KMTitanic III: But this ship can't sink!

This is the life...

Smith: The pumps... if we opened the doors...
Andrews: [interrupting] The pumps buy you time, but minutes only. From this moment, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder.
Ismay: [incredulously] But this ship can't sink!
Andrews: She's made of iron, sir! I assure you, she can... and she will. It is a mathematical certainty.

Eric Chu's KMT is still the KMT. The news says it all: Tenth KMT-CCP forum to be held in May or June. The KMT has but one card left to play, and that's the "only we can handle China" card. Unfortunately they are looking like the same old KMT more and more, with the press now discussing a Xi-Chu meetup at the Forum -- which is being treated as a separate issue. The Forum, held in June, will be only six months away from the election, a timely reminder of who the KMT's allies are. This connection might be nice in some quarters, and polls might even show majority approval, but I suspect voters are going to be very tired of it, and will punish the KMT. If Xi and Chu meet, it will cost the KMT votes.

In any case, the Eric Chu KMT is feeling a lot like the Ma Ying-jeou KMT, same people, same issues, same trends...

Lots of light moments this week. A well-known talk show host, Vivian Tsai (蔡玉真) made headlines today by announcing that Ma would have to step down in 2015, which would make Wu Den-yih President. It's hard to see that happening, but the really droll part is that Wu Den-yih and his wife believe they are fated to be president and first lady. Apparently a few years back, a fortune teller told Wu that he had a presidential fate. My wife observed that if he becomes president, that fortune teller is going to get rich. eTaiwan news says:

The Special Investigation Division summoned political commentators Tsai Yu-chen and Wang Chieh-min to testify Wednesday in its investigation of charges that President Ma Ying-jeou accepted illegal contributions from business figures in the 2008 election campaign. Afterwards Tsai took to Facebook to write that she believes Ma will step down as president sometime this year, to be succeeded by current Vice President Wu Den-yih.

Tsai revealed that she had been questioned in relation to reports of political contributions from the Ting Hsin Group. She said that prosecutors had provided a list of entrepreneurs and asked what she knew regarding the case, but added that she was not at liberty to disuss any details of the investigation. She said she could only disclose that she believes that before the end of this year President Ma will step down from office. "But don’t worry,” she said, “Wu Den-yih is prepared to take over and this will be a transition period only."

Wu dismissed the claims as "ridiculous". The really great thing is that suddenly the Chen Shui-bian accusations of the other day were blown away by this new kerfuffle and disappeared into the media ether...

Speaking of the presidency, reports have it that PFP leader James Soong, once a KMT stalwart who nearly won the Presidency in 2000 after leaving the KMT and running as an independent, is considering a run. This will help the PFP legislative candidates, though, if the last time he did this is any indication, he won't have much effect on the Presidential election. But it will still be nice to see...

Meanwhile, DPP Chair and probable presidential candidate Tsai Ying-wen is making DPP hay out of the nuclear issue. She called on DPP members to take part in demonstrations against nuke power across the nation on Saturday. Nukes are unpopular and DPP ownership of this issue will hurt the KMT come election time.
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Daily Links:

• MAC declines China's invitation to participate in WWII commemoration
• Single man dates three women in two weeks, makes headlines. Three Four different editorial staffs decided this was news. Taiwan is so ill-served by its media...
• Twilight of the Idols: Defacing CKS statues. 
• The recent pro-China changes to the education curriculum, in Chinese
• Cole: China demolishes the Taiwan consensus
• Reuters with a rare good piece on Taiwan-China. Reading more of these where the writer discusses what the Taiwanese people think. One effect of the Hong Kong protests was, IMHO, to make it easier for the international media to discuss what the Taiwanese people actually think.

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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!

Enjoy some links....

Water drops on a leaf.

Too busy, too tired to blog today....
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Daily Links:

• Taiwan is growing immigration destination for Hong Kongers (first segment in this video)
• Irony is dead: President's Ma sisters show up at New May Fourth rally with Chang An-lo, the White Wolf, longtime gangster, at a rally to, among other things, "support" the police and rule of law. The government announced that it is charging one of the underlings for the illegal assembly of gangsters led by Chang An-lo to attack the students a few weeks ago. It has to punish someone from its own side  in order to jail the students, and they lack the stones to punish the White Wolf. 
• DPP's Lin up on Hu in Taichung by 18 points in early Apple poll for mayor election.
• The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission Report on Taiwan-China Relations, April 29, 2014
• Photo-Essay on the Sunflower Movement from American student of Taiwanese descent who was "present at the creation." Good pics, astute discussion. 
• Taiwan to sue short seller Glaucus Research
• Jens Kastner: Taiwan as a western Pacific Cargo hub?
• Taiwan's Clam Heartland
• Bluesplainin'
• The transformation of Taiwan's Sunflower Movement. Laskai, in The Diplomat
• Cool: Strava bike riding heat map for Taiwan
• More on the purblind stupidity of building Nuke 4:
  

  The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is actually the last of its kind in the world, and its designer, General Electric (GE) Co, is unlikely to sell this kind of nuclear unit again. Since the basic design of the Taiwanese unit is similar to that of the Japanese Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, nobody dares purchase such a unit. Today, the GE’s two existing units of this kind are in Japan and are the only such units in the world. They are functioning well so far. When a massive earthquake hit Japan on March 11, 2011, authorities stopped the operations of the two units temporarily, for safety checks and quickly resumed the operations when no damage was reported.
  
  However, the original GE design of the two units was altered by Hitachi, Toshiba Corp and other Japanese companies, and even GE is unaware of all the changes. That being so, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is a guinea pig with no framework to follow

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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!

Economist at it again

The Economist's blatant favoritism toward the KMT was on display again this week. Consider the first paragraph:

....When [Lin I-hsiung] began his vigil, he said he would fast to death if necessary, until the government (a reformed and elected KMT) reversed a national energy policy that sees nuclear power as vital for the island. Not wanting to have a martyr on its hands, the government caved in. On April 30th Mr Lin ended his fast. The country’s nuclear policy lies in tatters.

"The country's nuclear policy lies in tatters." This pro-KMT remark sets the tone for the entire piece. We learn that the anti-nuke movement swelled after Fukushima, and then again after the street protests. We are given the KMT line -- the President "argued that Taiwan’s economic future needed nuclear power." The KMT line gets another repeat in the next paragraph, where we are told via quotes that the President is 100% right but no one is listening. The steady drumbeat of KMT talking points is so hypnotic, the reader may be forgiven for not noticing that the writer of this prose poem in favor of the Ma Administration never stops to inform the reader of why the opposition to the plant is so strong, and why they see the 4th Nuke Disaster as a really bad idea (for example, in describing Ma meeting with Su, we are told what Ma said, but not Su). The opposition never speaks, except tellingly, at the end, when Tsai Ing-wen is quoted to make another negative point about the street protests.

Its entire construction hinges on the idea that the street protesters were irrational and aggressive while the Ma Administration was rational and tolerant, just one big KMT talking point. Pure comedy.

The reader is never told that Ma backed down in part because the street protests signaled the KMT chiefs of Taipei, New Taipei City, and Taichung that it could hurt the party's election chances at the end of this year, and that Ma was forced to re-organize the KMT in response (post below this one) to shore up his sagging support from within the party. Protests took place within the KMT leadership, in other words.

Indeed, someone out there should be noting that the KMT itself began this mess by offering to submit the plant to a referendum. Remember that? More than a year ago, in fact (example). At that time pro-KMT media organs began arguing that the Executive Yuan can't shutter the plant because it would be unconstitutional, only the Legislature can do that (example), the argument made when the Chen Administration tried to kill this zombie project all those years ago. The Ma Administration's decision to mothball the plant (not halt construction) may be a clever way to get around that alleged constitutional problem.

