Referendum Reforms Finally passed

At the Taichung Train Station, the buttons on the automated ticket machines have Vietnamese labels for the foreign workers.

David Spencer, the fine writer over at Taiwan News who succeeded me in writing commentaries, asks the question that all of us are asking: will the new changes empower the young?

That is because this week this Legislative Yuan passed the Government’s Referendum Act (公民投票法), which lowered the age that people can vote in referendums from 21 to 18. In doing so, it handed a sizable number of young people in Taiwan the opportunity to vote on issues which are likely to affect their lives far more than those of the older generations.

The new law makes the following changes to national level referendums:

Under the newly amended law, an initiative to launch the first stage of a referendum will only require 0.01 percent of total eligible voters who participated in the most recent presidential election, as opposed to the 0.1 percent that was required to pass this first hurdle. In the case of the 2016 presidential election, that would be 1,879.

For the second stage of such a plebiscite to succeed, it now only requires 1.5 percent of those eligible to vote in the presidential election, as opposed to 5 percent previously. This translates to 280,000 people from the 2016 presidential election.

As for the third and final stage of a referendum, only a majority of 25 percent of eligible voters must agree to the act as opposed to the previous 50 percent. This would be the equivalent to 4.69 million of the voters from the past presidential race.

Under the previous law, which the KMT erected to prevent referendums from being successful, the law required that 50 percent of eligible voters must vote. Since the KMT could mobilize 40% of the vote, and many eligible people do not vote, it could easily cause any referendum to fail simply by ordering its people to not vote on it, as actually occurred. This law was derisively referred to as the "birdcage" referendum by DPPers, since it did not permit a vote on independence to ever occur.

However, the new law does not permit such votes either. Rather than troll Beijing and give our US friends ulcers, the legislation places changes in the nation's territory, flag, and name off limits to referendums.

This move was deprecated by some observers in private discussion groups, who argued that the new law removes a powerful soft power weapon: the ability of the Taiwanese to declare in a free and fair vote that they do not want to be part of China.

The low thresholds are a double edged sword. On the one hand, it means that anti-democracy groups in Taiwan's society can game the law to cause problems with divisive referendums. That is what I expect, sadly. On the other, it means that the referendum law can be used by groups with small but important issues to at least get attention.

It could also have serious ramifications for international affairs even without the independence possibilities, as a friend pointed out to me. For example, the ractopork issue remains on the burner, since the US insists on poisoning Taiwan with ractopamine-infused pork imports that will decimate Taiwan's farmers, and Taiwan would rather not have either of those. Imagine what would happen to relations with the US if there were a referendum on the issue -- the public would likely vote to ban ractopork, and the US would not be happy. Similarly, food imports from Fukushima in Japan are a contentious issue. For that reason, I expect the KMT to start raising these issues.

The KMT struggled to get an absentee ballot system included in the bill, but the DPP shelved that. The reasons are simple: no ballot coming from the tens of thousands living in China would be trustworthy, and incorporating such ballots would cast doubt on any election. Which is why the KMT wants that, of course. The DPP simply set the issue aside indefinitely.

Despite its flaws, this is a major step forward for Taiwan. Kudos to the DPP for finally getting it passed.
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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!

Lynn Miles passes

Lynn Miles, the longtime activist and fighter for human rights, democracy, and peace, passed away in the early morning hours today. He was a very great human being who always spoke truth to power, and will be missed by all who knew him, and by Taiwan. Om shanti, om shanti, om shanti.

FocusTaiwan's report. Also WantWant's, which puts in the important detail: the gov'ts final act in his life was to indict him...
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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!

118 Sunflowers to be prosecuted

J Michael at Thinking Taiwan reports:

Following the conclusion of three major investigations, prosecutors announced on Feb. 10 that 21 people, including Lin (who is currently doing his military service) and Academia Sinica researcher Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), will be prosecuted for their role in “318.” Despite conflicting reports, it has now been confirmed that student leader Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) was also indicted (full list here). Student leader “Dennis” Wei Yang (魏揚) and 92 others will be charged over “323,” while Hung Chung-yen (洪崇彥) and three others will face prosecution over “411.” In most cases, the charges involve “obstruction of official business.” Huang, who incidentally has spearheaded the Appendectomy Project targeting KMT Legislator Alex Tsai and others, will also be prosecuted for “incitement to commit a crime.” Prosecutors said they had yet to determine the nature of the punishments. They added that imprisonment was among the options that were being considered. And of course, gangsters like Chang An-le (張安樂) and his followers, the only people (besides the police) who actually used real violence during the crisis last spring, are being left completely alone by the prosecutors.

