Daily Links, May 7, 2012

Lots of moon pictures out there this week, but in most cases the brightness of the moon so close to earth blows out the details. I prefer the textures of a shadowed moon, much more enjoyable. The Flickr Moon Shots group has some excellent work this week.

What's shining out there on the blogs this week?

SPECIAL: Expats, you will recognize your Taiwan experience.

BLOGS:

• US raids on Formosa: WWII Battle of Takao Harbor 
• Taipei Air Station with color photos of Taiwan in the 1950s.
• F-16s: Taiwan faces difficult budgetary choices.
• Fenyuan's Baozhang temple with some nice pics.
• Richard Saunders on the trails in NE Taiwan. Good pics.
• Lao Ren Cha updates her posts on Indian Food in Taipei
• More Hitler Ads
• Taiwan-NZ complete FTA feasibility study
• Taiwan: Orphan of Asia

MEDIA:

• John Feffer on the Okinawa base ulcer in US-Japan relations. Okinawa will be important if China attacks Japan or Taiwan. 
• The resolutely Establishment East Asia Forum has a couple of reads on Asia's security future in the midst of competing US-China hegemonies. Archarya on China's Rise and East Asian Security. Also piece on the Pacific Pivot (does that really exist? Concrete evidence, please). 
• US says it will defend the Philippines from third country attack.
• Central Bank Governor protests "Taipei, China" name at ADB meet up.
• Tackling Linyuan's menacing air.
• Year's first dengue case reported
• Taiwan is not collapsing. Please stop with this silly genre.
• Coffee grounds are gold for Taiwanese firm.

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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.

Riding Sun Moon Lake

Great day Saturday. In the morning some old students of mine put together a ride around Sun Moon Lake. In the afternoon I drove up to Hsinchu for an impromptu farewell party for Jim Boyden of Sponge Bear as he is leaving Taiwan. Nothing like spending the whole day with wonderful people having a great time.

We stayed in the Taipower dorm 388.30 meters above Shuili town in ErPing Bing Dian, just outside of Sun Moon Lake.

In the morning we all breathed a sigh of relief as we had fog and clouds but no rain. Looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Click on READ MORE to continue....

Eroding Taiwan

A friend of mine passed this around Facebook today (link). This is a picture of Jingguan Village in Nantou. Farmed slopelands erode spectacularly in Taiwan's powerful rainfall events; the picture shows the resultant effects. Taiwan's gov't is pursuing the conflicting policy of developing marginal slopelands while paying for land to lie fallow. As I wrote in a post on paddy fields last year:

In Taiwan the government runs a set-aside program for farmland under which large quantities of farmland lie fallow. In some years the amount set aside exceeds the amount planted in rice (!). This program has come under much criticism, since sometimes farmland becomes unusable after being set aside and land lying uncared for invites pests that affect nearby farms. This results in abandoned land, 50,000 hectares by one 2004 estimate. When land leaves the market, it drives up the price of remaining land, pushing up rents -- and many farmers are renters, not owners. Further, for many observers it makes little sense to set aside good farmland in the lowlands while permitting farming on slopes. The set aside program is also driven by shortages of water, diverted for industrial and residential needs. Everything is exacerbated by the lack of government oversight and monitoring, a persistent problem in all areas of government policy in Taiwan.

The result of all this is graphically demonstrated by the image above.
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Daily Links:

• Some members of the Atayal community of Smangus, a popular ecotourism destination, have apparently been busted cutting down ancient trees on other tribes' lands and selling them.
• China defense minister to visit US to strengthen mil-mil ties. After twenty years of strengthening, shouldn't the ties be like iron? What? No? 
• Meanwhile US triples military aid to Philippines
• Alan Romberg's article on the recent elections in Taiwan
• Scott Simon: One China as a floating signifier

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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.

Ma Administration Comes Around on Electricity Rate Hikes

At night, the snails come out by the thousand.

The Ma Administration, under fire for the sensible move of raising electricity prices but doing it all in one fell swoop, finally bowed to sanity yesterday and announced that the hikes would be phased in in three stages (Taipei Times):

Prices will rise by 40 percent of the originally planned adjustment on June 10, and another 40 percent on Dec. 10. The date for the remaining 20 percent will depend on whether the public is satisfied with state-run Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) reform efforts, Ma said at an impromptu press conference at the Presidential Office last night following a three-hour meeting with senior officials on the issue.

"The date for the remaining 20 percent will depend on whether the public is satisfied with state-run Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) reform efforts". What does this mean? Remember when ECFA wouldn't be inked without 60% of the public approving?

The Taipei Times also reported that the rate hikes will not affect households and small businesses with electricity usage less than 330 kilowatt-hours. It noted:

According to the ministry, due to rising international fuel prices, Taipower has incurred losses of NT$117.9 billion between 2008 and the end of last year. The last time the government raised electricity rates was at the end of 2008.

Electricity prices have not risen in four years. Recall that the Chen Administration permitted prices to rise until August of 2007 when it suspended the floating price mechanism ahead of the elections. The Ma Administration never raised them, instead sinking the CPC into debt. The CPC's 2011 financial report shows the debt situation. The ratio of current assets to liabilities has plummeted since the Ma Administration took power:

2006 = 1.43
2007 = 1.53
2008 = 0.86
2009 = 1.08
2010 = 1.13  

Of course, the Administration has been gobsmacked by the global downturn and rising oil prices. But the failure to raise rates for nearly four years is an abdication of public responsibility, especially since growth was excellent one year.