But to return to the point about the nation's nuclear policy lying in tatters, it lies "in tatters" because there was never any nuclear policy -- it started out "in tatters".There is still, after five decades of nuke plant operations in Taiwan, no place or policy for long-term storage of nuclear waste. There is no plan or place to evacuate Taipei in the event of a catastrophe at of one of the three plants that ring the city. The plant is rife with construction irregularities (Global Post). The Fourth Nuke Zombie was supposed to have a tsunami assessment performed, but this was never done. If the nuclear policy is in tatters, it is because its supporters never had one that made any sense. It was just another construction-industrial state project, building, always building, just as it is with dams, roads, and other infrastructure.

Indeed, one could point out that KMT might have begun this mess because it knows perfectly well that the Fourth Nuclear Plant construction is rife with irregularities and that its local suppliers have little or no experience. Thus, it could never be opened. The government merely waited until all the money had been spent and the thing was almost completed, as if to ensure that its patronage networks had been properly fed and watered. Since a 1994 local referendum rejected the plant by +90% vote, and the public remains opposed to it, this whole mess might be the KMT's way of getting the plant shut down without taking the blame for it, as it did when it killed that monster naptha cracker in Changhua. "Those damn street protesters! They tied our hands!" Then when electricity prices go up as they must because they are far too low, the government can blame the anti-nuke types as well. My cynical guess would be that the KMT never anticipated that things would go in this direction.

In the post below this one I pointed out the nation's massive renewable resources. Another truth about the nation's energy policy was revealed in a Taipei Times article yesterday. Experts have long contended that the 4th Nuke Disaster can be converted to safer natural gas. This writer of a TT commentary (read it all, it's great) went a step further....

The Datan [Natural Gas power] plant is a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) generation plant with an installed capacity of 4.484 gigawatts (GW) and a thermal efficiency of 53 percent, which is quite high. Unfortunately the capacity factor was only 35 percent in 2011, only generating power for about one-third of the time, thus wasting the investment in the plant’s construction. If it could be changed into a base load power station with a capacity factor of 90 percent, it could produce 4.0GW of power, which would be enough to replace the first power plant and the Gongliao plant, which produce 1.27GW and 2.7GW respectively. It would also remove the excuse that ending construction of the fourth plant would require power to be delivered from the south of Taiwan to the north.

Wiki points out that the Datan Plant is the largest in the world of its kind.

The reason the nation's nuke policy is "in tatters" is because it is stoooopid, not because of street protesters, who merely called attention to this existing fact. Even without counting on renewables or calling for greater power conservation, the nation's power situation is such that we don't need the 4th Nuke Nightmare. The 4th nuclear plant is simply the ultimate example of a construction-industrial state run amok.

Next step: shutting down our absurd, murderous coal plants. Protesters, don't stop at nukes!
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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 KMT Brings order to the Galaxy

Noodle shop, Huaxin St.

The commentary on the nuke plant from the pro-nuke side is both comically stupid and revealing. South China Morning Post says it's time for a "rational" debate on energy in Taiwan.

But Taiwan, like Japan, has little choice but to consider nuclear power because it lacks the natural resources to generate electricity. Taiwan's three operating nuclear power stations, two of them in New Taipei City in the north where the fourth is being built, have operated safely for many years, while providing nearly 20 per cent of the island's electricity. Taiwanese need to put politics aside and talk about the island's future development.

Two issues to highlight. First, the constant deployment of "rationality" by the government side as opposed to the "irrationality" of the protesters. J Michael Cole accused the government of flirting with authoritarianism lite in a piece yesterday, and the fourth nuke train wreck is triggering its deepest bureaucratic authoritarian impulses of bringing order to the galaxy. Be orderly! the government keeps saying to the protesters. Orderliness involves education with correct information of course, because people simply need guidance and rationality. The KMT is apt to explain the behavior of its opponents as being uneducated, irrational, and lacking in proper guidance. Hence, the notice to the universities last year to supply guidance to students participating in protests. This discourse of education, rationality, and guidance is code language for authoritarian control. Cole only errs in saying that this is a response to the protests, it has always been this way for a society where the answer to all questions of public order is "more control". The KMT is merely updating its habits to the internet age.

 J Michael observes:

To counter this, the KMT and the Executive Yuan (EY) have both announced they will soon establish “new media” units to counter “disinformation” circulating on the Internet and provide “correct” government information using the social networks that served as the principal means of communication for the Sunflower Movement. The unit under the EY will reportedly fall directly under Premier Jiang Yi-huah. Ma and Jiang said that they would hire tech-savvy youth to facilitate the operations of their “new media” units, whose raison d’être bears striking similarities with similar units in China, which have been strengthened under President Xi Jinping in his campaign against the dissemination of “rumors” on the Internet. Officials have reportedly also been instructed to roam the Internet and rectify “wrong” information whenever they encounter it. The parallels with China’s use of “fifty cent party” — paid Internet commentators who are relied upon by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to counter dissent and spread the “correct” line — are hard to miss.

The fourth nuke crisis is indeed a crisis of order, but the major disorder is occurring inside the KMT, the real prize for True Believers like Ma. Thus, as Cole notes, President Ma, who is also KMT Chairman Ma, struggled to bring his rivals and his Party under control:

Meanwhile, Ma, who is perhaps most threatened by a possible split within his party, has sought to consolidate his power by using the tactics of autocrats by keeping his potential opponents close and diminishing the size of his winning coalition, or what political scientists Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith refer to as the “essentials.” This Ma did on April 30, with the announcement that he had appointed Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu and Taichung Mayor Jason Hu — all of whom had at some point or another in recent weeks occasionally expressed different views from the administration on how to resolve the political crisis — as KMT vice chairmen. By doing so, Ma co-opted potential critics within the party, which he himself admitted had been made “stronger” as a result, and probably ensured that he can withstand pressure from within the ranks to step down as party chairman, an outcome that this author had seen as highly likely.

Ma also cut the number of central committee members, Cole notes. These are moves meant to consolidate Ma's grip on the Party, an admission that things are not all going his way. Ma may be a hopeless politician when facing the common people, but his political tutors were Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, two dictators, and he knows full well the importance of securing his KMT rear.

The other way to interpret this, however, is to note that at the fateful meeting in which the KMT said the decision was made to mothball the fourth nuke plant, among those present were the big guys who became KMT vice chairman: Chu, Hu, and Hau. I suspect they delivered him an ultimatum to mothball the plant because it was becoming a problem for the KMT in the upcoming elections.

Ma has also done another common dictator move: by appointing a number of potential successors -- KMT Vice Chairman -- Ma has planted the seeds of chaos when he finally steps down. Jason Hu is probably ambivalent about ambition, but Chu and Hau are both younger and potential presidential candidates. It is not difficult to see that once Ma goes down, there will be a struggle over control of the KMT, which will cause KMTers to wax nostalgic about the good old days when things were orderly in the KMT and Ma ran things with an iron fist, like Russian pensioners wistfully recalling Stalin. Note that the perception that the KMT may have a difficult internal struggle if Ma is forced out may work as a factor to keep Ma in power...

The other thing the SCMP commentary points to is the vast, probably deliberate ignorance of the claim that nukes are the only way Taiwan can supply power for itself (in fact the Taiwan EPA under Ma also says renewables are unreliable and we gotta have nukes. LOL). Taiwan has vast renewable potential. I pointed in June to a piece on molten salt power potential in Taiwan at JapanFocus, which is pretty good when it isn't forwarding Chinese propaganda on the Senkakus. But there are several papers out there that give a good overview of the possibilities. For example, this 2006 paper observes:

These figures are obsolete but they give you an idea. The technology is progressing so rapidly that offshore wind potential has risen more than an order of magnitude from that figure, not even a decade old, according to this paper. That paper also ignores other forms of renewable energy, such as wave or OTEC, that might be useful in Taiwan.

