City Forums

Jack Anderson, WaPo, Aug 9, 1979. ROC officials considered sending letter bombs to people whose politics they didn't like in the US, but the idea was scotched by Chiang Ching-guo, according to a Senate report.

At New Bloom Brian H writes on Ko Wen-je and the Shanghai forum controversy. Ko agreed to welcome a CCP official as a stand-in for the Mayor of Shanghai. The hooha among the Greens, including very stupid accusations that about Ko's politics (of course he is Green, stop it with the purity tests) is a good example of the short-sightedness of so many in the Green camp. Ko was criticized for hosting a CCP flunky instead of the mayor of Shanghai -- as if the mayor of Shanghai were an independent elected official and not a CCP flunky.

Greens need to take the long view on this -- Ko is still electable and as a non-DPPer can garner a portion of the Blue vote, making him strong for the mayoralty in the next election. Taiwanese like to give a second chance after providing a warning -- so I expect he will win but with a smaller winning margin (like Ma for his second presidential term) -- and in any case, at the moment it appears the KMT nomination is likely to go to Alex Tsai, a blithering mainlander ideologue, instead of some deserving practiced politician. Another four years of Ko would be very good for the DPP, as Ko may be able to make progress cleaning up the cronyism that infests the city government after years of Blue control, and he will take the political hit for doing that (not the DPP). Moreover, another Ko term will demonstrate that the earth will spin placidly on even if the mayor of Taipei isn't Deep Blue, as well as create momentum for alternative parties, which the DPP needs to foster if it wants to prevent the KMT from rising again. After that the DPP can give Ko's presidential ambitions a quiet smile, and show him the door.

By contrast, Kaohsiung has no answer yet for its city forum from any of the five cities invited (FocusTw)...

Kaohsiung sent out invitations to Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Fuzhou in June for the Global Harbor Cities Forum it initiated and will host Sept. 6-8, but the five cities have neither confirmed nor rejected it, Hsu told reporters at the city's press conference held for the forum.

What does this mean? Well, if China had a policy, then they would execute it. But dithering like this over a minor international exchange is a strong signal that China has no idea what it is doing.
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Daily Links:

• Global Expat Rankings: Taiwan number 1
• New Bloom: How KMT Chair Hung's comments on the National Palace Museum treasures reveal the KMT's imagination of its own privileged position
• Doug "Peace in our Time" Bandow at CATO writes another tremendously stupid post advocating selling out Taiwan
• Welcome mat fades for Taiwanese businessmen in China
• Chinese overseas community: watched, surveilled, controlled
• Taiwan machine makers should "look south"
• 600K migrant workers in Taiwan

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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!

Ko Wen-je VS the Construction-Industrial State: Ko wins one

Beachcombing in Hsinchu.

Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je is rocking the construction-industrial state. The Taipei Times reports...

The Taipei Dome and Farglory’s contract had become a source of controversy in recent days as Ko and his administrative team began looking at several major projects either underway or in the proposal stage.

Prior to last night’s meeting, Ko had said the Dome contract would have to be revised to increase the penalties for failing to meet deadlines. He also said discrepancies between the initial contract terms during the bidding process and the firm’s final contract needed to be discussed.

“Farglory has already gone past the deadline for completing the project, in violation of the contract,” Ko said earlier yesterday, adding that the original contract’s penalty clauses “do not have any real impact,” because they only allow the city government to fine the firm a total of NT$3 million (US$95,300) for violations.

Hacking on the previous administration, Ko pointed out that Control Yuan asked that 39 articles in the contract be revised, but the previous KMT administration had not done so. Former KMT Mayor Hau had used the infamous you-do-not-understand attack to defend himself from Ko's exposure of his administration's apparent embrace of big companies...

Countering criticism leveled at several projects undertaken during his administration, former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday accused Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and his team of using “defamatory” tactics to hide their “ignorance” of municipal issues.

Hau also defended himself by saying that everything had been done according to the law and passed the ethics commission. Such reviews in Taiwan are typically prima facie. KMT Chair Eric Chu has asked Hau to take over the National Policy Foundation, the KMT's internal think tank. Hau is a princeling, like Chu, another clue that "reform" under Chu is going to be limited to revamping and further locking down the Party's relationships with the local factions so they don't bolt. ADDED: Yam ripped him in an editorial solidarity.tw captured.

So far, this is my favorite Ko moment:

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he has ordered all Taipei City Government departments to draft a complete list of all municipal property, after discovering that the controversial bus lane on Zhongxiao W Road includes a bus stop that is not listed as belonging to the city.

Ko also said he'd can the Taipei police chief if pro-PRC "protesters" in front of Taipei 101 continued their violent assaults on people; the chief subsequently retired, along with a fire department official. Ko is making everyone else administrating a county/city look bad. Commonwealth interviewed him in December shortly after his election victory.

BTW, some of you may recall that the Tax Bureau was pursuing Ko's family in a totally non-political case. Yesterday it dinged his parents for $31,200 NT. This is a symbolic figure -- once it was committed to the apparent harassment, it had to fine them, but if it had been a large amount, that would have called further attention to the fact that Ko's family was being pursued in a totally non-political case.

Mayor Lin Jia-long of Taichung killed the Taiwan Tower project in Taichung when its budget nearly doubled. Should that be read as a genuine commitment to curbing the construction-industrial state? Or just a one-off designed to make Lin look like he is doing a Ko Wen-je in Taichung, using a bad project with no great construction-industrial state support? For me the jury is still out on Lin. Another major project Lin has criticized, the BRT, saw an inevitable accident today.

Up and Coming for the KMT: As the TT reports, during the run up to the KMT Chairmanship election Chu hinted that he'd end the Party's assault on one of its most loyal servants, Legislative Speaker and longtime heavyweight Wang Jin-pyng (MaWangMess, MaWangMess). A group of legislators has proposed that the KMT withdraw its appeal of the court ruling that permitted Wang Jin-pyng to retain his position in the Party and in the legislature. Chu has delayed a response, but if he drops the appeal, it will be another declaration of Chu breaking with President and former KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (like his elimination of Ma's Zhongshan Council and return of power to the Central Standing Committee), who has been doing his Saruman-in-Orthanc imitation since the crushing defeat of the KMT in November. In fact the China Post report has Chu specifically saying he "respects Ma's authority", showing that Chu also views this issue as one that puts himself and Ma in conflict. The Ma-Wang mess really harmed the KMT's relations with its legislators. Surely Chu must sense the urgent need to fix that, and will drop the appeal. If not, then we know something about him and his relations with the KMT.
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Daily Links:

• Gerrit van der Wees of FAPA on US-Taiwan relations, other issues (video)
• Watch out! local monkeys harbor Herpes B.
• WantWant: Eric Chu must staunch KMT hemorrhage.

