Ma takes it on the Chin

Ants savaging a caterpillar.

Haha. For weeks many of us watching the KMT in increasing disarray have been waiting for someone to point out that Ma is still Chairman of the KMT because he can't resign. Well, it finally happened.

KMT member Chen Shu-fen (陳淑芬) said that Ma’s resignation as chairman on Dec. 3 last year and the KMT Central Standing Committee’s decision to hold a new election for the role contravene the charter, as Ma may step down only when he is no longer president or has his party membership revoked.

Could the sudden objections be arranged by Eric Chu to make room for him to run in 2016? Is Ma organizing this from behind the scenes, to enable him to remain as KMT Chair? Our operators are standing by to take your conspiracy theory now!

Fortunately KMT thinkers obviously took their training at Jesuit universities...

In response, KMT spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) yesterday said that the party charter regulated only the automatic assumption of office as party chairman to aid party unity and political focus, adding that the charter did not include the exception of the party chairman stepping down of their own initiative.

...see? When a KMTer becomes President, he automatically becomes Chair? But he can step down... O wait, if he steps down, he's not Chair. But then he must automatically become Chair, since he's not Chair... I'm getting a headache.

When this amendment was first mooted, it was widely understood as a way to enable Ma to keep his position and his face if his party lost an election. "I can't step down, the party's charter says I can't," he could then say...

Meanwhile Ma took another beating as China announced new flight paths in the Taiwan Strait without consulting Taipei. The nation donned sackcloth and ashes as legislators urged action. J Michael Cole interpreted this as a digiticus impudicus aimed directly at Ma, because Beijing now regards him as worse than useless.

And Beijing, which had already been losing patience with Ma for the “slow” pace of progress in the Strait, knows this. Unable to deliver what Beijing wants, President Ma is no longer of utility to Chinese leaders, who consequently will not hesitate to take actions that undermine his image with the Taiwanese public. In other words, the finesse is gone: Ma, like his predecessors, is being punished — humiliated, even — for failing to fall in step to Beijing’s tune. In this context, the August 25, 2014 intrusions by Chinese surveillance aircraft into Taiwan’s ADIZ, make a lot more “sense.” Then as now, Beijing’s disregard for Taiwanese sovereignty took precedent over all considerations intended to give President Ma “face.”

Taiwan complained to the ICAO about the new routes. Taiwan was invited as a guest in 2013 to the ICAO meeting (not as an observer or participant) and again in 2014 (see this discussion of the PRC and Taiwan's airspace with Bonnie Glaser). Beijing announced the new routes but hasn't filed them with ICAO, meaning that they could still be dropped. Perhaps when that shoe drops we'll see whether Beijing is testing Ma, the ICAO, or US resolve, since the US pushed China to drop similar routes years ago.

What if Beijing plays this like the ADIZ and simply doesn't file the routes, but begins using them?

Meanwhile, former Taichung mayor and KMT heavyweight Jason Hu had said he'd be taking a position at Fengjia University in Taichung. But Wednesday night he announced that he was instead becoming Vice Chairman of the Want Want media group. Want Want was the media group that tried to attain a near-monopoly position in the local media world a couple of years back Hu is a vice Chairman of the KMT but has indicated he will leave that position. solidarity.tw has the translation...

Hu said he’d already discussed arrangements for different teaching positions, and this looked like his best option. However, at the end of last year, “Mr. Tsai Eng-meng of the Want Want China Times Media Group sincerely invited me to come to his group to work.” Tsai told him that the position of the Want Want China Times is “true truth and true love of Taiwan” 真道理、真愛台灣. Tsai said he hopes to use the media’s influence to give Taiwan better days.

Hu is widely held to dislike Ma Ying-jeou and I expect that WantWant is going to savage the President. But more importantly, having a heavyweight like Hu in high office might help smooth things when WantWant makes another play for dominance in Taiwan's media market.
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Daily Links

• NYTimes: the lost KMT soldiers of remote Thailand.
• WashTimes: The Republican National Committee hopes to fence in the options of the next US republican president, make him support Taiwan
• Bird Flu is devastating our fowl farms.
• solidarity.tw translated this wonderful Apple Daily editorial on Ko Wen-je: the leader that the KMT has always wanted.
• Two men killed in execution-style killing in Taipei parking lot. It goes without saying that they were from Taichung. Drug dealing and gambling suspected.

