

AFP reported on a TVBS poll that said President Regional Administrator Ma's popularity had plummeted to 28%, announcing that this was a new low. Remember, guys, this is TVBS, not a rational polling organization. Ma's approval ratings may well be that low, but as the saying goes, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. Better to wait until more rational polls have confirmed that Ma's standing has indeed plummeted so far. TVBS' "news" does remind us, though, how Ma's social function is to serve as a scapegoat for public opinion, just as Chen before him -- playing Lotho to KMT elites' Saruman....

ESWN, popular tabloid blog, attempted and failed to comment rationally the other day on the Taipei Times report of former First Lady Wu Shu-chen's latest avoidance of court appearances by citing her failing health. After reviewing the Taipei Times coverage of the mess, ESWN pointed out that there were no quotes from Green lawmakers on the issue, only KMT lawmakers:

Why couldn't they get a quote from any lawmakers on the other side of the fence? Well, it is possible that it would embarrassing to the 'green' lawmakers and Taipei Times would not want that to happen, would they? It is also possible the the 'green' lawmakers made themselves unavailable because they know where the public opinion stands.

So I went and checked the pro-KMT China Post's coverage, which also did not appear to cite any Green lawmakers. In fact it cited a KMT lawmaker, the notorious Chiu Yi, whom President Chen let out of jail after he'd been sentenced for attacking a government building and assaulting policemen. Which the China Post did not mention, of course. Does this mean that the China Post has a horrible pro-Green bias? In both cases it appears that reporters probably felt they had the Green side since they had Wu's lawyer, and so -- for balance -- sought Blue counterquotes. In other words, ESWN most likely has completely misunderstood. The China Post did say that prosecutors thought this a travesty of justice, though evading court and police dates for health reasons is a time-honored practice in Taiwan's political circles.

Curiously, ESWN missed commenting on the far more ominous promise from the prosecutors in the Chen Shui-bian special funds case, in which eight prosecutors convened a press conference to announce that the prosecution of Chen would never stop until they had convicted him (not until they have found the truth).

On Monday, eight prosecutors in charge of the investigation into former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) secret overseas accounts held a press conference in Taipei.

During the press conference, prosecutor Yueh Fang-ju (越方如) proclaimed that if they failed to solve the case, they would step down.

Yueh asked rhetorically: “If the case cannot be solved, how could we not be too ashamed to stay?”

Supreme Prosecutor Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP) spokesman Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) echoed Yueh’s comments, saying that if the team failed to solve the case, then they would have to step down, too.

The problem with this is that prosecutors are civil officials, not political appointees.

They should handle cases in accordance with the law and make remarks and decisions based on the evidence associated with the case at hand — nothing more and nothing less.

The language used by the SIP prosecutors at the press conference makes it sound as if they were pan-blue politicians commencing a campaign of attack on Chen Shui-bian.

In addition, the SIP ignored Articles 2 and 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法).

Article 2 stipulates that “a public official who conducts proceedings on a criminal case shall give equal attention to circumstances favorable or unfavorable to an accused,” while Article 154 stipulates that “prior to final conviction through trial, an accused is presumed to be innocent."

No doubt just an oversight on ESWN's account.

Speaking of special funds, I've always thought the whole pushing of Taiwan's stock exchange in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election was purely a pump-n-dump by stock pushers. What was the smart money doing? Well, foreign direct investment fell 46% in the first eight months of 2008 compared to the previous year. So while the big boys were patting you on the back and telling you to invest in Taiwan, they themselves were busy schlepping their money elsewhere.

[Taiwan]

Bullets and Elections in Taiwan

The popular China blog ESWN, discussing the recent bullets flying in Taiwan, observes....

(TVBS) In Taichung's District #3, DPP legislature candidate Hsieh Hsin-ni lost her primary election but she has filed an appeal on the grounds that one of the polling research companies had an improper business relationship with her opponent and this company gave her really bad numbers that resulted in her losing by 0.28%.

Yesterday, the office of Hsieh-Hsin-ni received a threatening letter which contained a bullet. The letter told her not to support DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh anymore.

Hsieh Hsin-ni had appealed to the Appeals Committee of five persons, of which three agreed that there was a procedure flaw in the selection of the polling research companies. But there was also no evidence of wrongdoing by that research company. The matter has been referred to higher levels. If the polls should have to be taken over again, then Hsieh Hsin-ni's current public campaign against the nefarious collusion between her opponent and the polling company will in fact be an unfair factor in the public's mind. That is to day, a poll taking back then and a poll next week will differ to the extent that the public has been exposed to blanket coverage of the public brawl. Oh, yes, it is also well-known that bullets can affect election outcomes in Taiwan.