That pretty much sums it up. Two foreigners, the well known and longtime activist Lynn Miles, and David Smith, a Canadian photojournalist, were included among those charged, according to the TT. Cole argues that the timing of the indictments is intended to distract the public from the KMT's many problems.

Amnesty International's press release is here. I've included a Chinese translation below the READ ME line.

Taiwan's future already signaled by Hong Kong?

Dragonfly grabbing a break.

As I have noted many times, the biggest obstacle China faces in annexing Taiwan is its democracy. It ain't a perfect one, but it has been incorporated into the social identity of the Taiwanese and is now an important part of being Taiwanese. Hong Kong may be showing where things are heading. From SCMP:

Dangerous and ominous developments are occurring in Hong Kong politics, yet not a single senior official has cared to comment on them. They have, though, had a great deal to say about disruption that might be caused during an event which may not occur next year.

Not for the first time, but with greater swagger and clearer evidence of organisation, a bunch of thugs, including triad-linked gangsters, were sent to "deal with" anti-government protesters at the chief executive's public forum in Tin Shui Wai last Sunday.

In case there is a scintilla of doubt as to their intention, Tsang Shu-wo, one of the rural chieftains, proudly admitted that he had mobilised 40 villagers for this event and later said: "It is normal to have bloodshed if we are protecting Yuen Long. Let's see who will shed more blood."

At the demonstration itself, the thugs demanded that the police cease hampering their activities because they were "protecting the government". Fortunately, they were largely ignored and arrests were made, but anyone looking at the many videos of this event will note that the police also stood back while anti-government protesters were attacked. These videos also show it was far from being a spontaneous protest, as those giving the orders were not subtle enough to avoid the cameras.

This is not an isolated incident; I have witnessed an intimidating group of "protesters" outside Broadcasting House who got very angry when, in the spirit of journalism, I asked them what they were protesting about.

There is nothing new about authoritarian governments using gangs of thugs to intimidate opponents. It was a favoured tactic of the former Kuomintang dictatorship in Taiwan before democracy took hold. Today, it is the hallmark of Robert Mugabe's thuggish government in Zimbabwe; and so on. While these governments sit back and allow the thugs to do their work for them, they have the gall to blame their opponents for the violence.

.......

I have been loath to jump to the conclusion that there is an attempt to turn Hong Kong politics in a more violent direction but the evidence is increasingly pointing in that direction.

Fortunately, we have not yet reached the tipping point where thugs hold sway and they are licensed by the government to do their worst - indeed, many frontline police officers are doing their best to prevent this. However, the signs should not be ignored.

Many of us saw in the recent return from China of a major gangster with old connections to Taiwan's security state a signal, perhaps, of where Taiwan might be heading. He subsequently stated that he was going to participate in support of pro-China politics in Taiwan. J Michael Cole has commented forcefully on the use of individuals claiming to be plainclothes police to intimidate and coerce onlookers and journalists here 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!

Services Pact, Protests, Democracy: Eternally Abraded by Gold

The cycle path through the wind machines along the coast in Miaoli. An enjoyable stretch, one I do regularly.

The protests in Taipei over the services pact finally made the international news. AFP reported on it in its usual slanted way, characterizing the protesters as "pro-independence activists" (of course some of them actually were).

Dozens of Taiwanese pro-independence activists clashed with police during a protest Tuesday against an agreement to further open up service sector trade with China as lawmakers debated the pact.

....no mention of the students who have played a prominent role in the protests, as J Michael Cole has noted here and here.

AP's report has a more interesting slant....

The pact is the latest in a series of China trade agreements promoted by Ma. The Taiwanese leader believes that unless Taiwan tightens its economic links with the mainland, the island's standard of living will suffer, particularly as neighboring Asian countries pursue their own commercial preferential arrangements with Beijing.

What makes it interesting to me is how the writer characterizes Ma as believing the pact is necessary to save Taiwan's standard of living -- when said standard has been deteriorating for most Taiwanese for more than a decade now. Wages have regressed to late 1990s levels, for example. Indeed, this regression is occurring even as Taiwan moves closer to China and arguably, because of it. Wouldn't it have been great if AP had reported that? Hahaha. What earth am I living on? Meanwhile Ma is still promoting the move to China as necessary to "save" Taiwan, even at this late date....