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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!

AP on the WantWant Media Monster

AP's Peter Enav in Taiwan occasionally finds the time to produce longer review articles; last week he came out with a really good piece on the WantWant media monopoly campaign. A taste:

The controversy over Tsai and his expansive Taiwanese media holdings goes right to the heart of the dominant issue in Taiwanese politics: Whether the island should attempt to maintain the separate political identity from the mainland it has maintained since splitting apart from it amid civil war in 1949, or whether it should bow to China's increasing political and economic might and accept its sovereign sway. Taiwanese media, particularly the island's four national newspapers and its seven major 24-hour cable news stations, play a crucial role in the debate, using their columns and broadcasts to promote the competing pro-China and independence agendas of the two main political parties.

The strength of Tsai's pro-China views were underlined in January 2012 when he told the Washington Post newspaper that he unreservedly backed Taiwan's unification with the mainland. "I really hope that I can see that," he said. In the same article he also attacked the widely held belief that Chinese security forces killed hundreds if not thousands of demonstrators during pro-democracy protests around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989, citing the refusal of a phalanx of Chinese tanks to run over a famously bold protester as evidence of the forces' restraint.

Want Want's own internal newsletter reported in its December 2008 edition that during a meeting in Beijing, Tsai told Wang Yi, head of the Chinese government's Taiwan Affairs Office, that Tsai had acquired the China Times Group "in order to use the power of the press to advance relations between China and Taiwan." The newsletter quoted Wang as saying that if Tsai's company had any future needs "the Taiwan Affairs Office will do its best to help it, including giving support to its food business."

If you didn't read that last paragraph, read it. There's plenty of personal data on Tsai and views of Tsai from other sources, so read the whole article too. Really good work, Peter.

AP's treatment focuses on what outsiders are interested in -- the China's relentless drive to annex Taiwan and Taiwan's resistance to it. But there is another aspect that needs to be remembered: Next Media did plenty of investigative reporting of local politicians and corporations, and Tsai will likely hamstring that.

The day before the AP article, the National Communications Commission (NCC) ruled that WantWant had not satisfied the conditions laid down by the NCC months ago. The Taipei Times reported:

The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday ruled that Want Want China Times Group (旺旺中時集團) has not met the three conditions it set last year for the group’s acquisition of the cable TV services operated by China Network Systems (CNS, 中嘉網路), adding that another administrative hearing would not be necessary.

For the acquisition to be valid, group chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) and his family members or associates must completely dissociate themselves from CtiTV’s (中天電視) news channel. China Television Co’s (CTV, 中視) digital news channel, which also belongs to the group, must be changed to a non-news channel and CTV must have an independent editorial system.

The commission said that each condition must be met for the Want Want-CNS deal to take effect.

I haven't heard what WantWant intends to do about it. But last July when they were first promulgated, the food giant rejected them out of hand. It's hard for me to imagine that in a society where big companies routinely get whatever they want, this deal won't go through. It will be interesting to whether and how the NCC will either retreat or be bypassed or simply... ignored.
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Daily Links:

• Brian Benedictus' interview with Gordon Chang
• The little pangolin, one of the most threatened animals due to the illegal trade in their meat and scales.
• Taiwan Communique #140 out!
• Government accepts referendum on nuclear power.
• Last month, we learned that the rice noodles aren't made from rice. This month we learn that sodium levels in the instant noodles are much higher than stated on the package.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Friday Night Lights

Making lu wei eggs at a factory in Gangshan.

WantWant goes after student who got Chomsky to pose with anti-media monopoly image. Chomsky and another academic contacted have clearly said they did not know that the words "China's black hand" were included in the sign. The student appears to have misled them. Great work, now it appears WantWant has a genuine grievance. Perhaps the student can supply the documentation? Because at this point it appears that not only has the student invalidated Chomsky's action, she's also made it that much harder for the anti-media monopoly campaign to get other big names to sign on. UPDATE: Yay! Chomsky was just being scatterbrained. The original student email is here. It indeed mentioned China and correctly translated the sign.