That last sentence appears to refer to the assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian by a disgruntled Blue supporter the day before the 2004 Presidential election. It's an article of faith among the pro-Blue crowd that Chen arranged to have himself shot, or dickered the surgery, or something, but anyway, it was all a conspiracy, and of course, it swung the election over to Chen. This theory is on par with alien abduction claims and spoon-bending and other claims of faith that fly in the face of reality -- those same people who constantly claim that Chen and the DPP are hopeless incompetents nevertheless argue that they pulled off a conspiracy involving a cast of thousands at several different locations. The one good thing about, however, is that it makes it easy to sort out who is pro-Blue: pretty much anyone who pushes this theory.

Reality is a bit different than the pro-Blue fantasies alluded to by ESWN, however. It is an article of faith among the Blues that the assassination swung Chen over the edge, giving him the election, but no evidence exists to support this claim. In fact, Agence France Press (AFP) reported on March 7, 2004, that the pro-Blue China Times had come out with a poll showing that the election was close and that Chen had a slight lead over Lien Chan on March 6, 40-38. DPP internal polls were also showing a very tight election with Lien Chan trailing Chen Shui-bian as well by this time. Two days later the pro-Green Taiwan Thinktank came out with a poll that showed results similar to the pro-Blue polls, putting Chen up 40-39.5. In other words, both sides had the election was tight with Chen leading two weeks prior to the assassination attempt.

Chen won by less than 1% of the vote, a number that would have been greater if invalid ballots had been counted, as they had in previous elections. In early March he was leading by up to 2%. Any way you cut it, there's no support in any numbers for a claim that the assassination gave Chen the victory. Instead, any rational analysis of the 2004 election results would have to start with the incompetence of the Blues, who thought they had the election in the bag, mailed in their campaign, and blew a 20 point lead from the 2000 election - a lead that shrank steadily from December of 2003 on. They also had no counter for the 2-28 rally three weeks prior to the election that brought together people from all over the island, and apparently pushing up Chen's support. The DPP government thoughtfully arranged for the Taipei-Ilan tunnel to open five days before the election, and several other things, such as a last-minute endorsement of Chen by Nobel Laureate Lee Yuan-tse, also fell the DPP's way. Fundamentally, if you start with a 20+% lead, and lose by 1%, then you're the one with a problem.

The full irony of the KMT selecting Lien Chan as its Presidential candidate in 2004 is that in 2000, when the Blue vote was split between Lien Chan (24%) and James Soong (38%), enabling Chen to win with 39% of the vote, Deep Blue conspiracy theorists blamed Lee Teng-hui for promoting the candidacy of Lien Chan as a way to split the Blues. Wikipedia records:

Though more popular and consistently ranked higher in the polls, the outspoken former Taiwan Governor James Soong failed to gain the Kuomintang's nomination. As a result, he announced his candidacy as an independent candidate. The Kuomintang responded by expelling Soong and twenty one of his allies in November 1999. It is a very common belief by KMT supporters that President Lee Teng-hui was secretly supporting Chen Shui-bian, and purposely supported the less popular Lien in order to split the Kuomintang, and this belief was given a great deal of credibility after the 2000 election with Lee defected to the pan-Green coalition. Soong, a mainlander, tried to appeal to the native Taiwanese by nominating pro-independence surgeon Chang Chao-hsiung as his running-mate.

In other words, the KMT conspiracy position on the 2000 election recognizes, explicitly, that Lien Chan was too unpopular to win. Yet in 2004 that very same KMT went ahead and nominated that very same Lien Chan themselves!

It is clear that the function of the Chen Asassination conspiracy claim is twofold: it exists to attack Chen Shui-bian, and to more importantly, to divert attention from the incompetence and venality of the Blues.

On a lighter note, in that same post ESWN observes that

Late today, independent legislator Li Ao's office received a threatening letter with a bullet in it. The author claimed to be the leader of a criminal gang and he used foul to language to call Li Ao a coward who is taking money from Frank Hsieh. The writer also said that only Ma Ying-jeou can save taiwan.