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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!

What a coincidence. Ko's parents under investigation for tax evasion

The view from the Miaoli 51-1.

New Mayor Ko Wen-je of Taipei is making a splash. Not only did he stir up discussion in China with his simple ways, some of the local citizens are asking why their mayors can't be more like Ko. Very refreshing.

I'm sure it is just a coincidence that since he beat the KMT in the election the tax office is investigating his parents. Yes, surely the KMT would never use the governmental apparatus to punish the opposition.

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je expressed dismay Monday that Taiwan's tax bureau is going after his parents for possible tax evasion because of a NT$10 million loan they gave Ko to help him pay for a house in Taipei.

Ko, a surgeon-turned-politician, said he was disgusted when the National Taxation Bureau audited his personal income taxes to see if he had reported income from speeches made in a few years prior to last year's Nov. 29 elections.

Ko said that now that the elections were over, the National Taxation Bureau was "going overboard" in having his father go to the agency and explain the matter.

"This goes beyond what any normal person can tolerate," Ko said, publicly asking the agency to explain its actions.

This post-election investigation is standard playbook and has happened to many DPP politicians, though tax evasion is certainly a new wrinkle -- probably because the standard attack is misuse of public funds, and Ko's parents are retired private citizens with no access to public funds. It says a lot about the KMT that it believes that all politicians are misusing public funds...

Sad. But since Ko is an independent, it can only increase his popularity.
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Daily Links:

• Synapticism on a 1940s mansion in rural Changhua.
• UDN savages Ma Ying-jeou in editorial. All stuff I've been saying for years.
• Ryan Scoville on why Japan has a better claim to the Senkakus.
• China doubles its amphibious infantry for Taiwan invasion
• From May: Japan-Taiwan relations after the Sunflowers
• Drew with another great route, this time the Nantou 56.
• Drew again, on Taiwan's strange cycling routes.
• Strategic Risks in the Taiwan Strait. Refers to my blog post on the Black Ditch. Yay! 

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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!

Taipei: Sean Lien follies continue

The government gives a comprehensive list of warnings for the Dajia River.

Sean Lien continues to spout nonsense, to the great amusement of all. Among many lowlights of his campaign include a proposal to solve the stray dog problem by dumping the city's stray dogs down in Chiayi -- a very revealing moment showing how the KMT ruling core views Taiwan outside of Taipei -- it is simply a place to dump their waste, the funeral home fiasco, and the claim that he had visited all 600 precincts of Taipei, when the city only has 400 or so. Local netizens have been mourning the Nov 29 arrival of the election, saying that it is too soon. They want more time so as to enjoy Lien's flow of silliness to its fullest.

Lien's latest eye-roller was his suggestion to rename Shifu Road, City Hall Road, after former President Chiang Ching-kuo, made the other day at a rally. The city government's household registration office quickly came out to point out just how silly that was: there's a process for renaming roads, which Lien appears not to have considered. Imagine that.... Apple Daily posted a Liberty Times report:

今日出版的《自由時報》報導，北市民政局戶籍行政科長洪進達表示，市府路上有門牌1號的台北市政府及45號的101大樓，總共14戶。若要改動路名需先由5分之1住戶向戶政事務所提案，進行問卷調查，取得4分之3住戶同意後提報市府，市府審議通過再送市議會，獲得過半數議員同意，才能改路名，不是說改就改。（方翊倩／綜合報導）

The statement says that Shifu Road runs from #1 (City Hall) to #45 (Taipei 101!!), for a total of 14 registered addresses. According to the statement, a fifth of the households along the road have to apply for the change (change comes from within, in fine Buddhist fashion). Then a survey has to be performed, and 3/4 of the households must agree. The name change must then be submitted to the City Council for majority approval.

It almost looks as if the ghost of Chen Shui-bian is haunting the KMT again, for Ketagalan Blvd in front of the Presidential Palace was named Chieh-shou Road (=Long Live Chiang Kai-shek) before Chen changed it. Seems some KMTers want to get in some retaliation...

On a more serious note, this process is why the local city governments run by the DPP have never changed the colonialist road names in their cities: few households and businesses would want to go through the trouble of changing their addresses, getting new namecards and IDs, and so on, so name changes are difficult.
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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!

Ko Wiretap case takes ominous turn

Poster for Taichung mayoral candidate Hu and a local candidate in an aboriginal area.

The wiretap case in Taipei took a turn for the ugly:

On November 4, Ko aides said they found signs of wiretaps at his policy center, with wires having been installed in a telephone exchange which would have made it possible to tap two phones inside the policy center. The incident led to a war of words between the Ko camp and the campaign of his Kuomintang opponent, Sean Lien, accusing each other of being behind the bugging of phones.

The case took a new turn Friday evening, when prosecutors questioned two private detectives from Yilan County. The two, Wu Te-yi and Lin Chun-hung, had been found to have left prints on the telephone box inside the building, reports said.

After questioning them, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office requested their detention, but the court ruled early Saturday morning that there was not sufficient ground to hold them and ordered them set free without bail instead. Prosecutors said they would look at the court ruling before deciding whether or not to appeal against the two men’s release.

One of Ko's aides, surnamed Peng, knew one of the detectives. The police arrested and jailed Peng but the two detectives were released even though -- yep -- they had fingerprint evidence. They also had video from outside the building showing the two men entering, according to Apple Daily, in the company of a staffer from the Ko campaign. The inference the judicial system wants the public to make appears to be that Ko staged this himself, with Peng as the go-between and the detectives planting the wires.

Yeah, right.

Peng refuses to pay bail, since he is innocent, he says. Meaning that Peng is locked up and can't directly challenge anything said about him -- so now you know maybe why he was locked up and the detectives are free to disappear until after the election, as Maddog pointed out on Twitter yesterday.

As many observers have pointed out, detective agencies are untrustworthy and often do things to drum up business. Like fake wiretaps, for instance.
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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!

Taipei Mayoral Election: Lien Chan is all kinds of awesome

Spider guarding her young.

Election junkies: China Policy Institute blog run by Jon Sullivan will be hosting a special issue on Taiwan and the elections. The line-up looks fabulous. And trawl through the previous posts of Frozen Garlic, there's some great stuff there.