Moreover Taiwan has a strong renewables manufacturing sector which the government should be seeking to stimulate through purchases of power equipment for Taiwan. It should also be pushing the fuel cell and battery industries, not dumping $40 billion into operating and then retiring that time bomb on the NE coast. There's no sense in investing in nukes, a dead industry kept alive in zombie state only via massive subsidies.
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Daily Links:

• Two major Taiwan tablet makers doomed to occupy middle ground in tablet market? (Forbes)
• Russia, China to conduct naval drills in East China Sea
• Japanese patrol fires paintballs at Taiwan boat.
• Is Taiwan sinking back into obscurity?
• US FDA Taiwan country page
• Russia to sell advanced missile defense systems to China
• A small rise in taxes for the wealthy. Taiwan's fiscal crisis.
• Chicago professors fight Confucius Institute. Conspicuous by their absence: profs who study East Asia and presumably, China. 
• Don't Miss: Batto on majoritarianism

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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!

Another Overwhelming Wave of ECFA Successes

Putting in cables in Kaoshiung.

The Taipei Times reports on the amazing increases decreases in Chinese investment in Taiwan:

Chinese investment in Taiwan in the first quarter plummeted 90.83 percent to US$12.75 million from a year earlier, and investments from other foreign countries also fell in the first quarter by 33.82 percent to US$833.7 million, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Investment Commission said on Monday. Meanwhile, Taiwanese investment in China grew 28.97 percent in the first quarter from a year ago to top US$2.8 billion, the commission said.

Yes! Chinese investment has reached $12.75 million, or about what my in-laws spent on liquor at the last wedding in the family. Meanwhile capital that could be growing Taiwan is still flowing into China as China continues to be the abyss into which Taiwan's future is poured.

Both ECFA and the current services pact are projects that benefit the 1%: big finance, big corporations, and organized crime. As if in acknowledgement of this, I heard that the DGBAS, the official stats bureau, announced this week that it is going to stop publishing the ratio between the top and bottom of Taiwan's income groups. It will now become more difficult to discuss income inequality in Taiwan. That ratio of top/bottom incomes is a powerful indicator of the level of income inequality in Taiwan, a worsening problem which is linked to two major trends since 1990: financial liberalization, and closeness to China, both of which have been massively beneficial to the 1%.

News from the construction-industrial state: a friend who purchased land on the east coast wants to build a house. In order to do that he needs to grow crops on that land. The local gov't people have to come out to image the crops and verify that the land is planted, which it is, beautifully. Only they are slow in coming. Why? Well, one reason bouncing about the local community is that big hotel developers want a go-slow in the area so nobody opens bed and breakfasts that might compete with them.

See J Michael's latest in The Diplomat on the Anti-Nuke protests. Premier Jiang said that the government will never shutter the nuke plant. Stay tuned. The KMT's probable presidential candidates are all involved in this: Eric Chu, the New Taipei City chief in whose district the plant will function has called for revising the referendum law to bring it up to international standards. Hau Long-bin, the Taipei mayor, has played it close to the vest. Premier Jiang, whom I consider Ma's hand-picked successor, has been the President's attack dog, in the time-honored style of the lower level official saying things the Benevolent Great Leader wants said but cannot because they interfere with his appearance of benevolence. With everyone positioning for 2016, things could get interesting inside the KMT....
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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!

MASSIVE BREAKING Ma announces halt to Fourth Nuclear Plant Construction

It ain't over til the fat lady sings, but for now, the Ma gov't has taken another one on the chin. Yesterday thousands rallied in Taipei against the backdrop of longtime democracy activist Lin I-hsiung's hunger strike to end construction of this plant. The fifth day in, the Ma Administration threw in the towel and announced that it was halting construction of the plant. Lin I-hsiung could not be permitted to die.

We went through this a couple of years ago when the Ma Administration terminated that horror that was the naptha cracker down in Changhua, blaming the environmentalists. The project searched for another spot in Taiwan, then finally moved overseas. I suspect the Administration will struggle to breathe life back into it. Indeed, a keen observer of local affairs pointed out that apparently, the administration's inner circle made the decision without informing its own legislative caucus, [update: caucus leader was present] which it is at odds with since trying to force through that horror of a services pact, which probably has less public support than that nuclear time bomb it is building just east of Taipei. Taipower was quick to denounce the decision, saying it would need to somehow be shielded from bankruptcy.

Let's also recall, as an especially keen observer noted, that when Chen Shui-bian called a halt to construction, the KMT was quick to scream that it was unconstitutional. I expect Ma will say his hands are tied and they have to finish. The Constitution, you know.

A couple of other observations were made. First, the announcement was made by a KMT Party spokesman, not a government spokesman. Second, the decision was made without democratic input. When it is all said and done, the KMT believes itself to be in Taiwan but not of it, and in Taiwan's democracy, but not of it. To the mainlander core, it is always Party-State time.

But let's savor this. The Ma Administration has taken a savage and totally unnecessary beating, dating back -- anyone remember it? -- to the surprising 2009 referendum on Penghu, which I and everyone else thought would end in passage of a referendum authorizing casinos on the islands, but instead was defeated. The KMT even tinkered with the referendum law in an attempt to get that passed. Since then the Administration has slid slowly off the cliff. A triplet of wounds: Ma's attempt to get rid of Wang Jin-pyng, the occupation of the legislature, and now the shuttering of construction on the Fourth Nuclear Plant.

Perhaps this was done with the November elections in mind. Perhaps it will be reversed. But it really doesn't matter. Tonight it tastes like victory. And let's not forget two other victories that occurred recently. The High Court invalidated a portion of the Parade and Assembly Law, an authoritarian leftover. That was a victory of the Wild Strawberries and the professors who led them. And just this week the construction-industrial state took a blow as the Council of Grand Justices invalidated several clauses of the urban renewal act, halting up to 90 land thefts by big developers urban renewal projects. The youth activists were involved in that case as well, taking up the cause of the family who eventually took this case as far as it could go.

But: here's a reminder from J Michael that the struggle goes on. This time, over trees....
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Daily Links:

• Closer and closer, the nationalists on both sides of the strait come to making an outright claim to Okinawa.
• Obama follows longstanding policy and says that the Senkakus will be defended by the US
• Craig Ferguson's pics of the anti-nuke protest
• A writer at Caltech responds to some really bad work on the Sunflower Movement from a student at Brown
• The KMTaiwan twitter feed. Parody.
• SOAS Summer School

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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!

Our nuked environment

Chinese chess pieces.

Wow. Making the rounds since last night is the news, not exactly unknown, that the KMT government is totally despicable. The Min. of Economic Affairs purchased internet keywords, including the names of anti-nuclear activists, to promote its pro-nuclear propaganda:

The anti-nuclear activists from various civic groups discovered that when they searched for their own names on Google, Yahoo and other search engines, a pro-nuclear power Web site (anuclear-safety.twenergy.org.tw) operated by the ministry will appear as the first suggested Web site.

As the Web site’s content is clearly in contrast with the activists’ beliefs about nuclear power, the anti-nuclear advocates, including Nuclear-Free Homeland Alliance executive director Lee Cho-han (李卓翰), Tokyo-based Taiwanese anti-nuclear writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒) and Green Consumers Foundation chairman Jay Fang (方儉), among others, expressed anger and disgust about the advertising link.

The linkage was first discovered by Lee last week when he was searching for his own name on Google. He immediately contacted Google and Yahoo on the same day, asking them to take down the advertisement.

