William Lai sworn in

A tiny shrine in Tainan.

Straits Times reports on the dawn of a "pragmatic" era in Taiwan with the William Lai cabinet:

At the ceremony, the 57-year-old Mr Lai said his main task is to grow the economy, rather than to build political momentum before the island's next election, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong reported.

He also said his main responsibility is to build Taiwan, "expand the economy and look after the people", adding that his Cabinet would press on with reforms in areas ranging from the energy industry to labour, pensions and tax, while "eliminating obstacles for investment", Reuters reported.

As a keen observer pointed out in a Facebook discussion, growing the economy is necessary to build momentum before the election. Lai's appointment is squarely aimed at the election.

Note what Lai did not discuss: wages, living standards, housing. Lai is an oily center-right construction-industrial state machine politician emitting reassuring signals to that System, not a "strongman" as Lawrence Chung said in SCMP the other day. IMHO we will not see any of the necessary changes to the system, just "reforms" that will result in further concentrations of wealth. He might actually hurt DPP chances in the 2018 election with such "reforms".

(aside: "strongman" isn't in Chung's piece by accident. It's a KMT propaganda attack on him from 2015.)

Lai's elevation to the premiership is a signal that he has arrived and is being groomed as a possible presidential candidate. As I wrote the other day...

.....This gives Lai a chance to get national name recognition and give him central government experience. It also gives him a chance to show his face in the north.

Note that this gets him out of Tainan in a way that prevents it from looking like he is ignoring Tainan to run for the New Taipei City mayorship -- it would be a bit awkward if he were campaigning in Yungho or Chungho while still technically the mayor of Tainan. It seems obvious to me that eventually Lai will be begged to run, in fine Taiwan style, for New Taipei City mayor in the 2018 election. And in fine Taiwan style, he will reluctantly accept.

I will be very surprised if Lai is still premier once the 2018 elections are over with. I still expect him to run for New Taipei City mayor. Although some publications are arguing that Lai will challenge Tsai for the 2020 presidential nomination, I think that if he was really going to do that, she would not have made him premier -- why raise a rival up? Rather, this is a signal that she is confident he won't challenge her in 2020. This means, though, he will be presidential in 2024 assuming all goes well. He will be ~65 then, the right age for a Taiwan president.

According to news reports the new cabinet is pretty much the same as the old. I expect several posts to change over the next few months as ministers leave for whatever reason: personal, to run for office, etc.

This is not only seasoning for Lai, giving him central government experience. It is also a test of Lai as a DPP party politician. Lai is a New Tide faction member. Recall that so far, the DPP Presidential candidate has also been the party chair. If Lai can successfully balance the factions and regional tensions in his handling of central government appointments, he will go far in demonstrating that he is viable as a party Chair (and Presidential candidate). If the new administration turns out to be New Tide dominated, that will hurt his support within the party for the presidency in 2024.

Lai is a signal of a good thing: he is another of the emerging new generation of leaders in the DPP, emerging leaders that the KMT simply doesn't have. Cheng Wen-Tsan in Taoyuan is also looking like a solid prospect for the future. Moreover, with the lock on Tainan and Kaohsiung, the DPP has places to smoothly cultivate new leaders. The KMT has only Nantou and Miaoli, two small, mountainous, and broke counties. Note that I have not mentioned Lin Chia-lung in Taichung. All I have to say about him is *sigh*

Lai is also a signal of another good thing: the internalization of democracy and democratic politics as part of the new Taiwan identity. The island was spared a terrible political crisis in figuring out what the Taiwan identity means with the emergence of the second generation pro-Taiwan identity (as opposed to first generation in which being pro-independence meant being anti-KMT) as a global event across the under-40 generation in Taiwan. This saved the DPP from the crisis of defining what Taiwan means: the young did it for them. In an alternate universe, the appointment of Lai might have triggered a round of debilitating debates over what Lai meant for the new identity. The lack of any debate is a positive sign.

Lai also signals that the generational shift in the DPP is now finished: the activist generation has handed the party off to the politicians. The revolution is complete, and it has not eaten too many of its children. You can tell that transition is now over because nobody discussed the Lai appointment in that context. Meanwhile the KMT has not undergone a parallel transition from mainlander elite control to Taiwanization and with the appointment of Wu Den-yih as Chairman, is in fact actively resisting it...

Much of this is covered in the ICRT show on Friday with Keith Menconi, Gavin Phipps as host, and myself. The podcast is great, we had a lot of lighthearted fun. Keith Menconi is wonderful and I will miss him very much. Hope everything goes well for you in the US, Keith!

On a personal note, a month after surgery I finally got on the bike for a ride in the hills. Feels good. More pictures inbound!
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Daily Links:

• Indonesia responds to Chinese expansion in the South China Sea
• Ketagalan: Indigenous culture references in the Universiade ceremonies
• White Wolf, the former gangster and current "politician", says Taiwan aborigines are Chinese.
• Absolutely excellent piece on Wu Feng, the mythical civilizer of the aborigines in the 19th century. Kudos to the Taipei Times for publishing this piece with its many insights into the muted but still omnipresent Han chauvinist view of the aborigines (and other peoples). It is worth noting that while these stories were being invented in the 19th century, Han settlers were killing and eating aborigines, and preserving their flesh for sale in south China and Taiwan (bottom of here). Taiwan's headhunters were never that savage. 