Lien Chan, Honorary KMT Chairman for Life, father of Sean Lien, current KMT candidate for Mayor of Taipei, has spoken (in Chinese)(Taipei Times) on the election, attacking Ko in no uncertain terms. He's so wonderful. He should really speak at KMT campaign events across the nation. Not for nothing did a sharp friend of mine describe the Lien clan as Lee Teng-hui's gift to the DPP....

The elder Lien delivered us his undying wisdom....

“Ever since the KMT lost power in 2000, [then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration] started implementing a series of ‘de-Sinicization’ policies, forcing children at the age of 11 or 12 to receive non-Sinicized education,” Lien Chan said in his speech.

“We were saddened to see Chinese ethics, traditional morality and history being twisted to such an extent. As for those children who grew up being fed erroneous ideas, they are now in their 20s or 30s and may have different occupations, such as in the media or Internet sectors,” he added. “As you can all see, we [myself and my son] have fallen victim to distorted comments online and in the media that have unnerved our society.”

De-Sinicization is KMT code for Chen Shui-bian's policies of removing markers of KMT colonialism in Taiwan. Whenever you see it used to describe Chen or Lee Teng-hui, you know you're looking at KMT propaganda. Lien is especially classic in attributing the internet and media comments to de-Sinicization. That is a significant advance over the usual complaints about de-Sinicization. 

He went on to deliver a couple of more blasts at his son's opponent, Ko Wen-je:

He then took aim at Ko, saying that as the third-generation descendant of a man who served the Japanese colonial government, Ko had received “imperialization” education and therefore dismisses everything pertaining to “Zhonghua culture” (中華文化), including its values and history.

At another venue he added:

“I absolutely cannot stand the thought of having someone whose grandfather changed his surname to a Japanese one during the Japanese colonial era as mayor of Taipei. He [Ko] calls himself a commoner and us the privileged few, but I call him a ‘bastard,’” he said.

Labeling Ko anti-China, under control of the pro-independence forces, and Japanese, is the KMT way of trying to get the deep Blue pro-KMT crowd to come out. I doubt it will work; when your candidate's nickname is "God pig" after the pigs fattened for religious sacrifice in local religious traditions, it's going to be uphill sledding.

Lien also took a slap at the Sunflower Movement:

“Because of the poorly revised textbooks, these students think they can publicly declare that they are not Chinese. They have the entire day to do nothing except surf the Internet and form something akin to an online army that propagates malicious rumors,” Lien Chan said. “It was all their [the Sunflower participants’] doing.”

Not a word of this needed to be said, a not a word of it will impress outside of the deep Blue voters. It wouldn't be surprising if this cost Sean Lien votes, especially from a public that is hungry to hear about bread and butter issues and which reveres the Sunflowers. Indeed, if they had treated Sean Lien as a traditional candidate who would spread around construction money, serve the public, and so on, they might have been better off...

Today's TVBS poll had Ko up by 13 over Lien. The KMT and its deep Blue supporters are feeling deeply threatened, not only by the short-term possibilities of the election, but also by the long-term trends. The young in Taiwan are completely unmoved by the KMT's faux Chinese identity and are busily working out their own Taiwan identity. That is why current KMT mayor Hau's elder father, former Premier Hau Pei-tsun, came out the other day to (hilariously) declare that Ko's election would mean the end of the ROC. They feel in their bones the turning of a page of history, and are reacting accordingly....

Ko update: On the Facebook of Ko's wife, a highly perceptive and educated woman, people are warning her and her husband to watch out. She posted a pic of the thank-you card the Liens had sent Ko after he had operated on Sean Lien, and said that they had given him a bottle of liquor which cost $400 but which they had purchased on sale at $160....

UPDATE: A commenter below observes:

She did so only after Sean Lien's mother claimed at a rally one day earlier (Nov 15) that Ko was not among the four doctors who treated Sean Lien for his gunshot wound, implying Ko was lying about having treated Lien.

Thanks, I didn't know who had said it. The other comments are good too, don't miss them.

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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!

Last Month Crazies, Relevant Organs Edition

The pan-Blue side is really starting to bring their dish of smears to a fine simmer under Ko Wen-je. Since the attempt to smear Ko as corrupt with the MG149 account totally failed, they are trying to make silk purses out of the sow's ear of organs from China. The KMT news organ writes:

The journalist revealed his observations on Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), a physician of National Taiwan University Hospital, indicating that Ko “faced a genuinely vexing moral dilemma. His patients would die without the transplants he had arranged…. At the end of the day, Dr. Ko’s willingness to speak candidly is evidence of a singular courage. His account is the smoking gun. It represents the culmination of a long quest to find medical confirmation of China’s harvesting of prisoners of conscience from an unimpeachable source.” The journalist claimed that Ko not only agreed to have his name used in the book, but also said that he was willing to consider testifying before the US Congress.

The journalist wrote in the book, “Dr. Ko went to China and meticulously worked through the checklist of intimacy with his medical colleagues: The go-to-hell banquet. The karaoke bar. The cognac followed by the Mao-Tai. The subtle flattery and the jokes about his accent. And when the ritual was truly finished, the Chinese surgeons summoned him. You are one of us and you are a brother. So we will give you the family price. But we are going to do more than that. We noted your worries and concerns about organ quality. So you will have no worries for your patients. They will receive nothing but the best: all the organs will come from Falung Gong.”

Ethan Gutmann testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives on September 12, 2012 with regard to organ harvesting on the Chinese Mainland. He confirmed that a surgeon from Taiwan had participated in the organ trade.

In addition, Ethan Gutmann testified before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in the Canadian Senate on October 21, 2014. He stated, “Ten years ago Dr. Ko went to a mainland hospital to negotiate reduced kidney and liver prices for his department’s elderly patients. After a friendly banquet, Dr. Ko was given the Chinese price, which was about half of what a foreigner pays.” Gutmann went on to praise Ko, saying that “Dr. Ko is now the leading candidate to be mayor of Taipei, largely due to the perception that he is a man of integrity. I’ll go further. Dr. Ko’s testimony has done more for this investigation than all the world’s health organizations put together.”

It's always both ironic and hypocritical when the KMT criticizes its opponents. But never mind that, note Gutman's attitude towards Ko, whom he admires and respects. Gutman has spent years researching this and knows what he is talking about. This is another attack that isn't going to fly.