Retired generals from PRC and ROC want China and Taiwan to work together on Senkakus issue. That would be awful for Taiwan in so many ways, from making Tokyo and Washington angry at it, to strengthening China's claim to Taiwan. Remember, in the minds of right-wing nationalist fossils on both sides of the Strait, the claim to the Senkakus, Taiwan, and Okinawa are of a piece. And it comes right on the heels of the CRS report I linked to below which warns Congress to pay attention to possible Taiwan-China cooperation. It's pretty clear that at least one fork in the KMT's Senkakus strategy involves using the islands to make the US distance itself from Taiwan. I hope someone high up in AIT gives an interview in Chinese with the local Chinese language press and explains this strategy to the locals so pressure can be put on Ma to stop. And that the US re-considers its support for Ma. But see below....

...Why won't the US reconsider its support of Ma? This article by Brendan O'Reilly in the Asia Times looks like yet another one of those dreary articles claiming that the "pivot" of Obama is triggering a war in Asia. Forget that silliness. Look instead at who it relies on, Ken Lieberthal and Cheng Li, of Brookings. Cheng Li is at the John Thornton Center at Brookings. That center is named after the Chairman of the Brookings Board of Trustees and a big donor, John Thornton. I quote from The Mandarins:

....Thornton is also a director not only of corporations with huge interests in China (Ford, News Corporation) but also of large Chinese corporations (Commercial Bank of China, China Netcorn), and is even a professor at Tsinghua University.

...as for Kenneth Lierberthal, a major Asia figure who was the NSC's Asia Director under Bill Clinton and is Hillary Clinton's Asia guy, he had/has a post in Stonebridge China, the quietly influential China consulting firm which has/had several of its members in Administrations past and present. O'Reilly is no doubt writing in good faith; as for his sources, readers will have to make up their own minds. But I've seen a lot of pro-China whitewash stuff from Stonebridge employees scattered all over the media (for example). The US foreign policymaking community is populated with individuals doing business with China. Probably why US policy and media discourse on China is so awful. Now go and read The Mandarins if you haven't.

The staidly conservative pro-blue organization TISR (formerly Global View's survey unit) finds that support for independence has dropped. Can we see some analysis of the sample, please?

In case you live in a cave, Chinese hackers attack NYTimes for Wen Jiabao reporting. Best tweet: @JoshGartner: MOFA [Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs]: "We have read all of the NY Times internal emails and they have no evidence that China hacked their accounts."

ADDED: Forgot to point out that Ma tapped his fourth premier in five years. Remember when he accused Chen of constantly rotating officials? Under Taiwan's strange customary arrangements, cabinet officials are axed to "take responsibility" for Administration unpopularity or screw ups. But a perspicacious friend tipped me off to this prescient blog post in Chinese arguing that Premier Chen's replacement, Jiang Yi-hua, would become premier and make a great 2016 candidate. The KMT news organ noted:

Jiang Yi-huah was born in 1960. He holds a PhD degree in political science from Yale University and was a professor of political science at National Taiwan University. When President Ma was running for President for the first time in 2008, Jiang assisted in composing white papers for Ma. After Ma took office, Jiang was first appointed as Minister of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission under the Executive Yuan, before being promoted to Minister of Interior. Furthermore, on February 6th, 2012, he took up the position of Vice Premier.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

WantWant media monster merger maneuvers

My wife and daughter attempt to lure a puppy dumped in our neighborhood so they can take off the collar left on him by the idiot who dumped him. Near a hilly area, our neighborhood is a big favorite for dumping dogs.

WantWant's drive to create a media monster by annexing Next Media hit a snag at the National Communications Commission (NCC) this summer when the NCC demanded that it meet three conditions:

• Want Want China Times Group Chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) and his family sever all ties with the management of CtiTV’s news channel
• China Television Co’s (CTV, 中視) news channel be changed into a non-news channel
• an independent editorial system be set up for CTV’s news department

which WantWant then publicly rejected:

...Chao Yu-pei (趙育培), special assistant to the chairman of Want Want China Broadband, yesterday said that the Want Want China Times Group could not accept the NCC’s conditions, saying that “The company will not sell CTI Television Inc. (中天電視台) or alter the operating status of China Television Co. (CTV, 中視).” He went on to stress that “The NCC does not have any legal authority to demand that we delink the Want Want China Times Group and CTI, or change CTV’s operating status....