The Bureau of Energy said on Tuesday that it had bought the keyword advertisement on popular search engines, linking to a total of 92 keywords — including 29 names of people who often spoke publicly about nuclear power.

With a government like this, how can anyone trust the safety and financial assurances of these selfsame pro-nuke bureaucrats? Speaking of safety, Reuters reported that the first nuke plant was leaking water:

A nuclear power plant in Taiwan may have been leaking radioactive water for three years, according to a report published by the government's watchdog, adding to uncertainty over the fate of a new fourth nuclear power plant.

The First Nuclear Power Plant, located at Shihmen in a remote northern coastal location but not far from densely populated Taipei, has been leaking toxic water from storage pools of two reactors, said the watchdog, called the Control Yuan.

An official of Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower), which operates the island's nuclear power plants, said the water did not come from the storage pools, but may have come from condensation or water used for cleaning up the floor.

Don't you feel re-assured now? The bad news out of Fukushima continues -- last month plumes of steam were observed emanating from one of the damaged units, meaning that it is possible something is fissioning in there. We have many of the same conditions here that Fukushima does, from a government and political party maniacally committed to nuclear power to the same set of quake and tsunami zones. There could hardly be anything dumber than building nuclear power plants in a place beset by quakes, tsunamis, and possible bombing and missile attacks, but the government of Taiwan put in four. With no place to store the waste.

Speaking of the environment, the government is relaxing development restrictions around reservoirs. The Liberty Times says:

行政院院會昨通過水土保持法部分條文修正草案，未來水庫集水區內除須特別保護者劃定為「特定水土保持區」外，其餘水庫集水區可進行開發；已劃定為山坡地範圍的土地，經報行政院核定公告即可變更。但環保團體痛批此法為「亡國之法」，台灣會完蛋。

The Executive Yuan yesterday passed the draft amendment of certain provisions of the Soil and Water Conservation Act. Except for future reservoir catchment areas requiring special protection designated as a "Soil and Water Conservation Area", the reservoir catchment area can be developed and will be designated as slopeland areas. The Executive Yuan for approval and notice of the changes. But environmental groups criticized this move as the "subjugation of the law," saying that Taiwan will be finished.

This blogpost, forwarded to me by a local environmentalist, gives more details. Originally as many of my readers know, development was forbidden across the catchment area in its entirety. However, the Water Bureau felt that this was having a negative impact on the economy (hahahaha) by which it meant a negative impact on pockets filled by land development under the benevolent gaze of the construction-industrial state. Gravel and soil digging will also be permitted, according to this piece.

Thus, now the term "Soil and Water Conservation Area" will cover only those areas such as streams and slopes with severe landslide threat. As if developers won't ignore that the way they always do. The result, according to the blogger, is that just 17% of catchment areas will be protected, leaving 83% -- 1.72 million hectares -- for developers to ensorcel that land using that special alchemical brew by which public land is turned into private gold.

The blogger goes on to note that only Baihe and Wushantou reservoirs will have entirely protected catchment areas. The destruction is going to be immense.

UPDATE: Don't miss Fagan's comments below.
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Daily Links:

• DON'T MISS: Excellent IPS piece by longtime Taiwan reporter and commentator Dennis Engbarth on the Services Pact and J Michael's piece on how reporters covering the protests against the forced evictions are being manhandled and blocked by the police.
• China prepares for psy-ops in war with Taiwan
• Only in China: A private zoo in Henan puts Tibetan mastiff in cage, labels it a lion
• 30,000 Pinoys line up for jobs in Taiwan as ban on hiring is lifted.
• Chinese herbal medicines can cause cancer. D'oh.
• How China is poaching skilled physicians from Taiwan: Commonwealth
• From Donovan Smith of ICRT, another 'Only in Taichung' story:
  

  "Last Friday marked the opening of the “City Govt Tourist Night Market” featuring in the ballpark of 400 booths, amusement rides and more covering over 11,000 square metres. Billed as ‘Taiwan’s most expensive night market’ and located by the posh and fashionable Qiqi district, the market was an instant hit as crowds poured in to check out the newest city attraction.
  
  Aside from the unexpectedly large crowds creating more traffic and garbage than was expected, the market had one significant problem--it wasn’t legal, and the ‘city govt’ portion of the name related to the street name and area of its location, not any connection to the city govt itself. The city had rejected their application on the ground that the proposed market was to be nearly 7 times larger than what is allowed in a residential district. Undeterred, organizers forged ahead.
  
  City inspectors were ready on Friday, and immediately issued NT$60,000 in fines and ordered the market be shut down.
  
  This did nothing to deter the organizers, however, and an increasing frustrated city govt kept increasing the fines--reaching a whopping NT$9.6 million total by the end of the weekend. Their defiance ended when the city pulled the plug on power and water, and moved in with equipment to tear it all down--leaving vendors and organizers scrambling to get their gear out before the city did it for them."

• NOT TAIWAN: If you want to understand what's happening in Egypt, mideast expert Juan Cole has a great post explaining it.
  

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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!

Taiwan and Renewables at JapanFocus

JapanFocus has an excellent piece on Taiwan's energy situation in int'l comparison.... and some good points about the silliness of objections to renewables:

To illustrate our proposition, let us suppose that the Taiwan government said today that the entire nuclear power fleet would be phased out over five years, and would be replaced by a series of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, rooftop solar PV, and wind power. The scare stories are that this would cover Taiwan in photovoltaic cells and wind turbines; that it would be prohibitively expensive; and that it would be unreliable since power could be generated only when the sun shines or the wind blows. All these claims are false. The reality is that just a few mirror farms using molten salt technology as heat sink would be needed, taking advantage of the fact that China is now committed to CSP and will be driving down the costs. (See our article on CSP (co-authored with Ching-Yan Wu) at Japan Focus here) The land area needed in Taiwan would be no more than 62.5 square km (a square of sides less than 8 km) – which is as nothing when compared with Taiwan’s land area of 32,260 km2, and comparable to the land currently devoted to Taiwan’s advanced science and technology parks. The Hsinchu park totals 650 hectares; the Central Taiwan park 1400 hectares; the southern Taiwan park 1608 hectares – totalling 3900 ha or 39 km2. CSP plants generating half the entire nuclear output would occupy an area only marginally larger than this – and generate power 24/7 in a way that is infinitely more reliable and safer than the current nuclear facilities. And – this is the central point – this would catapult Taiwan into a world-leading position as supplier of CSP key technologies and equipment while creating domestic job opportunities as well. Such a strategy would also facilitate Taiwan’s urgent need for industrial transformation from a lower to higher value-added innovator. 

The world needs to get down to zero carbon within the next two decades, especially major polluters like the US, China, and Taiwan, if we're to have any hope of containing the coming climate disaster.
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An Ad in Kinmen local newspaper advocates putting nuke waste dump there.

This ad appeared in yesterday's 金門日報 (Kinmen Daily News), which appears to be a government news organ. The ad first describe how the Koreans approved a waste dump with a 70% turnout and 90% support in a referendum. It then advocates that the people of Kinmen do no less than the South Koreans did, follow gov't policy, and approve via referendum a low-level nuke waste dump, apparently on Kinmen. The bottom line says it comes from Taipower. The paper and ad are online here.
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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!

Saturday Night Short Shorts

Fourth Nuke: Premier Jiang met with the mayors of Taipei, New Taipei City, and Keelung to discuss their opposition to the Fourth Nuclear Plant. Interestingly, Hau of Taipei has been saying that no referendum is needed, opinion polls are enough. Clearly the idea of a referendum is scary for some politicians. The fact that there is no place to put the waste continues to be a problem. And the quake we had this week... lots of minds are probably thinking about how if we had one under the nuke plant..... yes, it was like a reminder from the gods how stupid it is to build nuke plants on the ring of fire.