Not that it matters because the Ko campaign is still flogging this wiretap thing which it never should have mentioned aloud and can 't prove anything about. Another round was fired off in today's newspapers. The taps were apparently placed in the correct spot, in a phone switchbox, on two numbers Ko himself used. However, they weren't plugged into anything... There's no reason the wiretaps could not be from old taps placed on some prior occupant, and coincidentally wound up on Ko's numbers since he's in the power office, same as the previously tapped occupant, fed by the same phone lines. Would like to see some evidence that it is from the Lien campaign...

Lien's manager, Alex Tsai, said he'd quit politics if he were found to be "personally involved" in wiretapping. The promise to "quit politics if X" is a common one among politicians here and is usually not honored, but the fact that he used the term "personally" is quite interesting, as if to distance himself from coming wiretapping revelations: "I wasn't personally involved in that stuff. Never knew a thing." It would be sad if he quit politics; he's been exactly the kind of manager for the Sean Lien team that the Ko Wen-je team needs him to be...

My man Les remarks on Facebook:

Ko P should offer to make public any information that Lien's team wants, they just need to ask, no need to plant bugs or insert spies.

Exactly.
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Daily Links:

• President Xi of China visited Tanzania last year; his delegation sent home tons of ivory in diplomatic bags. Brazen.
• Committee to Protect Journalists on the attacks on journalists here during the Sunflower protests.
• The Prediction Market at NCCU is attacked for being a gambling operation, raided by police. The whole thing is very obviously political. I'd sure like to feel the chill here, but considering that this misuse of official power is so normalized here, I'm numb. And NCCU is so staunchly pro-KMT, and for so many years, all I can feel is well, this world where police raid people merely for predicting that the wrong party will win the election is the world that so many at NCCU have struggled so long to bring into being...
• Say it loud, language and identity in the protests in HKK and Taiwan.
• Scary wargame shows China's huge quantitative advantage over US. The US could develop this rube goldberg gadget mentioned therein... or we could just sell some fighters to our ally, Taipei, as a friend observed.

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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!

The Sean Lien Campaign seeks inspiration wherever it can find it....

....including, apparently, from the California lottery. Go to Apple Daily to watch the video.
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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!

Lien in desperate move: Ko= economic doom!

FormosaNation on Twitter, who has been doing a great job tracking the Taipei mayor election, passed this glorious moment around. Here is Sean Lien, the KMT mayoral candidate for Taipei, announcing that if he isn't elected, the economy is doomed. People on Twitter pointed out that his solution is the same as Ma's: more China. That might have played in 2008. It won't play now. The government's insistence on failed China policies has backfired on one of the KMT's most critical claims in maintaining electoral superiority: the claim that it can deliver on the economy. Clearly, with Ma in office nearly six years, and the legislature controlled by the KMT, this was the time to show that was true. It's obvious to everyone that has failed.

Surely the Lien Campaign has to be one of the worst run campaigns in the history of the island's democracy.

For ordinary people, economy is in the dumps. Polls consistently show that Taiwanese are willing to take higher-paying jobs in China. I met a friend who is a buyer in the electronics industry this week, and he was telling me that Chinese electronics firms offer pay 3-5 times higher, or more, to lure key staffers to China. Once they have squeezed their knowledge out of them, they dump them after a couple of years. That higher paying jobs are widely available in China shows how hard the government has worked to keep wages low -- perhaps one purpose of this policy was to force Taiwanese to move to China.
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Daily Links:

• Good letter in TT on how nationalization laws are a humanitarian crisis
• Cold Front coming
• Interview: How to start a business in Taiwan
• Wed Nov 12, UCLA program on Sunflowers and Hong Kong
• Land based anti-ship missiles: good for US and its Asian allies, all DPP defense blue papers published to date h/t to Michal T, long may he reign.
• CPI piece on the Senkaku mess
• Taiwan's pivotal place on Asia's territorial chessboard
• Tear gas and the betrayal of Hong Kong
• WaPo editorial says Beijing's Hong Kong policy blew chance to provide pro-annexation forces in Taiwan with "a powerful argument".
• Bowring: How Hong Kong Elites have thwarted democracy for 150 years
• Latest polls from TISR: Winner will be...  DPP: South + Taichung, Ilan, Keelung, Penghu, KMT: New Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City and County, Miaoli, Nantou, Changhua, Taitung, Kinmen, Matsu + maybe Chiayi City Indep: Taipei (Ko), Hualien (Fu)

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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!

KMT cranks up the heat on Ko in Taipei

A gun position above Keelung.

Non-aligned candidate for mayor Ko Wen-je, who is supported by the pan-Green side, is feeling the heat from the KMT. It was totally predictable that the KMT would create some corruption charge against Ko, a constant tactic in their major campaigns. Remember the ridiculous accusations against Tsai Ing-wen in the 2012 election? That one featured the same one-two punch of accusations originating with the KMT being investigated by the government investigation apparatus. In Ko's case first came accusations about accounts from his hospital days, and then government investigation followed dutifully on its heels. The KMT has set up a party investigative apparatus for further attacks on pan-Green candidates:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus whip Alex Fai (費鴻泰) yesterday confirmed the existence of a “PK team” that had reportedly been set up at the order of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to have KMT lawmakers help the party’s campaign efforts for the nine-in-one elections.

Fai, who questioned National Audit Office Auditor-General, Lin Ching-long (林慶隆), on Thursday on the MG149 account controversy that involves independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and threatened to shelve the agency’s budget, said yesterday that the PK team is not aimed at Ko.

“PK” stands for “player killer” and is an online gaming term for players who hunt rivals’ virtual characters to kill them, rather than collaborate with others to solve missions or try to defeat non-player characters in a game.

Ko, who has mired himself in controversies over thoughtless comments, made another gaffe when he accidentally revealed the health status of a powerful local KMTer....

Independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) “saved National Security Council Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) last week,” apparently inadvertently confirming a rumor that King recently underwent a coronary artery stent operation.

Ooops. There's another month. Fingers crossed that we can make it through it without Ko blowing himself up with a similar but more dangerous "slip".

Remember also that Ko will have no representatives at the polling stations, because he has no party affiliation. Hence, all the polling people will be KMTers. But of course I'm not saying that the KMT is setting up a corruption charge in order to make an outcome that is not reflected in the current polls believable or anything...
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Daily Links:

• Don't Miss: Frozen Garlic runs down the Nov elections
• Link to DPP's new English website and newsletter
• Thick with info: Hong Kong, sovereignty, economy
• Ma Gov't defends its housing policy ahead of protests.
• Op-ed in LA Times connects Hong Kong, Taiwan
• DPP outlines national defense plans
• Andrew Sullivan mentions the HKK protests. 
• LaoRenCha explains why Sunflowers were media pariahs but Hong Kong protests get tons of coverage.
• Health Minister quits over gutter oil scandal. Remember all the KMT attacks on Chen for changing his Cabinet all the time. LOL.
• Aussie citizen jailed in Taiwan for spying for China
• What? KMT politician convicted of corruption doesn't report to begin his sentence? Who could have predicted that?
• MKL exposes the problem with the gov't's tourism numbers claims: "So while the number of arrivals to Taiwan grew 26.7%, the tourism revenue only grew 18.5%. This means the actual spending of these tourists dropped on average (while the opposite has happened in Japan and South Korea), and that is definitely nothing to be proud of, because we're basically getting more and more people into the country, but they keep spending less and less."