WantWant and the other buyers of NextMedia agreed to all of the conditions last week when it announced that it was putting CiTV in a trust run by the Industrial Bank of Taiwan and then submitted a proposal to the NCC for handling the second and third conditions listed above. Throwing in the towel?

Previously the KMT had been against legislation for handling the media monopoly issue, but reversed its position the other day. Legislation sailed through the legislature. The KMT news organ passed this around today:

The legislative Transportation Committee on January 9 reported out of the committee amendment bills to the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法), the Cable Television Act (有線電視法) and the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法) proposed by the DPP caucus.

.......

According to media reports, the KMT party central hoped that the whole matter would be dealt with only after the NCC proposed an exclusive draft bill on anti-media monopoly in March.

The anti-media monopoly amendment bills sailed through the Transportation Committee in a hasty manner on Wednesday. Yesterday, NCC Chairperson Howard Shyr (石世豪) called on Premier Sean Chen (陳冲), expressing the NCC’s view that many parts of the amendment bills were impracticable. Premier Chen concurred with Shyr in that regard.

In a rare press conference last night, an NCC official commented on the anti-media monopoly amendment bills, saying that the NCC, as the competent government agency, considered the adoption of the amendment bills by the Legislative Yuan as the worst possible outcome.

The NCC official said that the DPP’s proposal in the amendment bills to separate media operations from the financial services industry would adversely affect the financial industry’s willingness to invest in the media industry because the proposal was too draconian.

Hmmm..... lots of backdoor dealings there. Was the NCC concerned the bill would limit its power? Was the KMT concerned that the bill would stop the WantWant deal? I'm taking Door B on that one. Reuters reported it that way -- KMT blocks bill:

In an about-turn on Friday, the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) rejected the anti-monopoly media law proposed by Taiwan's major opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a move that is expected to swell numbers at a rally planned for Sunday against China-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou.

MEDIA NOTE: Reuters version of The Formula for China's claim is subtly delicious:

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong's forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek's KMT fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule eventually, and by force if necessary.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

NCC to stand firm against WantWant Media Maw?

Pandemonium in the cafeteria today as dozens of groups competed in the annual gingerbread house building contest on campus.

The Taipei Times reports:

National Communications Commission (NCC) Chairman Howard Shyr (石世豪) yesterday said the commission’s ruling on Want Want China Times Group’s purchase of cable TV services owned by China Network Systems (CNS) remain unchanged and that the transaction would not take effect until the group fulfilled each and every requirement issued by the commission.

....

The preconditions include that group chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) and his family members, as well as his business associates in the deal, must completely dissociate themselves from the operation of CtiTV News. In addition, China Television’s (CTV) digital news channel must be turned into a non-news channel. As a TV network, CTV must have an independent editorial system as well.

These conditions were already rejected by WantWant back in July, months ago (my post). A media report quoted:

Chao Yu-pei (趙育培), special assistant to the chairman of Want Want China Broadband, yesterday said that the Want Want China Times Group could not accept the NCC’s conditions, saying that “The company will not sell CTI Television Inc. (中天電視台) or alter the operating status of China Television Co. (CTV, 中視).” He went on to stress that “The NCC does not have any legal authority to demand that we delink the Want Want China Times Group and CTI, or change CTV’s operating status."

The curious thing is that a couple of years ago the NCC, originally created during the Chen Administration to be a lapdog of the KMT in its ongoing struggle to gain control of the media and do an end-run around the Chen Administration's control of the government news organs, was in turn targeted by the Ma Administration (here) for being a bit too independent. The Administration obviously wants this deal to go through.  Last year there a journalist who reported that the NCC had been pressured to pass the deal was sued, a case that caused an uproar. Either the NCC is simply grandstanding for the public and will be ignored by WantWant as it engulfs Next Media, to which the NCC will quietly acquiesce when presented with the usual fig leafs so it can claim the conditions were met, or else the Administration will slap it down.

The Taipei Times also reported...