Li Ao is a pro-annexation mainlander who ran for President in 2000 on the New Party ticket, the first of the many parties to spin off from the KMT. Li Ao, you may recall, gassed the legislature last year. Li once brandished a knife during a legislative session and told Minister of Defense Lee Jye that he should castrate himself. He has also claimed that the CIA gave him information that Chen arranged his own assassination. Li, who was once a useful public intellectual, has become a clown who told the authorities in Beijing that he hopes they have another 1,000 years of rule....

This is not the first time for Li Ao to make a bullet claim. A couple of years ago he also reported that he recieved a bullet in the mail. Let's hope the police find the culprit, whom I suspect will not be very far from Li Ao's mailbox....

[Taiwan] [Li Ao] [ESWN] [media] [Chen Shui-bian] [KMT]

Hong Kong: What's in Store For Taiwan

The great blog ESWN had an article translation that should send chills up the spine of anyone who wants Taiwan's future to be democratic:

... In the March 26 issue of TIME magazine, Hong Kong was on the front cover with the lead story being an interview with Chief Executive Donald Tsang. The local media obviously focused on this interview. In the same issue, there was a more important essay that nobody paid attention to. Not a single word was quoted by the Hong Kong media. This essay was written by the Executive Council convener Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) who is a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Consultative Council. ...

The essay covers the issues, from China's point of view, of what it means to be a "child of the motherland" -- and what is Taiwan's relationship to China, according to the pro-Beijing crowd? ESWN goes on to comment:

The title of Leung's essay is Child of Motherland. From the title, it does not seem to be any big deal. But the sub-heading pointed out the main point of the essay in a clear way: "As a part of China, Hong Kong cannot and may not autonomously determine its own democratic system." Leung wrote: "Unlike other colonies, Hong Kong did not become independent. It became part of a nation -- China -- and was given not full but a "high degree" of autonomy, under the principle of 'one country, two systems.'"

Two key points here. First, when Taiwan is part of China it cannot determine what government it should have ("As a part of China, Hong Kong cannot and may not autonomously determine its own democratic system."). That is for Beijing alone to say. And second, "one country, two systems" is a sham, for under that rubric, Hong Kong does not have its own system, it merely has a high degree of autonomy, which China is slowly eliminating. In other words, the "other system" of the "two systems" isn't another system, but the same system as China -- as I said the other day, "my system is my system, and your system is my system." If Beijing really wanted to lure the Taiwanese into the fold, suppressing democracy in Hong Kong is a bad move. What does that suggest about Beijing's strategy vis-a-vis Taiwan?

[Taiwan] [China] [Democracy] [ESWN] [Hong Kong]

Gangsta Pap

Our fair city has been the site of another one of those periodic outbursts of gangster violence recently. Gangsters killing each other, a world-wide affliction, is not very interesting news, but the tale did take a turn when a gangster supposedly filmed himself making threats on tape promising retaliation for the killings. ESWN has part of the story, but tonight the story took a more interesting turn when it turned out that the gangster didn't film himself -- the reporter from TVBS helped with the filming and was present during it, the evening news is reporting here. TVBS has apparently canned him (based on a TVBS taking its own initiative in investigating the reporter's claims, they say. NaCl, anyone?)

ESWN points out that gangsters have filmed themselves before, and attempts to present this as controversy of the right-to-know versus media publicity for gangsters:

There have been prior instances of Taiwan gangsters shooting their own digital videos for public consumption., and this explains why there is objection to offering publicity to gangsters. Is this news in the name of the people's right to know? Or is this encouraging worse behavior? Internationally, a similar question is whether Osama bin Ladin's videos ought to be shown on television? This is a test of finding the balance between freedom of press and media self-discipline.

Is this really a test between freedom of press and media self-discipline? Perhaps, although the reporter's involvement is blatantly illegal and is not really an information self-discipline issue. But what you won't read on ESWN is that TVBS is Chinese-owned and 100% supportive of the KMT and China -- it is a pro-Blue station to the core. A propaganda staple of the Blues is that Taiwan's society is in a mess -- and of course, videos threatening violence and gangster killings are proof positive that the propaganda is correct. What a coincidence, eh? This gangster is so useful, if he didn't exist, he'd have to be invented. Fake videos are also well known in Taiwan -- see ESWN's profile of a case from two years ago. It is too soon to say what is going on, but you can be sure the whole story ain't out there yet.