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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!

Sean Lien: another slick ad

KMT silverspooner Sean Lien's latest Taipei mayor election ad, which opens: "just as a flower cannot live without sunlight, so people cannot live without hope." Bringing the hope, is our Sean.

The "God Pig", as he's been nicknamed, after the pigs fattened and then ritually killed for local religious festivals, is going for the younger set with this ad again. Like many local ads, it uses the theme of hope, and says nothing about specific policies -- even in the abstract, nothing like "I'll attack high housing prices" or "I'll clean up the Keelung River". Just sheer vagueness. No wonder all polls show him ten points down.

The final image shows Lien (who's lost a lot of weight, or else some really expensive software has been used) standing among a crowd of young people, lily-white. The KMT vision of Taiwan.....

Other news: KMT radio host threatened with party discipline for criticizing the party's candidate in the Taipei mayoral election. Also looks like Lien's campaign is starting to fray under stress. What an awful candidate he is, and yet, he's gonna collect a lot of votes.
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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!

Why Taiwan Nationalism Exists

Heron now.

The Taipei Times reports on the regional disparities in the central government development budget:

According to the Ministry of Finance, Taipei is to receive NT$36.3 billion (US$1.2 billion), averaging NT$10 billion more than the New Taipei City and Greater Kaohsiung, which have larger populations than Taipei.

Taipei would receive an average of NT$13,500 per resident, almost double the amount per resident in New Taipei City, Yilan, Changhua and Hsinchu counties.

According to Ministry of Finance, fund distribution next year — not including a special overall planning fund — is estimated at NT$225 billion, a NT$17.3 billion increase from last year.

A total of NT$205 billion is to be distributed among 22 local governments, with NT$19.4 billion to be shared among townships, the ministry data said.

The five special municipalities and Taoyuan County, which is due to become the nation’s sixth special municipality on Dec. 25, are to receive more than NT$145.6 billion of the fund, the data showed.

The essence of colonialism is that it is extractive. The colonizer extracts resources from the colonized population and transfers them back to its own people. In the Taiwan case, that is Taipei sucking resources out of the south and spending them on the heavily pro-KMT city. This arrangement is one reason why Taipei people vote for the KMT year after year -- it results in concrete lifestyle benefits. The amazing metro system in Taipei is possible only because people in Pingtung and Chiayi are starved for development funds they need.

Why do the South and Center feel colonized? Simple: resources go out, but they don't come back. In recent years several cities have upgraded to the municipality level to gain a greater share of the nation's development resources. Currently the Act Governing the Allocation of revenues calls for 43% of revenue to go to special municipalities (Taipei, New Taipei, K-town, Taichung, and Tainan) and 57% to everywhere else. One reason the north gets away with more is that when Tainan and Taichung upgraded, they merged the city proper with the surrounding county, meaning that they got only modest total increases in funds, since the county and city had separate funding. New Taipei City, however, was not required to merge with anything, meaning that New Taipei City saw real increases in development funding, and the north continues to dominate in development funding.

As you can see, Taipei continues to retain more than its share, and yet as a center of headquarters, government, and finance, it produces nothing tradeable, just services (nearly half the nation's services are produced in Taipei). The real work of Taiwan takes place elsewhere, with Kaohsiung and Taoyuan (due to be upgraded to a municipality this year) producing nearly a third of the nation's industrial production. The independence sentiment so strong in central and southern Taiwan is the direct result of this transfer of resources out of the productive regions of Taiwan into Taipei. Note that Greater Kaohsiung's population is larger than Taipei's but it gets a smaller amount of development funding than Taipei.

This is why the DPP has consistently attempted to move government functions, and the government itself, out of Taipei and elsewhere. Just this year the Ma Administration recalled the Fisheries Agency to Taipei...
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Pure Entertainment: the Taipei Mayor's Race

O the pain, the comedy is too much. Lien Sheng-wen (Sean Lien), son of Honorary KMT Chairman for Life Lien Chan, and KMT mayor candidate in Taipei, has put out this wonderful commercial above, asking people to tell what they would do if they had his kind of money. I think the idea is to show what a noble, self-sacrificing lad is our hero Sean Lien, running for mayor of Taipei when he could be out having a good time... Hey, I've got an idea -- let's remind everyone that I am totally rich and have never worked a day in my life. A completely empty ad, it says nothing about what Sean Lien can do for Taipei.

More interesting than the ad's amusing premise is its choice of presenters -- all young people and notice that all are brightly white-skinned and freckle free. No dark skinned people in KMT Taiwan. Its construction of "Taiwanese" is quite stereotypical. I wish someone out there would point that out.

Meanwhile Ko Wen-je, the non-KMT candidate, has been sticking his foot in his mouth with relentless regularity. This week it was totally sexist remarks about a female candidate down south. Needless, stupid remarks. Ko's handler's need to teach him never to criticize anyone except Sean Lien, in the tradition of coaches talking about the opposing team... "Well, they have some good players, and we're going to face a tough battle. But we'll prevail." With Ko and Lien both insensitive and gaffe prone, these last seven weeks before the election will be fun.

Less amusingly, the KMT has started its inevitable attack on Ko, which I've been expecting for some time. A KMT legislator accused him of corruption, etc. This is only the tip of the spear, the attacks are going to get worse. As an administrator for many years, there's probably some receipt issues (here in the land of fake receipts) and other minor stuff that someone could blow up into a scandal.
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Daily Links:

• Ralph Jennings at Forbes says China is taking a swipe at Taiwan because it is losing patience. The general opinion of this piece is that Jennings has read too much into the official's remarks. 
• Don Rodgers at Thinking Taiwan with the second of his excellent pieces this week, this one explaining why President Ma rules as an imperial president despite incredible political weaknesses
• Don Rodgers' other good one this week, on defending Taiwan's economy and society.
• Jamestown org on the devolution of China's maritime authority to local provincial structures. Chinese ships also harassing Vietnamese fishing boats. 
• Taiwan exports hit three year high
• Taiwan-US talk on submarines. For heaven's sake can we get subs since we can't get fighters? And why not buy the Soryu-s Japan is currently retiring? Someone in the US needs to push someone in Japan to sell to Taiwan.
• China taking aim at Taiwan's semiconductor talent with high salaries. 
• Nat B: Hong Kong a mirror for Taiwan?
• Jens Kastner: Taiwan-China relations souring. Chang An-lo's quote about Ma is nonsense.