Taipei Promotion: Another piece from WSJ promoting Taipei: Eating in Taiwan beyond Din Tai Fung. Just makes me want to rant so brace yourselves -- there are many food bloggers in the city who know the place well, innumerable knowledgeable foreigners who are regularly published in major international media, yet, once again, a major western publication sources its information from someone located in Beijing with obvious and powerful Chinese biases and who doesn't appear to know Taipei very well. She writes in her usual excellent style:

It is, in other words, no longer that special. Don’t get me wrong: Din Tai Fung is my standby in Beijing. It’s where I can count on good service and a decent meal without having to worry about the provenance of the ingredients. But in Taipei, DTF—even the original shop on Xinyi Road, which aficionados claim produces superior dumplings—is not on my hit list.

With just three branches in Taipei, Kao Chi isn’t seeking global domination. And despite the swish décor at the Fuxing South Road restaurant (my preferred choice), it feels resolutely local. No tourists were in sight the night we popped by.

Yes, the xiaolongbao are a must, but Kao Chi dabbles in other Shanghainese snacks as well as specialties from other regions in China. (One of the many joys about eating in Taipei is that menus aren’t limited by geography.) At the Fuxing branch, you can order Northern-style pancakes stuffed with beef with Cantonese claypot chicken and Wuxi braised spareribs.

Argh. I've been eating in Taipei for twenty years and here's a sentence I have never heard: "Let's go to Din Tai Fung, it's special!" I've been there once, it was totally forgettable. Going to Taipei for good food and then debating the relative merits of Din Tai Fung vs Kao Chi is like going to New York City for Italian and then arguing about whether The Olive Garden or The Spaghetti Factory has better pasta. If you look in the comments there my man Feiren, who knows some fantastic places to eat in Taipei and isn't hung up on comparing Taiwan to China, leaves a few suggestions.

Note how the piece relates everything to China in the best "Taiwan is an outpost of China" fashion, even to the point of focusing on two chains run by mainlanders. Like this...

As a coda, make sure to have the lianghuang jianguo bing—a chestnut-paste-filled, sesame-encrusted pancake, a rebuttal to those who think Taiwanese desserts are just mountains of shaved ice with stuff piled on top.

It's only a "rebuttal" if it is "real Chinese", because the standard is the production of "authentic" Chinese dishes (that implicit claim of superior authenticity itself is a pretentious colonial construct, one that has long been used to attack Taiwanese culture as inferior). Sorry, but it's the other way round: a real Taiwan mango ice made by a sturdy old machine in its third decade of productive work is a rebuttal to a pompous lianghuang jianguo bing any day; god knows what goes on in the kitchens of chain restaurants, and anyway shaved ice is a real Taiwan treat. It would be nice after some excellent local restaurant food like Japanese-style eels with Taiwan beer, or a heaping bowl of beef noodle in some serious hole in the wall where the old husband's hands tremble as he carries the bowl of steaming soup across the room to you and if you work hard, you can make his wife cackle at one of your jokes.
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Daily Links:

• Making the rounds: Camera lost in Hawaii, found in Taiwan.
• Yet another KMT official busted for corruption. Changhua and Nantou local government heads busted in recent months. Not going to blog, the litany goes on. 
• Taiwan, the bridgehead for the Vatican's assault on China
• Drew on the Tour of Taiwan's future being in doubt.
• Hear in Taiwan with a couple of pics of the recent quake
• F-16s. Jokes on you, Taiwan supporters. Gov't says it may suspend efforts to acquire F-16 C/D fighters. There was never any "effort" on the part of the Ma government and the US government never wanted to sell them. Hopefully this dance is now over. Time to build lots and lots of missiles. 

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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!

Local KMT officials Oppose the 4th Nuclear Plant

Mayor Hau of Taipei came out this week against the Fourth Nuclear Plant... (Taipei Times)

Hau became the first local government head from the pan-blue camp to declare his stance on the nuclear issue by saying on Thursday that he would vote “yes” in a national referendum asking voters if construction and operation of the plant should be suspended.

His announcement prompted President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to call him on Thursday night to discuss his stance on the power plant. Ma met him yesterday in the Presidential Office to continue their discussion on the issue.

Presidential Office spokesperson Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏) said Ma and Hau exchanged opinions on the construction of the power plant, alternative sources of energy and the potential impact on the economy if the plant is suspended.

“The president said whether or not the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant should be suspended is a crucial issue, and the public must be given sufficient information to help them make the final decision,” she said.

Hau yesterday said he opposed the construction of the power plant because of the state-owned Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) poor quality control over the plant and its failure to solve the problem of storing nuclear waste.

The Taipei Times article also added, strangely, a comment from Premier Jiang Yi-hua....

At a question-and-answer session at the legislature yesterday, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said that he, the president, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Hau were in frequent contact with each other to exchange views about the power plant.

“We all share the same position,” Jiang said when answering questions from KMT Legislator Hsu Shao-ping (徐少萍).

"We all share the same position? Jiang has said that he would die before letting plant construction halt. Hau wants it halted. Meanwhile New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu has registered lukewarm opposition to it, raising the waste issue.

What do Jiang, Hau, and Chu have in common? They are all mentioned in speculation regarding who will be the 2016 KMT presidential candidate. Jiang is an unlikely dark horse, while Hau probably could not get many votes south of Taipei. But it looks like we are watching everyone attempting to position themselves -- and the move of Hau and Chu to look like they are opposing the plant is solid evidence for where the sentiments of the public lie.

The New Taipei City Council, where the plant will be located, has also approved a measure calling for a halt to construction (KMT news organ).
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Daily Links:

• How to unload a truck in Taiwan (video 1:33)
• Frozen Garlic discusses women in Taiwanese elections
• Taiwan in Cycles on Taiwan's faux commitment to cycling.
• People in I-lan must be so happy Chen Ding-nan refused that naptha cracker. It's a monster.
• Legal alternatives for shuttering the nuclear plant.
• DPP Plans 1000 anti-nuke events
• This year, US drought will be worse. Food prices, inflation, and global political stability.... all taking a hit.

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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.

Twofer from Commonwealth: rice and nukes

Went to the bike show in Taipei this friday to drop in on friends and ogle the gear. Great time. Expecting full report on the show from Taiwan in Cycles tomorrow!

Commonwealth Magazine has two excellent articles this week, one on political rice buying by China that explains why ECFA has neither benefited the south nor changed hearts and minds, the other on the fourth nuclear power plant. On rice, discussing how China early on adopted a two pronged strategy, one to win the hearts and minds via purchases, the other to strip mine Taiwan's agricultural know-how.....

This January, Wang Zhizhong twice visited Houbi District – the major rice producing area in the Jianan Plain – accompanied by Taiwan's former Minister of Justice, Liao Cheng-hao. Also in Wang's entourage were high-ranking officials from the Cuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province.

....

During each of his four visits over the past two years, Wang went directly to Taiwan's agricultural areas, meeting with representatives of production and marketing teams, farmers' cooperatives, as well as fruit and vegetable wholesalers. He also visited farming families in Jiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung.

"These were special fact-finding itineraries to get the real picture of Taiwan's agricultural industry," explains ex-minister Liao, who accompanied Wang on all his visits to Taiwan.

Chinese officials not only want to understand the industry, they also want to import knowledge in the form of farming advisors and farming technology. Wang, who commands a vast interpersonal network in China, is planning to develop a plot of land of 4,300 hectares – roughly 165 times the area of Da-an Forest Park in Taipei – in Chuxiong Prefecture's Yuanmou County into a model zone for cooperation in high altitude organic agriculture between Yunnan and Taiwan. The project is explicitly defined as a cross-strait agricultural cooperation zone.