I'm not even going to bother to discuss the pact; we all know what a pact supported by the Ma Administration, the KMT, big companies, and global financial capital means for Taiwan.

Rather, I'd like to talk about something J Michael Cole wrote about in his stream of posts on Dapu, Huaguang, and the services pact protests. Here's what he wrote: Young Taiwanese fear authoritarian revival. Oh, wait a second, that was from 2008, Chen Yun-lin visit. Remember that? And yet, "despite" the anger, ECFA sailed through the legislature and Chinese negotiators continue to visit, just like the current services pact is going to sale sail through the legislature.....

Yep, student protests have become, well, a regular feature of Taiwan's democracy. Probably the first major one was in March of 1990 (unless you want to count the Tiaoyutai Movement), one report here in the NYTimes.....

More than 6,000 students and thousands of onlookers gathered in a city park today to demand greater democracy, and there were reports that the President would convene a national conference to discuss the pace of political change on the island.

...you can also date them back to the 1980s, when Lin Chia-long, the current likely DPP mayoral candidate for Taichung, was organizing free speech protests/clubs on university campuses (those clubs grew into the 1990 protests). What's happening in Taipei at the moment is hardly on the scale of the protests of even five years ago -- in Dec of 2008 several thousand students marched to the presidential palace, after 400 had begun a sit-in, in a huge ruckus over the parade and assembly law driven by the Wild Strawberry movement. Remember that?

Yeah, thought you did. Bet you can't tell me what happened to the parade and assembly laws as a result of the protest.

Alas, the protests do not signal the possibility of change. That was the case in the 1980s and 1990s, because there was so much potential for positive change and because protests could make that change by signaling public displeasure when other avenues are closed. In the authoritarian days protesters appeared to outsiders as fighters for freedom. Now they appear as partisans for particular self-interested causes, avatars of interest-group democracy -- which is how the media typically interprets democratic processes -- rather than heroes of democratic development.

Really, several of these latest protests are just the squirming of the bugs as they are being crushed.  Dapu was over when the project was planned; Huaguang was finished when some developer wanted that land....

These protests have now become normalized and part of the System. Think about it. Every time some group is displeased at some event or decision, they go up to Taipei and protest. After all, we have democracy, and protests are no longer exciting and risky challenges to a fading authoritarian regime, they are part of the normal democratic process and have become a kind of background noise of democracy, like the cosmic radiation left over from the Big Bang. Such protests change nothing, of course. Whatever decision has been made goes on, a few sops may be handed out to the offended group. Government officials will express sympathy and concern. And the official refrain, one always hears it whenever officials are challenged: "This was done in accordance with the law." And whatever action was being opposed, goes on. Democracy thus functions to legitimate KMT power, especially for outsiders. Because the KMT makes the law.

The real, fundamental problem is that the KMT/construction-industrial state alliance has rendered Taiwan democracy irrelevant. Taiwanese can do as they want, talk, protest, whatever, it affects the construction-industrial state not a whit. The KMT has been able to this because it controls the legislature where the laws are made, and as I pointed out several years ago, it will probably continue to control the legislature for years to come. The "reform" of the legislature, which shrank it and changed the districts to winner-take-all, will someday be seen as a turning point in the march of democracy in Taiwan, cooperating with that as possibly the DPP's greatest fuck-up of all time. These protests and others to come when a few thousand of the next generation of idealistic students takes to the streets will break like foam against this wall of lawmaking incompetence and corruption. Cole claims:

....In the past two months I have noticed a marked hardening in the words used in slogans and art against the government, including the now popular “fuck the government” stickers, the “Today Dapu, tomorrow the government” slogan and the “civil revolt” towels. More and more, I see references to “overthrow,” “bring down” and “cleanse” on various Internet platforms, language that I had rarely seen in my nearly eight years as a journalist in this country.

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard the equivalent of "fuck the government" from a Taiwanese in my twenty years here -- most of it not spent in the Taipei bubble -- I'd be a wealthy man indeed. No one is going to overthrow or "cleanse" the government, it will remain as always when the current round of protests peters out, controlled by KMT even if the DPP wins the Presidency, and more fundamentally, by the construction-industrial state. That vast capitalist machine spits out money all over Taiwan, linking powerful local clans in patronage networks to the central government, and dusting everyone's lives with a little cash. Everyone has a little stake in it. Student protests aren't going to affect that Machine. It will just ignore them.....