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Tuesday during the release of the nation’s first human rights report in English that he did not want the media in the nation to present only one viewpoint.

....since so much of the local media is being eaten by China, one wonders.
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Daily Links:

• Law and the Taiwanese police by one of the coolest people I know, Jeff Martin.
• Taiwan gov't releases its first human rights report.
• Richard hikes Mts Shihguanyin and Erkonggui.
• October export orders run ahead of estimates. 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! Delenda est, baby.

=UPDATED= Next Media Parceled Out to Five Buyers

Tea pickers on the slopes of Alishan

UPDATE: I'm moving this to the top. Finally heard the reason for the fifth buyer. By adding the fifth buyer, they can separate the print and TV portions of the deal, meaning that the NCC can't impose the same condition of separation of cable TV and print they tried to before. The new deal also reduces Jeffrey Koo Jr's holding to just below the threshold required by the FSC. Next Media, as a friend observed, had the most powerful investigative team in the business. How much longer do you think that will remain true?

Student protests in front of the FTC and the legislative Yuan all day too. But the number is too small to gain international media attention, judging from the photos.

Adventures in Charity, episode #249:
I'm buying tickets at the Chiayi train station on Sunday with a big pile of 100 NT notes. A girl behind me in line leans forward and asks if I could loan her $100. I said sure, no problem, and slipped her a 100 NT note. She then asked me how she could pay me back. "What's your phone number?" "Forget it," I said, "I don't live here. You don't have to pay me back." Suddenly she looked at me crossly. "Hey!" she barked. "What kind of attitude is that?"

I put that tale there because you'll need some light humor to deal with the Next Media deal. A friend summed up the five buyers of Jimmy Lai's Next Media thusly:

• Chinatrust Charity Foundation chairman, Jeffrey Koo Jr.
• Formosa Plastics Group chairman, William Wong
• Want Want China Times Group chairman, Tsai Eng-meng
• Lung Yen Life Service Co. chairman, Lee Shih-tsung
• Taiwan Fire and Marine Insurance Co. chairman, Lee Tai-hung.

Businessweek explained the deal, inked in Macau for tax purposes:

Next Media will sell its Taiwan print assets to four investors including Want Want Chinatimes Group President Tsai Shao-Chung, William Wong of the Formosa Plastics Group, Chinatrust Charity Foundation Chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr. and Lung Yen Life Service Corp. (5530) Chairman Lee Shih-tsung, Simon said.

Lai, known for criticizing the Chinese government, is exiting most of his Taiwan businesses after battling regulators for licenses and distribution rights. The investment by Tsai, son of Want Want China Holdings Ltd. (151) Chairman Tsai Eng-meng, may raise regulatory concerns as Lai’s Apple Daily and the Tsais’ China Times will have a combined newspaper market share exceeding 45 percent, according to National Chung Cheng University’s Kuang Chung-Hsiang.

...

Lee Tai-hung, chairman of Taiwan Fire & Marine Insurance Co. (2832), replaces Tsai in the group buying the television assets, Simon said. The pacts were signed yesterday, he said.

The deal requires approval from the Fair Trade Commission, the National Communications Commission, and the Financial Supervisory Commission. Each may find reason to balk. The FSC had objected to Jeffrey Koo Jr's 7% stake in a financial firm (blogged). The Fair Trade Commission may not like the 45% share of the media market it gives the Tsai media operations. The National Communications Commission, you may recall, gave tentative approval but required Tsai to sell off his cable TV operations. Tsai gave the NCC the digitus impudicus, and the case is now in the courts.

The articles in the international media tended to (wrongly) frame the issue as a pro/anti-China affair. For example, the AP article on the deal is solid as far as it goes, but it wrongly characterized the student protests as anti-China when they are pro-democracy. The business publications covering the story pointed out that it is likely that the Tsai-owned media will go soft on China's territorial expansion and other problems, but failed to mention that Apple and Next Media also provide independent coverage of domestic corporate shenanigans, including environmental stories that other media don't publish.

Also, I heard tell of a rumor running around that one of Taiwan's online media outfits, NOWNEWS or ETTODAY, is going to be bought by a Chinese firm. Take with NaCl.....

ADDED: Taipei Times editorial on the sale.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.