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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!

Polls and Politics in Taipei

Another Lanyu pic, because I miss it so much.

Over on Twitter the very useful FormosaNation has tweeted round the lastest WantWant poll. Independent and former DPPer Shen Fu-hsiung has withdrawn from the Taipei mayor race, leaving independent Ko Wen-je and KMT scion Sean Lien facing off. WantWant has a new poll out which looks a lot like most of the other polls, giving Ko 39.5% to Lien's 30.1% among those likely to vote. Undecideds are at 25%. When asked who they thought would win, voters had Ko over Lien, 32.5% to 30.1%. Interestingly, these are almost the same numbers for Ko/Lien as the Apple poll from exactly a month ago.

Looking at the numbers as they currently are, less than 90 days from the election, Ko need only pick up another 8% of the voters to exceed the DPP's/pan-Green's highest total of 45% in 1998. That leaves 17% for Lien, all of which he will have to pick up to win a narrow victory in that case. But if Ko only gains 1 or 2%, Lien will only have to pick up half of the remaining undecideds (23% left!) to win. It's early, and money still hasn't been showered on the precinct captains, nor has the harrowing last election month with its hit pieces and mounting character attacks arrived. Nor has Ko ever broken the 40% mark in the last few months. Is 38-39% his ceiling? Could well be. I see no reason why Lien won't win at the moment.

Ominously, as if reflecting Ko's flat numbers, this recent poll on the elections shows that the KMT is slowly gaining on the DPP in local surveys, while DPP numbers, still high, remain flat. Neither party is well-liked and both have high dissatisfaction ratings. As is conventional in media explanations, this is attributed on the DPP part to Chairman Tsai Ing-wen's lack of announcement of new policies.

I would bet that most of the undecideds in Taipei are light blues, because Ko's numbers are just a few points off the limit of DPP votes in Taipei. Light blue voters, as I've noted before, flatter themselves that they vote on merit and what a coincidence, KMT candidates are the most competent. This is an important self-perception in this election, because the candidacy of Sean Lien spits in its face.

The classic justificatory regime for colonial governance is racism -- the "racial inferiority" of subject peoples was justification for white European colonialism. In authoritarian regimes the parallel justification is meritocracy -- they deserve to rule because their people are better trained, more competent, etc. Colonial regimes also justified themselves this way, as exporting "rational" and "scientific" methods to the "irrational" and "traditional" regions they ruled. As an authoritarian, colonialist state the KMT has deployed both the ethnic superiority (Han/Mainlander chauvinism) and the "competence" claim in justifying its control (recall Ma's election claim of "clean, capable" governance. LOL). My experience with light blues is that they dip into the well of both these claims -- feeling themselves superior as Han/Mainlanders and also feeling that they merit the privileges of their existence, since they are so competent and hardworking. One feeds the other.

Sean Lien in one stroke cuts the feet out from under both these claims. Instead of providing an outstanding example of the superiority of education and breeding, Lien actually reveals that the light blues are all dupes, their self-justifications hollow, since the only reason Lien is in the running is that he is the son of Lien Chan. Indeed, all that he has, he has because he is Lien Chan's son. He shows with total clarity that the KMT isn't about the self-serving delusions of the light blues, but that in fact, the KMT and its justificatory ideologies are merely vehicles to ensure that certain powerful families maintain their grip on the flow of resources and power to the center, and the function of the light blues and their tribal identity is to provide the support for that control.

Will the light blues vote Lien? Vote Ko? Stay home? It's on them that this election will swing. Wish I could see some poll numbers on them....
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....Simply Shows How Out of Touch Sean Lien Is

Bird and owner out for a cycle trip.

Sean Lien, the son of KMT Honorary Chairman for Life and KMT mayoral candidate for the KMT fiefdom of Taipei stunned the political universe this week by lunching with a bunch of foreigners. The event was widely mocked by netizens for its $500 NT lunchboxes (normal ones go for a fifth of that price), once again displaying the Lien clan's total lack of the common touch. The foreigners touched on various issues, Lien gave the KMT party line. Boring, and Lien dismissing claims that the FPEZ opposition is just pro-independence types, as longtime KMT observer Ketty Chen noted on Facebook, simply shows how out of touch Lien is.

In fact, you can simply follow any activity of Lien's with the phrase "...simply shows how out of touch Lien is."

More seriously, overheard on the internet: since Ko Wen-je in Taipei is an independent candidate, he cannot appoint election supervisors to count the ballots, according to the law independent candidates can't do that. Since the DPP and TSU have no candidate, neither can they appoint election supervisors. Hence, according to this longtime political observer, all election supervisors, responsible for assessing the validity of ballots, will be KMT.

Color me Sean Lien this week.

COMMENTER CORRECTS: "The NT$500 is inaccurate. Those boxes are afternoon tea set from hotel, NT$580+10%=NT$638 per head. Just because the sets are served in bento boxes so people mistaken them as bentos."
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Daily Links:

• China's SOEs test South China Sea
• Ben adds more to the post on KMT's colonial view below
• Geopolitics and China's fishing fleet
• Did China blink in the South China Sea? No, this is normal behavior for China. Take something, pull out, move forward, pull back. 
• East Asia's geostrategy, Japan's defense
• China's tide of garbage trashing Taiwan's outlying islands. Pretty much a metaphor for Chinese relations with Taiwan.
• Liberty Times reports on the ugly reality of Chinese power: Hanban ordered the European Assoc of Chinese Studies to remove a page from their conference brochure that extolled the many contributions of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation to Sinology. So... the EACS... did. Ugly. No, the Confucius Institute got hold of the pamphlets and ripped them up before either the University or EACS knew. I hope the defenders of CIs will shut up now.

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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!