Indeed, it should be noted, the vast majority of students are not protesting, they are preparing for jobs in China or studying for the endless exams (whose political function is to curtail student political action by loading them down with work) or taking selfies or collecting LV bags or smartphones or breaking records on World of Warcraft. One thing the System beats into students here repeatedly is that You Can't Beat City Hall and If You Try We Will Fuck On You. Dropping out and ignoring the System is also a form of protest against it, the only form of protest available to so many here.

The most recent iteration of the student movement has attempted to bridge the Blue/Green divide by embracing social issues that cross it, like the Losheng Sanitarium or the parade and assembly laws or in this case, the construction-industrial state as manifested in the demolition of the houses at Dapu. They have also embraced the Hung case, the conscript allegedly tortured to death. This is a new tactic, but it is a classic case of a useful tactic making a poor strategy. Sooner or later it will run up against the problem that the construction-industrial state (like most other Taiwan problems) is predominantly a KMT project, however much it may have corrupted the DPP......and then it will be standing on one side of that divide. And then it will be discredited by the tribal identity politics here.

If I could make one change, a key bottleneck is the nation's legislative bodies, with the Legislative Yuan the worst. If we could get decent legislators, we might have a chance to make meaningful change. Taiwanese voters need to change how they vote for their legislators, yet, how to make them change? Complete this sentence: change will only begin when....

• ....when the students take their protests outside of Taipei. Protesting at the LY is useless; it confines the movement to Taipei, neutralizing its possibilities. The movement is seen by outsiders as something that happens in Taipei. It needs to be national. Its Taipei leaders need to fan out and seed movements at other universities. 
• ....when those celebrities megaphoning about Dapu start making PSAs aimed at getting the public to change the way it thinks about voting. 
• ....when.... what's your answer? 

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Daily Links:

• New ten-dashed line map for Chinese claims.
• Teach Taiwan history to the Taiwanese
• China stock market wipes out $0.75 trillion in slide.
• Taiwan Review on Convenience Stores as dining venues: 20 million people eat out in Taiwan every day, according to a 7-11 PR guy. 
• Economic outlook not good: WSJ
• Formosa Foundation's info document for Congress on Human Rights in Taiwan
• 18 indicted in death of soldier. So what? Are we going to see changes in the system?
• Ralph Jennings on corruption and Transparency International.
• Presidential adviser resigns over services pact, says Ma is either autocrat or impossibly stupid.
• More rabies cases, including a shrew. I'm sure you've heard. 
• Farm tourism in Taiwan, from Steve C.
• Manila, Hanoi, discuss cooperation on China issues
• Taiwan to issue one year multiple entry visas to Chinese

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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!

Student Protesters Push Back Against Ministry

Taichungers: been to the gourd shop outside of Dongshi on Rte 8 (somewhere in here)? Some lovely gourd art there.

NewTalk reported on National Tsinghua University's attempt to rein in its student protesters.

清大今天發出聲明，對於陳為廷昨天在立法院的不當行為「深感痛心」，也對蔣偉寧及社會大眾所造成的傷害致上最深的歉意。

National Tsing Hua University today issued a statement yesterday in the Legislative Yuan, saying that it was "deeply saddened" by the inappropriate behavior of [student leader] Chen Wei-ting and offering its deepest apologies for the harm caused to [Minister of Education] Jiang Weining and the community.

....

陳為廷稍早也在臉書發表聲明，澄清自己昨天是受立委之邀前去「備詢」，立委本來就有職權邀請公民到場提供意見，他不認為自己的言行有錯；他也強調，昨天的發言只是陳述個人意見，並沒有要質問、要求蔣偉寧回答的意思，很遺憾被外界錯誤解讀。

Earlier on Facebook Chen Wei-ting issued a statement to clarify [his words from yesterday at the Legislative Yuan,] .....he stressed that yesterday's speech was a statement of personal opinion, and was not intended to interrogate Minister Chiang and demand an answer. It is regrettable that it was misinterpreted by outsiders [he said].

Tsinghua University was responding to comments by Chen Wei-ting in a session of the legislature yesterday in which he and others criticized Minister of Education Chiang for the Ministry's email which asked universities to "care for" students protesting. To many ears it sounded like a coded authoritarian message. The Taipei Times reported on the legislative session in which Chen Wei-ting spoke:

While legislators across party lines asked Chiang to apologize for the e-mail, he repeatedly said the ministry would engage in “profound reflection.”