The piece also gives some numbers on the "hearts and minds" campaign...

Council of Agriculture (COA) statistics show that in June last year, after China gave the green light for rice imports, Taiwan exported a total of 773 tons of rice to China, about 25 percent of the island's total rice exports. This made China the largest buyer of Taiwanese rice alongside Hong Kong.

Taiwanese rice is not exactly an export hit. Although officials pride themselves on exports to 27 countries, total exports reached just 1,900 tons in 2011. With China added as a new buyer, rice exports soared to 3,100 tons last year. But this is still a far cry from 140,000-ton rice quota that the Taiwanese government has approved for export per year. Clearly Taiwanese rice could use more overseas buyers.

More.... the amounts....

COA statistics show that Taiwan exported rice worth US$1.32 million (about NT$39.6 million) to China last year. But local rice farmers feel that they do not reap any tangible benefits from exporting to China.

To put that tiny number in perspective, from my post on how the government is trying to encourage the hearts and minds switching to support of closer relations with China, the Council on Agriculture observes:

Of these, items on the ECFA early harvest list such as bananas, hami melons, lemons, oranges and red dragon fruits accounted for US$1.38 million,

Miscellaneous fruits are a bigger seller in China than rice politically purchased! The sum is simply too tiny to have any political effect.

The problems of China's approach are further laid out: the purchase and distribution system ensures that profits don't return to the farmers or even the local rice mills, but rather come to distant middleman, as we have already seen with other aspects of this trade:

This can be attributed to the way in which Taiwanese rice is distributed and marketed. Normally, farmers sell their entire harvest to rice mills, which process and sell it on to distributors. Rice destined for export to China is usually sold to the rice mills at the same price as rice for domestic sale; the farmers themselves do not earn a single penny more.

At the same time, the rice mills sell to Chinese distributors at the same price as domestic rice dealers. Therefore, the rice mills also do not earn more from selling to China.

How the system really works, and a hint of one of its real purposes, is laid out in these paragraphs....

"Chinese officials mostly come here to buy rice to build connections with Taiwanese county and city governments or local communities," observes Wu Yuan-chang, head of the Taiwan Province Rice and Cereals Association. He believes that Chinese rice importers only want to make their higher-ups happy and that after reaching China the Taiwanese rice will not find its way onto supermarket shelves due to a lack of distributors.

.....

This past January, Liu Gui-miao, a former Tainan County councilor for the ruling Kuomintang and now marketing manager of the farmers' cooperative selling Chamuying Rice, sold 1,632 2-kg. bags of rice to the Foshan City government, a deal facilitated by the Tainan City Straits Economics and Trade Cultural Development. Upon import into China, the bags of rice were used as official gift packs or hand-outs to low-income families.

"They repackaged the rice into 289 gift packs and gave them to government officials. The rest was used as food aid for distribution to low-income households," association secretary general Lu Ai-hua, who formerly served as the chairman of the now abolished Yongkang City Council. In March, Lu will visit China again, hoping to land bigger orders in Luohu, the gateway between China and Hong Kong on the China side.

While much of the hype focuses on alleged benefits Taiwan receives from more closely aligning itself with China, one more important aspect of the drive, never discussed in the international media, is the way closer China links are parlayed into greater support for the KMT at the local level. Stronger links to China means, essentially, more links between Chinese money and KMT officials at the local level. People often assume the south is Green but it is more like a checkerboard -- the local level officialdom is often KMT, and more importantly, the local institutions of agriculture -- mill ownership, ag and irrigation cooperative officials, marketing firms, and so on, are more likely to be KMT. China's cooperation with such individuals helps increase the strength of their local patronage networks and improve their political prospects. Just as the Taiwanese moving their small factories to China was a way to preserve the system of family ownership and competition on price and avoid upgrading to modern management methods, so the KMT's move toward China is a way to avoid political change and preserve KMT power. China is the Vishnu of the Taiwanese sociopolitical world, ruling by preserving.

The Commonwealth piece also points out that the political rice is not distributed in China where it would cause trouble for China's powerful grain interests. Such Taiwanese rice as is sold on actual store shelves in China gets there via private marketing arrangements, and is largely a niche market, as the last page of the piece discusses. The political rice has neither stability nor order volume, two keys to maintaining and expanding markets. As Commonwealth observes...

Two years ago China began purchasing milkfish from Taiwan under contract, a move also intended to win the support of local fishermen. But in the end prices and order volume proved difficult to maintain.

The rice campaign was focused on Tainan; so was the milkfish campaign. The actual amount ordered for last year was US$4.45 million (source). Here's a piece from Dec 2012 full of promise, but I can't find anything on subsequent milkfish orders. Surely FocusTaiwan would be bragging...

The nuke piece is also quite good. It's full of interesting claims:

Dealing with nuclear waste has even become a hot-button diplomatic issue. A report published in the American journal New Scientist noted that there are 437 nuclear power reactors in 31 countries around the world, but not one repository for high-level radioactive waste.

Spend some time with it.
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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.

Nuclear Plant Referendum and Power Stuff

Taking pictures in front of the Hakka Museum in Dongshih.

The Executive Yuan came out in favor of absentee ballots for the referendum, provided the system is only done domestically.

“The Executive Yuan recommends the adoption of transfer voting in Taiwan. For example, people who live in Pingtung County could vote in Taipei by-elections,” Executive Yuan Secretary-General Chen Wei-zen (陳威仁) told the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee.

The interesting thing will be how they prevent people from voting more than once..... the absentee ballot issue was a sensitive issue since so many Taiwanese live in China, where it seems like that the government will take steps to influence the vote directly. Other rumors came out of the Executive Yuan too, carried on the KMT news organ....

The controversy over a plebiscite on the fate of Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 (NPP4) continues to heat up. Rumor has it that high-level officials within the Blue camp were inclined to directly announce a halt to the construction of the NPP4 instead of first holding a plebiscite on the issue so as to avoid having a plebiscite result that would affect future elections.

An informed KMT legislator recounted that Chen Wei-jen (陳威仁), Secretary-General of the Executive Yuan (Cabinet), stated bluntly during yesterday’s meeting with KMT legislative caucus cadres that the Cabinet hoped that the report on nuclear safety would be presented by the end of June or no later than August, adding that a plebiscite on NPP4 must be held by the end of this year with no delay.

There's been some discussion that the referendum on nukes would lead to a referendum on sovereignty-related issues, but the referendum law is written to prevent that, as my man Ben reminds me.

This rumor also appeared in another form in the China Post as well, where the Premier said based on the 2000 decision by the Judicial Yuan, it would not be constitutional for the EY to stop the plant because only the legislature can do that.....

According to local reports, Chiang's speech at a recent Yuan Sitting noting that any possible decisions on ceasing the construction of Nuke 4 would require further discussion by Executive Yuan members has triggered questions about whether the Executive Yuan looks set to make an announcement to stop constructing Nuke 4.

“The Executive Yuan can not directly announce a cessation of Nuke 4's construction as it will completely mix up the boundary between execution and legislation,” said Chiang.

Chiang emphasized that the Cabinet will not consider violating law to stop the construction of Nuke 4.

According to Chiang, when the then-ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ceased construction of Nuke 4 in 2000, the Judicial Yuan Interpretation stated that it is unconstitutional and the construction was resumed after four moths.

At the time, the Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 520 (大法官釋字第520號) stated that the Executive Yuan cannot stop construction of Nuke 4 without first getting approval from the Legislative Yuan.

To do otherwise would violate the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers.

You see how this is set up. The government has assured the public that safety will be first (example). Imagine if the government actually finds that the plant is unsafe in the final phases of construction (yes, I know, pigs will swoop past my window before that happens). It still can't shut the plant down. The ruling of the Judicial Yuan makes the government's findings moot, because only the legislature can halt construction. And the legislature is controlled by the KMT.....