Taipei Mayoral Election polls

FormosaNation sent around these two images. He's bullish about the prospects of Ko Wen-je in Taipei against Lien Chan's son Lien Sheng-wen (Sean Lien) and has been twitting Ben Goren at Letters from Taiwan and I about our pessimism. The top image shows the China Times poll that has Ko at 38%, Lien at 30%, and Shen Fu-hsiung, a former DPPer, at 10% with the remainder at no opinion/undecided. The bottom poll is even more terrifying if you are a KMTer: Ko is on the left and even or winning in traditional KMT districts. FormosaNation pointed out to me that KMTers are wailing and gnashing their teeth, but Ben observed that complaining that things are hanging in the balance is a common KMT election tactic.

My own view remains that Shen Fu-hsiung's 10% means nothing. That figure is a protest vote against the KMT. In the end those people will go into the voting booth, stare at Shen's picture, and then mark their ballots for Sean Lien. James Soong, a far more recognizable candidate for KMT voters, took just 4% as the alternative in 2006. My thinking is that Shen will probably get 3-4% and Lien will collect the other 6%. This means that Ko and Lien are actually neck and neck.

That is no small feat when you recall that Hau crushed Frank Hsieh 53-40 in 2006 and then actually increased his proportion to 55-43 against Su Tseng-chang, who ran a much better campaign than Hsieh in 2010. That means that in Taipei 55% of the people are willing to vote Blue even when the alternative is one of the most personally attractive and competent politicians in Taiwan. So don't underestimate the slavish devotion of Taipei's KMT voters to their social identities.

In 2002 Ma Ying-jeou crushed Lee Ying-yuan 64-35, but Lee was a relatively unknown and uncompelling candidate, hence the election scores are anomalous. The vote counts for the other elections are:

2006
KMT 692,085 (53.81)
DPP 525,869 (40.89)
Other 68,135 ( 5.30)

2002
KMT 873102 (64.1)
DPP 488811 (35.9)

1998
KMT 766377 (51.1)
DPP 688072 (45.9)

1994
KMT 364618 (25.9)
DPP 615090 (43.7)
New 424905 (30.2)

It's easy to see that the DPP in a competitive election typically takes 40-45% of the vote, the KMT makes up the rest. The only way the DPP can ever win is if the KMT vote is split between two strong candidates, which is what happened in 1994, when the New Party outpolled the KMT.

Ko is a totally new factor in the last two decades, a strong and nominally independent candidate who is not a former KMT politician. However, his ceiling is probably still 45% of the vote -- and that figure was from 1998. For Ko to win, many light blues are going to have to decide to stay home or make protest votes. Shen Fu-hsiung is just going to have to collect that 10% of the vote. Or the earth god will have to intervene...
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Daily Links:

• SPECIAL: Thinking Taiwan: Is Taiwan Prepared for the Next Pandemic?
• Referendum on the nuclear plant passes initial threshold
• Michal Thim's great blog gets a makeover.
• CIER raises growth forecast to 3.15%
• Ketagalen Media with another great round up of stuff
• Ben finds some amazingly sexualized views of aborigines.
• Hegemonic Warfare Watch: Having tested Vietnam, China moves oil rig from Vietnamese waters

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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!

Shen heats up Taipei Mayor Race

SETTV Poll

News out: DPP says it will support the independent Ko in Taipei race, agrees with TSU not to field candidate. Quid pro quo:

As part of the reciprocal commitment, Ko agreed to hold talks with DPP candidates in other mayoral and commissioner elections to formulate “shared platforms” and, if he wins the election, take the same positions as DPP mayors and commissioners on major policy discussions.

Ko also pledged to campaign for DPP candidates in the Taipei councilor elections.

On Twitter @Formosanation sent around this SETTV poll. The poll has Ko Wen-je, the independent candidate supported by the DPP, in a comfortable lead over Sean Lien, the KMT princeling. Interestingly, former DPPer Shen Fu-hsiung entered the race the other day and polls at 13%. @Formosanation pointed out that his father, a die-hard KMTer, had switched from Lien to Shen and mentioned that many others appeared to be doing the same -- Shen is not taking votes from the pan-Greens, but from Sean Lien, yet more evidence of how widely detested the candidate of the 1% is in his own party. But with the KMT voters split, conditions are slowly emerging for a major upset -- if Ko's handlers can keep things under control.

Even more impressive is that 19% for the rightmost candidate in the graphic, the DPP's Pasuya Yao. If you add that to the 41% that Ko has collected, you get an overwhelming pan-Green victory. Argh!! I don't believe that will hold up, and polls like this are incredibly unreliable -- voters might utter protests to pollsters, but on election day they come home to the Party. But it makes a nice little fantasy.

It's amazing to think that if Ko actually wins and doesn't screw up too badly as mayor, he'd have to be taken seriously as an independent candidate for President at some point...
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Early polls taipei race

The Kuomintang News organ reports....

According to the latest opinion poll conducted by Apple Daily on the support ratings of candidates in the Taipei City mayoral election, Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), a pro-Green camp independent, leads the KMT's Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former Vice President Lien Chan (連戰), by approximately 11 percentage points (47.35% vs. 36.73%), while Sean Lien leads DPP legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) by 41.96% to 39.27%. Yao won the DPP's first-stage primary for the Taipei mayoral election in a public opinion poll on May 14.

According to an opinion poll conducted by TVBS, Sean Lien trails Ko by 6 percentage points (39% vs. 45%) but leads Pasuya Yao by 12 percentage points (46% vs. 34%)

Well well. This doesnt really mean anything. The "independent" candidate Ko I expect to crash and burn over some ill-thought or too-honest remark, while Pasuya Yao is simply an attention troll. Polls like this reflect public dissatisfaction with Sean Lien, who is getting this position because he is KMT royalty and not because he put in years of work in the trenches on behalf of the Party. Likely the money from A Certain Party will roll down to the precinct captains, the votes will be properly corralled and disciplined, and Lien will win in a total travesty. Don't expect too much from Taipei....

UPDATED: A reader observes that the polls are probably matched for ethnicity to the national ratio of about 15% mainlander, rather than the 30% that Taipei hosts. That may account for the discrepancy. Another reader pointed out that lowball polls in Blue papers are a way of motivating KMT voters. However, Apple Daily had generally the same numbers.
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Why doesn't Taiwan have more rage killings?

The Memorial City House of God, next to the train station in Houlong, which apparently was a hospital once.

Metro killer: 19 arrested for threatening copycat attacks...*sigh* Many people complaining that the present of police on the Metro, some with assault weapons, is not making them feel safer. One man's action has cast a long shadow over one of the world's best, safest metro systems, and now everyone must suffer.