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) said the school regulations of 22 of the 37 universities included in the e-mail still included punishments for students who hold assemblies and protests, adding that the ministry should have showed concern by eliminating such rules.

DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) said that Chiang should at least apologize for the ministry’s inability to show real concern for students, even if he would not for its misguided wish to monitor them.

“We think the ministry’s words of concern are hypocritical,” said Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), convener of the Youth Alliance Against Media Monsters and a National Taiwan University graduate student, adding that the minister could have approached the students when they were protesting in poor weather, or called the premier to tell him about the students’ demands.

“Minister, I think you are full of lies, a hypocrite and a minister that does not know repentance. I don’t think you are qualified to be a minister. Please apologize to us,” said another convener of the alliance, Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a student at National Tsing Hua University.

Many pixels have been launched along the intertubes about the generational change within the two major political parties, but in a sense this evolution reflects a tremendous social transition: the students in their twenties now grew up in the democratic era, while those who sit in judgment on them are relics of the authoritarian period, in many cases formally and informally vetted to ensure they had proper political views when they entered the system back in the 1980s. The two sides speak to each other out of completely different cultural worlds.

This generational clash is particularly profound at the universities, which are structured to prevent students from engaging in exactly this kind of political activity. The universities do not overtly pursue political students but the structures remain in place, latent. Workloads are heavy, students have limited choice. The nation's universities are famously paternalistic, an attitude that is always threatening to shade into outright authoritarianism, and almost alone among the major institutions of society they have failed to adopt the best practices from abroad (compare that to major Taiwanese firms). There is an almost visceral fear of student political activity; people like Chen Wei-ting and Lin Fei-fan must send shudders coursing up the System's backbone. Moreover, the students quoted in the last couple of days in the media come from sectors long known for pro-Taiwan and pro-democracy political activity: National Taiwan University, frequently described as very Green, and doctors.

Students in every society have a kind of moral force that other protesting groups are often perceived as lacking. Leaders fear this moral authority. In Taiwan student protesters have to contend with what they often describe as a wearisome partisan divide -- they struggle to keep their protests about issues of civil society and human rights that are neither Blue nor Green, to prevent their protests from becoming discredited as merely partisan action. It is to the credit of both sides' legislators, and to the students who struggled to straddle that divide, that legislators of both parties demanded an apology from the Ministry of Education for this apparent attempt to intimidate the protesters. Sadly, no forthright apology was issued....
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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.

Reuters Interviews President Ma: Human rights gone astray?

Reuters published an article on its interview with the President....

Asked about blind activist Chen Guangcheng, whom China recently allowed to travel to the United States to study after a diplomatic row between Beijing and Washington, Ma said Taiwan was concerned about rights in China, particularly in light of there being a million people from Taiwan on the mainland.

"We hope the mainland can face some of the issues that have happened in the past and can treat dissidents well. We are looking at this from the point of view of kindness, not based on Western human rights values, but traditional Chinese values."

There is a transcript up now in Chinese at the President's Office.

我們長期以來關心中國大陸的人權問題，並不是刻意要干預他們的內政，而是目前有100多萬的臺灣人在大陸工作、就學及經商，因此他們的權益也要受到保障，例如最近我們與中國大陸談判的「投資保障協議」，其中就包含一些有關個人安全及自由的保障，這是不可避免的，我們當然會關心。我認為兩岸在這方面還有一些差距，如果能夠縮短，就能有效縮短兩岸人民的心理距離。在過去幾年中我經常提到這一點，我們會持續關心這個議題，希望大陸能夠務實面對過去所發生的一些問題，同時善待異議人士，我們的出發點是善意的，而我們的依據不是西方價值，而是傳統中國價值。

Note that in the transcript currently online, there is no mention of "human rights" here. Hence interpretation of the President's meaning is complicated by the issue of what he actually said. The text in Chinese simply says "...but what we are basing this on is not western values, but traditional Chinese values." Has "human rights" been dropped from the transcript? Such editing of transcripts is hardly abnormal.

Since the questions here were probably scripted -- indeed during Ma's first term there was much 'criticism' of the President's speaking to reporters in English, which appeared to actually be support for a move to exert greater control over the questions that reporters ask.

Judging from the other comments made in that paragraph, it looks like Ma is searching for common ground with China, as he always does. This probably should not be read as something anti-western so much as it is his normal pro-China boilerplate about "reducing differences" between the two sides and appealing to shared Confucian values. These are favorite themes, the locals just shrug them off.