[Taiwan] [ESWN] [media] [TVBS] [Taichung]

ESWN on Marches in Taiwan and Hong Kong

The peripatetic China blogger ESWN remarks on marches in Taiwan and Hong Kong, claiming that there is a problem with explanations of low turnouts for pro-democracy marches in Hong Kong:

Yet, when the call went out for the people of Hong Kong to march for universal suffrage, not more than 5,000 people showed up (Comment 200703#053). There is an obvious problem here, but nobody seems to want to confront it honestly. Here is the quote from SCMP: James Sung Lap-kung, a political scientist at City University, said: "The low turnout might not necessarily mean Hong Kong people do not want universal suffrage. But it signals that they want the democrats to change their form of fighting for it."

I've highlighted Roland's comment there: the problem is "obvious." What is it?

What is he talking about? Why do the majority of the citizens who have said time and again that they want universal suffrage decline to turn out for a well-publicized demonstration march towards that goal? The organizers of these marches have never answered this question satisfactorily. Perhaps they do not know how to or perhaps they don't want to state the obvious.

One wonders -- what is the "obvious" thing going unstated? I ask this question because there were anti-war demonstrations in the US the other day that attracted only thousands, yet the majority of Americans oppose the Iraq war. Looking at ESWN's numbers of 5,000 marchers out of a pool of 4.2 million democracy supporters, that works out to 0.00119% of the pool present. Using a US population of 270 million, if at least 135 million oppose the war, we'd expect a turnout of at least 160,000 around the US yesterday. With just a 1% turnout, 1.35 million people should have clogged US cities yesterday. From what I can see, we were nowhere near either figure. Similarly, the Shih Ming-teh-led anti-Chen demonstrations here last year quickly peaked at a hundred thousand, and then fell to a few thousand on the weekends, much less on the weekdays, despite the millions of pro-KMT types in northern Taiwan and the widespread practice among the pro-China parties of paying demonstrators. Opposition to gay marriage is the majority position in the US, but demonstrations against it do not draw large numbers.

The sad fact is that low turnouts at demonstrations are a statistical norm for well-supported causes around the world. Perhaps ESWN should run some numbers for turnouts around the world and give us some comparisons. Maybe he'll turn up something that makes the turnout in Hong Kong an "obvious" problem, but perhaps also he might be surprised to find that what happened in Hong Kong is perfectly normal and the reasons for it incredibly prosaic.

Those are the reasons that I came up with. There may be others. so maybe these comments will generate the usual criticisms that I hate democracy and freedom. But what is your explanation as to why 5,000 people showed up for the march when public opinion polls showed that 60% of the population are for universal suffrage? If you can solve that puzzle, then you will get 60% of 7 million people = 4.2 million people to march for universal suffrage. How can that sort of people power be stopped?

How indeed?

UPDATE: I deleted comments similar to Raj's here at the Peking Duck. But he speaks for many thoughtful supporters of democracy around Asia:

Roland, did you ever consider that your thinly-veiled hostility towards democracy in HK and constant attempts to undermine it is the source of such comments? If you do actually believe in HK democracy (i.e. the end of the functional constituencies, 1 vote per person and only direct elections) maybe you could actually show that - just for once.

Dream on, Raj.

[Taiwan] [ESWN] [Hong Kong]

ESWN on AP's Use of Beijing Propaganda

ESWN comments on the flap over the AP's use of CCP propaganda as an important component of their story on Annette Lu joining the race for the Presidency in 2008 (original story). ESWN writes:

[022]The "Scum of the Nation" Story (03/09/2007) (UDN via Yahoo! News) Here is the initial official reaction after the AP/CNN story which cited identified persons who called Taiwan vice-president Annette Lu 'insane' and 'scum of the nation' (see Comment 200703#014). The Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union both demanded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government Information Office to cancel the AP reporter Li Min's visa and expel him out of Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Government Information that they will do so quickly and the police will ask Li to depart. However, a person involved in diplomacy pointed out that an expulsion may raise international concerns over freedom of press in Taiwan.

The Taipei Times has the complete story on the abrupt about-face. The correspondent, Li Min, was from Hong Kong and his biases were on full display, recovering remarks about Lu made eight years ago and referring to "Beijing's sacred view" that it can annex Taiwan and murder Taiwanese to do so. The AP story also worked in the completely irrelevant tale of the Blue supporter who shot Lu and Chen the day before the 2004 election, setting off the KMT ("the opposition") claim that it was a conspiracy in a single, separate sentence for emphasis. The story wasn't all bad, but the biases of the writer are obvious.