After deploring the leap to blame various things, Daniel Lin at Thinking Taiwan observes:

Mass random killings are a form an extreme violence. Although we have yet to identify any strong predictors to explain such complex behavior, we can reasonably assume that it is driven by multiple biological, psychological, and social factors. Witch-hunts and the facile categorization they engender can discourage efforts to establish a systemic approach to identifying high-risk individuals.

In simply the best work on rage killings of the last couple of decades, Going Postal, Mark Ames did in fact identify the source of the problem: America's toxic work culture. Jeff Sparrow at Counterpunch ("Rage Killings in a Neoliberal World") brings it together...Sparrow is talking about the recent killings in California, but he could well be talking about the ones in Taiwan.

As I’ve argued before, the most interesting attempt to historicise the rage massacre comes from Mark Ames’ book Going Postal. Ames’ title reminds us that, in the US, such killings were once synonymous with postal workers (a historical fact that now seems almost quaint). That’s why he identifies the rise of rage massacres with Reaganomics: he suggests that neoliberal reforms to the postal service reduced job satisfaction, placed employees under unbearable stress and transformed workplaces into cesspits of toxic bullying.

Signfiicantly, when Ames’ interviewed massacre survivors, some expressed a remarkable sympathy for the shooters, while very few surprises at the crimes. They’d expected something to give, they said, even if they hadn’t known quite what.

Ames notes the migration of rage massacres from the workplace (in the 80s) to the school (during the 1990s), a trajectory that followed the generalization of neoliberal principles into the US education system. In their suicide notes, school shooters also referenced prolonged bullying, as the entrepreneurial values of mainstream American culture found schoolyard expression in concentrated form, and the gulf between the school’s winners and its losers became more pronounced and more significant.

Like the workplace gunman, the teenage killer embraced mass murder as a brutal and incoherent expression of social despair.

The really interesting question for Taiwan is not that we have rage killings, but why we don't have more of them here, given the long working hours, stagnant incomes, and relentlessly competitive educational and work environments. There's no single factor, but many working in tandem. Some might be....

• the lack of guns and sociocultural identification of guns with manliness and manhood
• the ruthless ability of Taiwanese to exploit themselves ever more strongly. My Facebook feeds are filled with posts from my former students, now drones at the bottom of the corporate ladder, admonishing themselves to work harder, and the general cultural belief in the efficacy of hard work
• Taiwan is still in the first generation of the class revolution that has redistributed America's wealth away from its working and middle classes upwards for the last 30 years, and the young are still to a certain extent supported by the enormous wealth gained during the Miracle Economy years.
• the educational system trains the young to accept long hours of work under arbitrary authority as normal.
• outlets: Taiwanese can relocate to China or remain in masters degree programs, since so many have four year degrees.

More could be said. I wondered if Taiwanese were more prone to suicide than mass murder, but if you look up the numbers, Taiwan and the US are pretty comparable....
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Daily Links:

• Thinking Taiwan: Problems with tolerance for minorities in the revolution?
• Cole writes about the links between the pro-democracy sides in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
• WSJ: Taiwan data suggest Taiwan, rest of Asia will see higher growth
• Taiwan Today on poll of Asian leaders from CSIS.

  A major finding of the poll is that 70 percent of respondents expect their country’s interests to be negatively impacted if Taiwan were reunified with mainland China through coercive means.Both the U.S. and Japan expressed the most concern at 93 percent and 96 percent, respectively, higher than Taiwan’s 89 percent.

• Taiwan releases aid payment to Solomon Islands
• National park number 9 to be established in Penghu
• No kidding, this is an actual news story: Captain Phillips (kidnapped off Somalia) says Taiwan boats well-equipped.
• Housing market slows, slowing construction in April, the 4th consecutive month.
• President Ma still relentlessly pushing the services pact.

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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!

FocusTW: Ko/Lien Match for Taipei shaping up

On the 159A between Shijhuo and Chiayi city.

The gov't news organ FocusTaiwan rounds up some stuff on the Ko-Lien match:

Although neither major party has nominated a candidate, outspoken surgeon Ko Wen-je could very well represent the opposition in the election for Taipei mayor in late November and face Sean Lien, who would try to retain the Kuomintang's (KMT) hold on the city.

When Lien was shot in the face on the eve of the previous municipal election four years ago, it was Ko who led a team of medical experts at National Taiwan University Hospital to operate on him.

The Liberty Times talked about the DPP teaming up with other outsiders in KMT strongholds like Hsinchu and Miaoli, but UDN observed.....

On the other side, Lien was in Washington to attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast. When asked about his plans by reporters, he reiterated that he will make an announcement before the end of this month.

Addressing the question of whether President Ma Ying-jeou does not favor his candidacy, Lien said only that he does not believe the president, busy as he is, has the time to cooperate with TV pundits in their attacks on him.

The Taipei mayor election could expose the split within the KMT between the KMT old guard and President Ma Ying-jeou. Recall that several years ago, when Wang Jin-pyng and Ma ran against each other for Chairman, party leaders including Sean Lien's father Lien Chan endorsed Wang, while the rank and file endorsed Ma. A lack of support from Ma could hurt Sean Lien; on the other hand, Ma's clinging to the Chairmanship suggests he'll attempt to remain relevant after he steps down from the Presidency, meaning that he might be moved to support Sean Lien. But his vicious attack on Wang a few months back may point to some deep issues with the Old Guard types who opposed him that go beyond rationality.

On the other hand, I've been talking to people and the conspiracy threads are alive and well. One school is holding that Ko is an out and out tool of Beijing. This criticism is pro forma whenever anyone rises in the Greens. Another school holds that Ko is out of his depth, overweening, and a bit of a loose cannon, likely to say something incredibly silly that will cost him the election. Hope his handlers are competent......
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Daily Links:

• Danny Bloom on the 1930s baseball movie
• Ben notes that the Party-state haunts the history revisions
• SkepTaiwan responds to JFritz's piece on the Taichung metro
• Taiwan's F-16 program -- facing turbulence.
• Factory activity expands in Jan -- I also saw that new car sales, including Benz and Mercedes sales -- are up. Let's see if we can get something sustained in the economy. 
• Quota on independent Chinese tourists to rise to 4000
• US calls on China to clarify its South China Sea claims
• Taiwan should use cycling to attract Eurotourism -- if only the gov't had a clue how to do it.
• Taiwan = rising power in the art world?
• Miaoli won't fight Dapu ruling. Not that it matters.
• The Language Log has been doing some excellent stuff on multilingual punning ads in Taiwan. Here's one.
• WAY COOL: Million year old footprints discovered in the UK. 

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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!