There is plenty of stuff on economics, which is Reuter's primary focus, after all. The report notes that Ma is attempting to get FTAs with other trading states. Very curious to see whether Beijing will let that occur. Ma also mentioned the talks with the US, which got hung up on the beef issue. Also very curious to see whether both sides are genuinely interested, or are merely playing the same kind of game as Taipei and Washington have been playing with the F-16 purchase.
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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.

Can Taiwan's Soft Power Change China?

Sun Moon Lake.

A victory for Taiwanese-Americans as the state of California ended its crazy policy of forcing Taiwanese-Americans to list "Taiwan, province of China" instead of "Taiwan" as their birthplace. WTF does it matter? Not to mention that it is in complete conflict with US policy and international treaties...

In the context of another affirmation of Taiwan's undetermined international status it was interesting to be sent a piece from an academic in Hong Kong arguing that Taiwan can change China....

Taiwan should follow Hong Kong in becoming more open to mainland tourists and students. Rather than viewing the bilateral relationship in “hard power” terms including the military balance between the two sides, Taiwan can wield the “soft power” of liberal values. These values will eventually subvert the PRC’s authoritarian system, making it converge socially, economically, and politically with Taiwan and Hong Kong.

It is hard to imagine why any rational person would want to "converge socially, economically, and politically" with an authoritarian state like China, which is what the author is actually advocating.

Like most such pieces, it consists entirely of commonplaces and unexamined assumptions. A widespread one:

In order to achieve this, Taiwan should accelerate interactions with mainland China. For example, Taiwan can allow more mainland Chinese students to study in its universities. Students will return to the mainland with a better understanding of democratic institutions and practices.

Few Chinese students who come to Taiwan are in positions to effect change. By contrast, there are thousands of Chinese students in the western democracies. Can anyone point to concrete changes in China as a result of this enormous presence? Let me also remind the reader that many of the anti-democracy elites at the top of the KMT have degrees from US universities...

The author goes on:

Second, Taiwan should build deeper economic interactions with the PRC, including an economic union. This will bind the economies of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao together. It will also encourage accelerated political transformations in the PRC.

This is rather a strange claim. First, creating an economic union with the PRC would indeed bind the economies of China and Taiwan, so the second sentence merely restates the first. And so what? The PRC's politics are not freer than they were when Taiwan businessmen started going over to China twenty years ago; the security state is larger and more pervasive. The CCP shows no sign of reform or change. Taiwan businessmen in China are careful to toe the Party line and usually do not engage in local politics. In any case the major driver of change in China is/will be the Chinese themselves and economic union will have little effect on that. This is a mere ideological faith statement...

Moreover, economic union would reward China's current strategy of pressuring Taiwan to annex itself to China and to entangle the two economies so deeply as to impair Taiwan's freedom of action. It is hard to see how rewarding expansionist, authoritarian behavior can change that behavior. Economic union will of course be followed by increased pressure for outright annexation....

There's actually the germ of a good idea here....

Third, Taiwan could adopt a much bolder attitude in political negotiations with the PRC. In the past, Taiwan’s elites have adopted a conservative approach, arguing that the PRC must first change politically to allow negotiations to take place. But the time is ripe to push mainland Chinese elites to adopt more political tolerance of political dissent and freedom of speech and assembly.

It might be good for the KMT if the Ma Administration was more critical of China's restrictions on speech and dissent as well as on the property and economic rights of its people. But such a discourse would not be aimed at Beijing but rather at the KMT's domestic audiences... and the lack of such a discourse at present in Taiwan should have signaled the author that a KMT-led government can never change China through increased interaction because at heart the KMT and the CCP share too many political and social values.

As for the "time being ripe", it is always the time to talk about how we can make our world more democratic....

Moreover, Taiwan's democracy is not the result of KMT party efforts, but of the sacrifices of thousands of activists who struggled to build a democracy here, most of whom were pro-independence as well. Because independence and democracy are intertwined values in Taiwan, one cannot be asserted without simultaneously asserting the other. This handicaps the pro-China parties in their expressions of support for democracy and in their use of democratic discourses as tool to change the CCP, since they are anti-independence.