ESWN observes that "identified persons" made the remarks. Who cares? Propaganda is propaganda, whether sources are identified or not. Those remarks should not have been in either the headline or the opening paragraph, where they help shape reader perception of the remainder of the document and of Lu herself. The issue is not even that propaganda was used; the real issue is the way that the international media constantly reaches for Beijing in defining Taiwan. Why didn't the lead paragraph reference Lu's career, a formidable one as an activist, feminist, and politician? Why wasn't a story on a Taiwan person centered on Taiwan? Is that too much to ask?

ESWN then reminds us who the first foreign reporter to be expelled from Taiwan was...

Here is a history lesson. Who was the first foreign correspondent to be expelled from Taiwan? In 1981, there was the shocking case of Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor Chen Wen-chen who was found dead on the campus ground of National Taiwan University. This was an international incident, due to the disagreement between the authorities and the Chen family about the cause of death. Chen's bruised and battered body was discovered on July 2, 1981 on the campus of National Taiwan University after he had been taken away by the Taiwan Garrison General Headquarters on the previous day. The garrison headquarters
initially claimed that Chen had committed suicide because he feared being arrested for crimes, but changed its account the following day, saying that he had died in an accident. Eventually, the Taiwan authorities acceded to the Chen family's demand to have an American forensic doctor come to Taiwan to examine the body.

In her report, Associated Press reporter Tina Chou used the word 'autopsy' instead of 'examination.' The Taiwan Government Information Office believed that the word 'autopsy' damaged the sovereignty and dignity of Taiwan and demanded a written apology. When AP did not respond in a timely manner, the Government Information Office canceled Tina Chou's press license and expelled her from Taiwan. By the way, the head of the Taiwan Information Office at the time was none other than James Soong.

Tina Chou's account of this affair is somewhat different -- the problem was that the authorities claimed that she had filed an "untruthful" report. Because Chen had died during an intelligence investigation, probably after being thrown from a upper story window, the authorities did not want the word "autopsy," with its implication of foul play, used in the story. Chou was the first Taiwanese ever employed as a foreign journalist in Taiwan, also with the AP. Chou describes:

To rationalize the action against me, the government told the Legislative Yuan that my autopsy report was a fabrication by a foreign news agency and living proof that foreign imperialism once again was plotting to manipulate the Republic of China! With TV reporters told to expect and report this address to the Parliament, the official lamented previous imperialistic invasions and interferences in China, vowing to protect Taiwan from further advances.

One of the more ironic and insidious propaganda moves of the anti-Taiwan crowd is to claim that Chen Shui-bian and the current DPP leadership is as bad as the KMT. Here ESWN juxtaposes the tale of Li Min and Tina Chou, as if there was some equivalence. But the differences are key: Tina Chou was an accredited journalist, originally from Taiwan, expelled for telling the truth, and her career in Taiwan was impaired for years afterwards. Li Min was not expelled -- the difference between an authoritarian state and a democracy is this accountability that permits cooler heads to prevail -- and his transgression was abusing his position as a journalist to repeat someone else's propaganda, to paint a tale about Annette Lu. There's no equivalence between individuals who speak truth and individuals who repeat the lies of others. In the final analysis, that Li Min is still in Taiwan is simply further evidence of the vast difference between the pro-Taiwan and the pro-China crowd.

UPDATE: As the TIME blog shows, the international media just don't get it.

[Taiwan] [ESWN] [media]

Open Source Translation Project

Rebecca MacKinnon at RConversation, who has been important in drives to build bridges between the Chinese language and English language blogging communities in East Asia, announces the Open Source Translation Project:

Guangzhou-based blogger and Global Voices language editor John Kennedy is leading an exciting new initiative which Roland Soong has dubbed the Open Source Translation Blogging project.. and which "Letters from China" calls the Great Hall of the Bloggers.

John's idea, which started in a comments thread on LfC's blog, is similar to a dream Roland has had for a couple of years: To build a cooperative of bilingual bloggers who coordinate translation of important conversations taking place on the Chinese Internet - particularly stuff that we think will help the English-speaking world to understand China better.

Roland has become one of the most famous Chinese-English "bridge bloggers," bringing articles, blog posts, conversations, and debates from the Chinese-language Internet to the attention of the English-speaking world. But there are many other people doing this on their own blogs. They include John, LfC, the good folks at Danwei, Interlocals, the China Media Project, the team at China Digital Times and many many more bilingual bloggers scattered around Greater China and across the globe.

I'm hoping to squeeze out some time to participate in this project. Hope you can find some too.