Activists from the outlying islands demanded to meet with the premier to discuss the nuclear waste disposal problem (Taipei Times). Taiwan still has no plan for long-term nuclear waste storage, despite planning to begin operating another nuclear plant soon. Apparently the government expects magic ponies to drag the stuff away, or perhaps consume it. The activists complained:

Tao Foundation (蘭嶼部落文化基金會) secretary-general Sinan Mavivo said that Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) should not make excuses such as being unable to pick a final disposal site for low-level radioactive waste to delay making good its promise to remove nuclear waste from Orchid Island.

Recall that the government told the islanders they were getting a fish cannery and then sprayed money around......

The Taipei Times ran a piece from Taipower's CFO today, with some numbers. I love numbers....

Then there is the issue of the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. Taipower was established in accordance with the Company Act (公司法), and it holds full responsibility for its profits and losses. That means that Taipower must raise money for the construction project by itself, by issuing corporate bonds, commercial paper and even loans. To this day, the government and taxpayers have not contributed financially.

By the end of last year, the book value of the power plant’s fixed assets had reached NT$263.9 billion. If a referendum to halt construction is passed and the project is terminated, commercial operation would of course become impossible. If that were to happen, Taipower would have no choice but to list it as a loss according to International Financial Reporting Standards.

Along with the accumulated book losses, the total loss would reach NT$460 billion, a figure that is much higher than the company’s paid-in capital of NT$330 billion. As a result, the company would have no choice but to file for bankruptcy in accordance with the Company Act.

Years ago the government had plans to privatize Taipower, but one of the casualties of the stupid decision to build the fourth nuclear plant rather than invest in renewables and conservation was that plan. But further down he observes that if the fourth nuclear plant is not built, the lives of the other three nuke plants will have to be extended past their original forty years. Apparently Taipower cannot imagine an alternate universe where we shutter our nukes and coal plants and put in lots of solar and wind power.

Speaking of power, people wonder why so many of us don't think Taipower can be trusted with the new nuclear plant..... the TSU accused Taipower officials of colluding with independent power producers in order to obtain illegal insider benefits, when the independent power producers (IPPs) refused to raise rates....(Taipei Times):

Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) was behind the refusal of nine independent power producers (IPPs) to renegotiate electricity prices with the state-run company, Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmakers said yesterday.

Four of the nine IPPs — which were slapped with a NT$6.32 billion (US$212.5 million) fine on Wednesday for conspiring to refuse Taipower’s request to renegotiate electricity prices — are subsidiaries of Taiwan Cogeneration Corp (Taiwan Cogen), Taipower’s reinvestment company, TSU caucus whip Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) told a press conference.

Among the 36 board members of the four IPPs, 21 were appointed by the government, including 13 from Taiwan Cogen and four each from the Taiwan Sugar Co (Taisugar) and CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC), which means that Taipower knew that the companies would refuse, Lin said.

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Daily Links:

• William Stanton's Speech reported via AP: former top diplomat criticizes Taiwan's lack of defense spending
• Hilariously bad piece at Huffpost in which Mahlon Meyer attempts to re-interpret Life of Pi as a presentation of the Mainlander Myth of the Retreat to Taiwan. Lots of people didn't get what he meant. Not their fault either. 
• WATER: With reservoirs scraping bottom, the government will be cloud seeding in northern Taiwan, due to the lack of rain. Except the plan was put on hold when cold front didn't show up. Expect rationing. Central and Southern Taiwan will also face rationing if we don't get some rain. 
• ANZ banking group says 2013 growth will be 3.6%
• China's Spoiled Brat Generation?
• Taichung mayor to crack down on Fengjia B&Bs popular with backpackers because they compete with hotels owned by powerful wealthy individuals because they are unsafe.

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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.

More referendum observations

A longtime observer of local politics pointed out to me another bit of anti-democratic fallout from the Double 50 threshold: ballot secrecy. There won't be any. Consider...

1. It is likely that the KMT will instruct its people to stay home.

2. It is also likely that the referendum will not combined with next year's elections.

3. Thus, the only thing voted on will be the Fourth Nuke Plant referendum.

If KMT types are ordered to stay home, this means that the only people going will be, in the very least, people who are voting to stop construction and operation of the plant, and who are more than likely pan-Green voters. In other words, anyone who goes to the polls that day outs themselves as a probable DPP supporter. That will be a consideration in people's minds, and it will inhibit participation in some cases.

Latest TISR poll: 58% want Fourth Nuclear Plant suspended, 52% support keeping the other three plants in operation. The public is wary of Nuke 4 but separates that issue from the issue of nuclear power as a whole, says TISR.

The Atomic Energy agency and the KMT rejected a DPP proposal to amend the law to provide for a local referendum when a nuclear power plant has its fuel rods loaded, TT said. Although it is local lives and health affected by the plant, the government refuses to give them any say in whether they want such a plant in their neighborhood. The article also observed that the plan to remove the nuke waste from Orchid Island by 2016 is "hardly possible" and thus the project has been pushed back to 2021 at the moment. Argh.
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Daily Links:

• Latest Quadrennial Defense Review says time not ripe for cross-strait military confidence building measures.
• Reuters on the NCC's tougher line with the WantWant media monopoly. 
• Major security issue in East Asia is climate change
• Photos of North Korea
• The Diplomat on Manny Ramirez in Taiwan
• I've blogged on the Gaoping Great Lakes controversy before. Add land speculation to the list of reasons the government is pushing this dog of a project.
• DGBAS refuses to provide estimates of the economic effects of the fourth nuclear plant stoppage. With good reason, since they depend on the policy decisions of others.
• Commonwealth has a long piece Can Taiwan Survive a Nuclear Free Future? The pro-nuke propaganda we've been hearing for the last twenty years is all here, with the bonus that the article is constructed so that the tech types are all sourced for the pro-nuke commentary while citizen activists are sourced for anti-nuke commentary. LOL. 

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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.

Anti-Nuke Demonstration Rocks Taiwan

Locked forever.

What a success! 200,000 show up for the anti-nuclear demonstration across the island yesterday, rocking the Powers That Be. From FocusTaiwan, one of the government news sites, from the government's Central News Agency (CNA):

In what organizers called the largest anti-nuclear protest in Taiwan, an estimated 200,000 people took to the streets in several parts of the island on Saturday to call for the scrapping of nuclear power plants.

The protest was held simultaneously in northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan just two days before the second anniversary of the meltdown of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in the wake of the big earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

....

As of 5 p.m., the estimated number of participants in the march were more than 100,000 in northern Taiwan, more than 70,000 in southern Taiwan, more than 30,000 in central Taiwan and around 2,000 in eastern Taiwan, according to organizers.

The government pledged to stress safety and then reeled out the propaganda:

"The government will do its best to avoid electricity shortage and restrictions, cut the impact of high electricity rates on industry and public lives, and avoid industry exodus and unemployment," he said.

LOL. AFP has a nice quote from an activist who points out that polls show the public wants the plant closed. No need for a referendum, the public has spoken. Not that the government will listen....

The internet was flooded with pictures, great to see all the people come out. Nation Takes to the Streets said the Taipei Times. Well put.

A negative note: the government blocked the entry of a German environmental activist for "participating in an illegal demonstration" in 2011. They mean, for opposing nuclear power. Global Voices has a thorough review, including:

This is not the first time that Taiwan has zeroed in on the participation of foreigners in anti-nuclear activities in Taiwan, where the recent construction of the fourth nuclear power plant in Taiwan has been met with strong criticism because of security concerns. Two Japanese people from Fukushima were warned by the country's immigration office [zh] immediately after they gave a speech at an anti-nuclear demonstration on April 30, 2011.