Taiwan changes China not by direct interactions with the leadership in Beijing, but by constantly being an example of an alternative Chinese polity that locals in China can use for everything from a stick to beat the authorities with to an example to be emulated. Taiwan changes China simply by existing. Every day Taiwan remains free is another day that there is a society that daily refutes the idea that China and its daughter cultures cannot handle democracy. A consequence of the PRC's insistence that Taiwan is "Chinese" is the undermining of its own claims that western-style democracy is inappropriate or unacceptable for Chinese.

Finally, another aspect of the "soft power" issue is that the author of this piece does not appear to consider the possibility that China with its vastly greater material resources and power might more greatly change Taiwan in negative directions (note how vague he is on what "converge" means). Already there is a large segment of local businessmen who serve China's interests in Taiwan, as the developing boycott of the China Times is highlighting, and the influence of China in the media is profound. The reader will no doubt be able to think of others...
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Daily Links:

• Taipei Air Station with excellent post of color pic collection from 1950s Taiwan.
• Japan switches off its reactors. Now for Taiwan.
• Gorgeous pictures of Taiwan's nature and biodiversity (scroll down).
• Ma announces increase in funds, nurse-patient ratio.
• Apple Daily has a report today on calls for increases in the proportion of hours devoted to studying the Chinese classics in Chinese education to 65% and similar moves. 

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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.

MAJOR: Another attack on press freedom??

Freedom House picked this up last week via the Taipei Times:

Lin Chauyi, a reporter at the internet news outlet New Talk and head of the Association of Taiwanese Journalists (ATJ), was sued by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) whip and legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang for defamation on October 14. Lin had written an article on September 2 about Hsieh's "political interference" in a controversial cable television deal. According to the report, the legislator had met members of Taiwan's National Communications Commission before it held a September 6 public hearing, and pressured them to approve Want Want Broadband's bid to purchase China Network Systems (CNS), Taiwan's second-largest cable television provider. Want Want Broadband is a subsidiary of Want Want Group, which is known for its friendly relations with the Chinese government and state-run media outlets (see CMB No. 34), raising concerns that its acquisition of CNS would limit Taiwanese viewers' access to diverse television content. At the plaintiff's request, Lin faced a provisional seizure of NT$2.5 million (US$82,600), which was approved by the Taipei district court; one-third of his monthly salary will be withheld until the amount is covered. After other media outlets and civil society groups, including Want Want–owned China Times and the ATJ, condemned Hsieh for violating press freedom, Hsieh said on October 19 that he would settle the lawsuit if the reporter admitted "that he failed to carry out a thorough verification of the information." Immediately after Hsieh's statement, New Talk said its fact-based investigation was "open to public scrutiny." It added that Hsieh had requested provisional seizure of assets from both Lin and New Talk chairman Su Chengping, for a total amount of NT$5 million (US$165,300), though only the request regarding Lin has thus far been approved.

Let's see that on the instant replay:

1. News report says legislator pressured National Communications Commission (originally erected to be a KMT end run around the GIO during Chen Administration) to approve WantWant's purchase of CNS. WantWant, though Taiwan-owned, is a rabid supporter of Beijing (Newtalk's report in Chinese says Hsieh pressured the NCC twice).

2. Legislator (KMT whip, not some nobody) sues reporter who is also the head of the Association of Taiwanese Journalists for defamation for reporting this. Is this a game of "let's send a signal to journalists"?

3. Legislator requests, and the court (incredibly and rarely) grants, that the journalist's salary be docked 1/3 until $82,500 US dollars is paid off before the freakin' trial. Not just a lawsuit, but also an attack on the journalists ability to support himself and his family. Is this a game of "let's send a signal to journalists"?

4. Even WantWant owned media protests this apparent assault on press freedom.

Newtalk (please go here and read the whole excellent analysis) points out that this lawsuit looks like a clear violation of UN press freedoms. Defamation remains a criminal act in Taiwan -- recall that President Chen Shui-bian did eight months for libeling Elmer Fung during the martial law period. Newtalk argues that having signed the international covenants on rights, the government is now subject to their stipulations....

Citizens and news workers might have anticipated that the question of decriminalization of libel might have been raised in the wake of the incorporation into our domestic law of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights effective December 10, 2009.

However, Article 310 and the question of whether defamation should be decriminalized have not been included in the review of Taiwan`s legal code and administrative regulations now being conducted under the auspices of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Human Rights chaired by Vice President Vincent Siew.

Part of the reason for this omission may be the fact that Taiwan`s Constitutional Court found in its Interpretation No. 507 of July 7, 2000 that Article 310 does not violate the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Article 11 on the grounds that the criminalization of defamation is "a necessary countermeasure" to "protect individual legal interests" and "to prevent the infringement of the freedom and rights of other persons."