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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!

Politics round-up

Little lost kitties.


Reverberating into local politics: Taiwan businesses in China are getting out as the China economy continues to slide. This will undercut the KMT argument, constantly made, that Taiwan needs to tie itself economically to China in order to survive. As each year passes, it is more and more clear that the golden age was under the Chen Administration, and the Ma Administration deeply impaired Taiwan's ability to engage China on Taiwan's terms.

"After the Lunar New Year holiday, we will likely see a large-scale shutdown of small to mid-sized businesses in China, including those run by Taiwanese people," said the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland (ATIEM), a corporate community made up of Taiwanese businesspeople in China.

The association said a wave of departures started around four years ago, adding that the current wave was different from before — in the past, while Taiwanese businesses would shut down factories in China, many kept their assets in the mainland as they maintained an optimistic outlook on the Chinese economy.

"They used to either keep their mainland savings in banks or invest in real estate, businesses ventures or the stock market. But what is different about the current wave of departures is that not only have the factories and assets left, people have stopped feeling any sort of sentimental attachment to the place altogether," an anonymous committee member of the association told local media.

Those Taiwanese businessmen remaining in China will be either too invested to leave, or true expats unwilling to return to the homeland, slowly becoming ever more out of touch with their homeland. Like all expats they have developed a set of elaborate rationalizations for their living outside of their homeland, which are often mistaken for meaningful political commentary.

Meanwhile the KMT continues to stumble. This week the news came out that the forms for new party membership application hilariously contains only places in China to be filled in as birthplace...

However, the party’s Web site for online membership application does not include most Taiwanese counties and cities as an option for the applicant’s place of birth.

Although it lists 59 locations for applicants to choose as their place of birth, no Taiwanese administrative division is included other than Taipei and Kaohsiung.

They probably bought it from a Chinese company. UPDATE: Nope. It was deliberately designed that way to comply with the Republic of China territorial boundaries.

KMT Chairmanship hopeful Steve Chan observed that the KMT might disappear if its internal splits continue. Report in English.

The big news this week was Tsai's cabinet reshuffle. As a commenter predicted here last year when this disappointing cabinet was picked, Tsai is moving out the technocrats, among whom are KMTers (Taipei Times report quotes observers noting that too many KMTers remain) and replacing them with politicians who can effectively run the ministries and campaign for the DPP. It's February, remember, and campaigning for the 2018 elections, which will be held in Jan Nov of 2018, will begin at the end of the year. I expect more cabinet members to be replaced. Tsai also reportedly plans a new cross-strait policy in time for the elections.

Also hilariously, Hau Long-bin, the KMT heavyweight, criticized the cabinet changes, accusing the DPP of nepotism since the new Minister of Labor is President Tsai's cousin, saying: “Nepotism is not good under any circumstances.”

Hau, readers will recall, is the son of KMT reactionary General and Premier Hau Pei-tsun, and owes his high position entirely to the fact that his father is a powerful KMT figure.

This habit of constantly replacing cabinet ministers is bad for Taiwan. Needs to stop... and Tsai's obliviousness to simple issues, such as appointing a family member to high posts in her administration, as well as appointing few women to positions in her cabinet, also needs to stop.
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Daily Links:

• Longtan Butokoden: photo and essay from Josh Ellis
• Taiwan sees record high tourists in 2016. As expected. Excellent news for Taiwan. Nobody will even notice the loss of Chinese tourists, and as word gets around, tourists from more lucrative countries that aren't threatening to murder Taiwanese and take their island will come. And before you tell me something about soft power or people to people contacts or other nonsense, the Chinese group tourists were simply making China even more despised. The individual tourists are far more respectful and likable.
• Thursday = COLD FRONT
• Cambodia is rapidly turning into a protectorate of China (along with Laos). The PM this week banned the ROC national flag in deference to Beijing, but asked for Taiwanese investment to continue.
• Joe Hung, the reactionary KMT commentator, with another round of comical spew in China Post. A good look into what the Deep Blues actually think.
• NOT FAKE NEWS: Comically, after years of regurgitating Chinese propaganda about Taiwan in reports studded with errors and misunderstandings, BBC is producing a site dedicated to fighting fake news. Hint: look in the mirror, BBC. 
• INTERNSHIP:  Winkler Partners, law firm in Taipei, great place to work full of great people. Apply for our paid international law student internship before 15 February and join us in Taipei, Taiwan! http://bit.ly/1NWwsdd

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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!

Forward Taiwan: Latest NDC Proposals on Liberalization of Laws related to Foreigners

Threading our way through the mass of downed trees and debris on a forest road near Sanyi.

This was posted to Forward Taiwan's Facebook page. Very important stuff here....  because it is long I have posted it below the READ MORE line. UPDATE: Dont miss the excellent comments.

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National Development Council’s Plan to Create an Environment for Retention of Talent in Taiwan
FORWARD TAIWAN 。 向前台灣·MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2016

Introduction
This note translates the various proposals made by the National Development Council to the Executive Yuan on September 1 2016. It is divided into an introduction followed by translations of the proposals themselves with comments and explanations from Forward Taiwan. We look forward to your feedback and any corrections.