Hmmm... remember the illegal anti-Chen demonstrations. Lots of foreigners participating. I wonder how many of them were blocked from re-entering Taiwan.... I would bet money the answer is... zero.
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Daily Links

• IPS news on the recent human rights review
• Taiwan's regional security profile grows.
• Hilarious and thoughtful account from Andrew Ryan of his recent piece on Ang Lee for CNN. A must read.
• Text of keynote speech at Seminar on China's Human Rights from Taiwan journalist. Discussion of human rights and the Ma Administration in Taiwan
• Sun, Mon, Tues at sunset look for the Pan-STARRS comet. 
• Chinese "professionals" can now work in Taiwan for up to three years. Another rule that is going to be utterly abused by corporations in their suicidal quest for ever cheaper labor. 
• China's strategy to wear out the smaller Japanese navy.
• Fagan gets some excellent pics of eagles...
• Taiwan's indigenous missile program
• What we are fighting: the reality of Fukushima clean up.
• Taiwanese living in China can now trade A shares on China's exchanges.
• For amusement purposes only: Ma touts Taiwan's "peacemaker" role in the Senkakus mess.

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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.

Nuke Referendum Round Up =UPDATE=

The kids playing air hockey in Keelung.

UPDATE: Anti-nuke March today got tens of thousands. Enormous turnout. Very happy.

Tsunamis and the Fourth Nuke Plant
Adam Chimienti had a great piece in the Taipei Times today, pointing out that the defeat of the Shoreham Nuclear Reactor complex on Long Island back in the 1980s meant that the disaster of Hurricane Sandy did not result in flooding in reactors right off the nation's most important financial center. One of the points he made in the piece was that the Manila Trench, just off southern Taiwan, is a likely source of a massive quake in the near future. I picked up a journal paper that made the same argument, since there have been no recorded big quakes in over four centuries from that trench, meaning that a really massive one is probably building. It explores what would happen in the case of a massive quake in that Trench.

The paper observes:

It is significant that since the Spanish colonization of Luzon in the 1560s, no earthquake exceeding magnitude 7.8 has been observed (Repetti, 1946). Conservatively, it can be postulated that very large events on this megathrust have a recurrence interval exceeding 440 years. Taking a trench-normal convergence velocity of 87 mm/yr, strain of 38 m would have accumulated over this period. Though large, this slip magnitude remains within the range of plausible scenarios. It is comparable to the 1960 Mw 9.5 Chilean earthquake, in which coseismic slip reached 40 m (Barrientos and Ward, 1990), and larger than the 2004 Aceh-Andaman event, which produced 20 m of coseismic slip (Chlieh et al., 2007).

One of the propaganda claims you'll soon be hearing is that Taiwan can't produce a quake big enough to severely damage our reactors. This is nonsense (Wikipedia has a list of historical quakes in Taiwan) but we also face the problem of tsunamis. Their simulation of a massive quake/tsunami results in waves 8 meters high rolling over Luzon, with southern Taiwan getting smashed as well (extra points for identifying the location of the nuke plant there). But they also note that southern China's topographical orientation is such that 8 meter waves also smack it, despite the greater distance, meaning that....

Farther in the north, Taiwan receives the impact of reflections from mainland China, and the central western coast appears to suffer waves of up to 3 m in height. The southern Japanese islands of Ishigaki, Miyako and Okinawa ( 25 N, 125 E) also suffer from reflective waves and may experience waves of about 2 m. It appears that the reflective waves travel to, as far as, northern Papua ( 2 S, 137 E), which may be hit by waves of up to 2 m.

That's right. A quake on the southwest corner of the island, also results in waves 3 meters high striking northern and central Taiwan. That's separate from the quake-induced shaking. The paper does not simulate the onshore effects, but they can be imagined...

The second suspected tsunami inundated Kaohsiung, southwestern Taiwan, in 1781 (Wang et al., 2006). Besides appearing in a contemporary Chinese travelogue and a Japanese historiography, it was also recorded by Dutch colonists in the 18th-century Taiwan. Flooding lasted upwards of 8 h and many villages were swept away, resulting in more than 40,000 casualties (Wang et al., 2006). Despite the severity of this event, no inland or nearshore earthquake was identified as the cause. This would be consistent with the theory that the tsunami was generated by a far-field earthquake from off the Philippines.

Historical sources say the height of the 1781 wave exceeded 20 meters. This paper offers a comprehensive list of tsunami events and wave heights in the South China Sea region.

The belief that a large tsunami has never struck Taiwan's east coast is challenged by this presentation, which draws on aboriginal folklore and field studies to show that this belief is false. This Taipei Times piece from the other day observes that Taipower is supposed to study the tsunami and earthquake record in the area, but to date no one has been appointed to carry out the study.

Referendum
The wording of the referendum has been released....

If the KMT proposal is approved by the legislature, the public will be asked in a referendum: “Do you agree that the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant should be halted and that it not become operational?” (你是否同意核四廠停止興建不得運轉) 

Despite the fact that the proposal originates from KMT legislators, the KMT government obviously wants to continue construction and thus can block the referendum merely by asking its supporters to stay home. That is why the referendum is worded negatively. Yes, that's right. They will put the issue on the ballot, and then ask their people to stay home. The cynicism of this would be breathtaking, if it were not the norm in politics here and abroad.

A longtime observer also pointed out that the phrase "not become operational" is deliberate. Recall that referendums can only be held on the topic at eight year intervals. By inserting that phrase at the end, the KMT then prevents a referendum on operating the plant when it becomes operational a few years from now. Indeed, the KMT whip said as much:

KMT caucus whip Lai said that the reason the KMT included “not become operational (不得運轉)” in the plebiscite question was that “otherwise, if the plebiscite failed to pass and the construction of Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 continued, then someone might propose another plebiscite on whether or not Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 should become operational. Therefore, why don’t we just solve the problem once for all in order to save the trouble.”

One of the things that scares so many of us viewing this debacle is that construction in Taiwan is so often sub-par, yet this is regarded as normal and the same practices of corner-cutting and fly-by-night firms are taking place at the Fourth Nuclear Plant. This article describes:

At a separate press conference, DPP lawmakers Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) and Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) said a construction company with a questionable record was among the subcontractors at the plant in Gongliao (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市).

Kuo Teng Construction Co (國登營造), which was found to be responsible for construction flaws at the Wugu-Yangmei Overpass, secured a construction bid worth more than NT$300 million (US$1 billion) for the plant.

While the winning bidder for the project listed on the Public Construction Commission’s (PCC) Web site was Cheng An Technology Co (城安新科技公司), Yeh said, its company address was the same as Kuo Teng’s, according to data provided by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

There was also a piece about plastic bottles being used as filler in the plants concrete walls, another common practice in Taiwan. Jenny Hsu in WSJ added:

Situated in the coastal Gongliao district, the plant, which is missing only fuel rods and is scheduled to begin commercial operations by 2015, has been blasted by critics as a “ticking time bomb.” Since 2008, the project has suffered a string of mishaps, including floods and small fires (in Chinese). Concerns over safety at the plant skyrocketed after Fukushima.

The first three nuke plants are all scheduled to be decommissioned by 2025 according to current plans. The fourth is due to come online in 2015 or 2016 but I suspect that the KMT will push it back a couple of years, since it might not be a good idea to remind the public of KMT duplicity during a major election year (2016).

Polls
Bunch of polls on the issue out recently (here and here).

• TISR: 59.6% opposed to finishing the plant; 67% in New Taipei City where it is located.
• Business Today: 54% want it scrapped, another 23% oppose it. Just 11% trust the government to operate it properly.
• Pro-KMT China Times: 62.4% want it stopped, only 21.2% want it to continue.

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