The Constitution Court determined that "if the law allowed anyone to avoid penalty for defamation by offering monetary compensation, it would be tantamount to issuing them a license to defame."

Newtalk further notes:

Specifically, Article 47 mandates that "defamation laws must be crafted with care to ensure...that they do not serve, in practice, to stifle freedom of expression."

Moreover, the HRC`s interpretation mandates that "states parties should consider the decriminalization of defamation and, in any case, the application of the criminal law should only be countenanced in the most serious of cases and imprisonment is never an appropriate penalty."

In addition, Article 47 stated that "at least with regard to comments about public figures, consideration should be given to avoiding penalizing or otherwise rendering unlawful untrue statements that have been published in error but without malice" and that "a public interest in the subject matter of the criticism should be recognized as a defence" and adds that "care should be taken by States parties to avoid excessively punitive measures and penalties."

The Association of Taiwanese Journalists has a response up on their website. TT reported that ATJ said:

In a statement issued on Tuesday night, the association said that while anyone mentioned in a news report may make a response to that report, no one should threaten journalists through lawsuits or provisional seizure measures “which may frighten individual journalists, leading to violation of freedom of speech and a shrinking freedom of the press.”

Worth observing: the original article included balancing information from Hsieh's assistant denying the claim that Hsieh had pressured the NCC.

Keep in the mind that the furor over press freedom in this case should not obscure the fact that this is fallout from a more important issue, the KMT's apparent enablement of China's relentless assault on Taiwan's media freedom and diversity. Let's not forget which party regularly eulogizes Singapore as an example of how things should be run.
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Daily Links:

• An excellent forum on Taiwan: Is Taiwan defensible? reported in the Taipei Times
• Denny Roy becomes the latest in an endless line of people calling for Beijing to let Taiwan into international organizations. In three years of Ma's diplomatic "truce" we have diddly to show on that front. Remember the glorious days when the punditocracy announced that Beijing would take down the missiles if Ma was elected? 
• Taiwan dollar rallies
• The story of a Taiwan death row inmate

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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.

Landmark Free Speech Ruling

A court in -- where else? -- Taichung handed down a landmark ruling on free speech, sentencing a local blogger to 30 days and $7,000 US in compensation to the owner for giving a restaurant a negative review.....

After visiting a Taichung beef noodle restaurant in July 2008, where she had dried noodles and side dishes, Liu wrote that the restaurant served food that was too salty, the place was unsanitary because there were cockroaches and that the owner was a “bully” because he let customers park their cars haphazardly, leading to traffic jams.

The restaurant’s owner, surnamed Yang (楊), learned about Liu’s blog post from a regular customer, and filed charges against her, accusing her of defamation.

The Taichung District Court ruled that Liu’s criticism of the restaurant exceeded reasonable bounds and sentenced her to 30 days in detention, a ruling that Liu appealed.
The High Court found that Liu’s criticism about cockroaches in the restaurant to be a narration of facts, not intentional slander.

However, the judge also ruled that Liu should not have criticized all the restaurant’s food as too salty because she only had one dish on her single visit.

This brilliant ruling will surely be cited by free speech advocates everywhere as the judges have done a wonderful job protecting free speech. This is the kind of ruling that should be trumpeted around the world, so the greatness of the Taiwan Court system is manifest for all nations to see. Truly this is a wise and humane judgement. I bow to the superior wisdom of these black-robed gods. Now that this judgment has been made, I will never again feel a chill in the air of freedom in Taiwan!

Additional foreign blogger commentary from the Writing Baron, Lao Ren Cha, Echo, and OzSoapbox. These benighted souls clearly lack the acuity to see the unabashed greatness of this key ruling, to grasp its unalloyed goodness, how it has made their lives freer and safer in every way. Go back to your Cheeto-clogged, pajama-strewn basements!

UPDATED: Longtime commenter M says she got 30 days, suspended.
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Daily Links:

• Grass-Mud-Horse lexicon (thanks, Marc).
• The Bushman does a Neiwan grill party: looks like a blast.
• Don't sell betel nut to Chinese, says DOH.
• Taiwan's Museum of Alien Studies. Please tell me this is a joke.
• China warns US over South China Sea.
• China attempts to shore up Jason Hu of Taichung, lure Taiwanese SME's to special industrial zone just across the Strait.

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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.