Remember, subsidized electricity rates are a staple of KMT industrial policy that goes back 50 years. US experts tried to get them adjusted early on in the switch from import-substitution to an export-oriented economy in the early 1960s, but without much success. The result is an economy that is biased toward polluting, inefficient industries that rely on cheap electricity and cheap water, such as the manufacturing of plastics. One reason I think the Ma Administration let the big new plastics plant in Changhua quietly die is because it gazed into its policy crystal ball, saw that sooner or later electricity prices would have to go up and that the plant must inevitably become uneconomical. The environmental movement made a nice whipping boy for that decision....

The China Post had a somewhat longer report, printing Ma's apology for the "agony" caused by the price rises. It also scribed:

The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics estimated that inflation this year will be 1.94 percent, Ma said. “I believe the decision of gradual increases to the electricity rates will help us to contain inflation at under 2 percent more easily,” the president said.

The DGBAS also dropped the economic growth forecast to 3.38% for the year.
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Daily Links:

• Enraged pandas fail to catch blind Chinese dissident, with bonus F-16s! NWA's latest animation.
• Ian Inkster with a sensible view of the latest DPP Chairmanship debates
• Taiwan Foundation for Democracy: Strange Things Afoot
• Drew with nice pics from the Dadu Shan Hill Loop

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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.

The Red Menace Grows

The Red Army menace grows even as the government cuts the budget....

The total area in Taiwan affected by exotic red fire ants has increased by nearly 50 percent since 2003, but despite the growing infestation, the government budget for pest control was cut from last year’s NT$40 million (US$1.36 million) to NT$20 million this year.

Listed among the world’s top 100 most-invasive species, the ants, native to South America, were discovered in Taiwan in 2003 and have alarmed residents by quickly spreading through urban areas in Greater Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli and Chiayi counties.

Fire ants, often called red ants, first appeared in Taiwan in 2003. According to a landmark genetic study, fire ants are spreading out of the US into the world along global trade routes. The US is in fact the origin for all subsequent transmissions, a total of eight separate waves. The Taiwan case was special: while other transmissions went directly from the southern US outward to places like New Zealand, the Taiwan-bound group of ants came to California before continuing on to Taiwan. The article above describes:

Biologists had certainly considered this United States–bridgehead scenario of invasions, Ross says, “but without data, it was anybody’s guess.” To track the invasions, an international research team analyzed ants from 2,144 colonies in a total of 75 places in 11 countries and looked at several kinds of genetic information, including dozens of DNA markers.

“Most studies don't come close to those numbers,” says Goodisman.

Ross explains that looking closely at fire ants in their native range in South America revealed 322 distinct genetic types. Only 11 of those types were found in the southern United States, including three that were very rare in the native range. Yet the populations from newly invaded territories had combinations of the three rare variants from those U.S. types, not the others left behind in South America. Additionally, the researchers ran computer models of how gene patterns in populations change as invaders bud off into new territories. The scenarios that fit the data best, alas, showed the United States as the source, Ross says.

This analysis raises the possibility that the rigors of invading the United States and then of moving on toward world domination have winnowed out weaklings and less invasive ants. Populations now erupting from the United States could be specially adapted as super-invaders, Ross says.

Fire ants like disturbed terrain, of which there is plenty on the overdeveloped Beautiful Island. When disturbed, they attack aggressively in swarms, and their venom can cause shock and even death in a small percentage of cases. Arriving in Chiayi and Taoyuan in 2003 in what appears to be two separate infestations, they quickly spread across Taoyuan county and are now entrenched in urban areas around the island but especially in the north. In 2006, to help root out the problem, Taiwan began to train beagles to smell out fire ant nests.

According to this 2009 paper, the core of the infestation in the north is in Taoyuan: Dayuan, Jhongli, Luiju, Taoyuan, Bade and Pingjhen, but it reaches well into Hsinchu county. The figure below gives a glimpse of their distribution:

Polygyne and monogyne refer to their social organization of nests that have multiple queens and single queens, respectively. Note that dead center of the infestation in the north is Taoyuan International Airport. The authors argue that the infestation in Chiayi came entirely from ants with two or more queens per social unit, and that the nests with single queens are a later development, implying that the island was infested twice, seemingly in the same year. They also say that while the infested area in Chiayi is basically stagnant, the one in the north is expanding at a constant rate. Brr.....
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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.

Daily Links, April 30, 2012

A juvenile Malaysian night heron, a common sight around Taiwan.

A friend sent this from the China Times around: "A ship carrying pesticides and herbicides manufactured in Africa and China ran aground and sank off the coast near Fuzhou earlier this month. The contents of the ship has spilled into the ocean and is making its way toward northern Taiwan. The pesticides are reportedly highly toxic. You might want to stay clear of the beaches in the north. Of course, that won't help the ocean life." What else is out there?

BLOG:

• Battle of Formosa: the US Navy's raid on the Japanese colony in 1944
• Formosa Plastics sues professor for pointing out high cancer rates near its Mailiao plant
• J Michael Cole argues that the ROC's claims in the South China Sea might enable it to join international organizations. He also writes on the increase in intelligence flights around Okinawa by the PRC
• Last week one Cilliers Landman had a really bizarre letter in the Taipei Times. Drew responded to his nonsense about cycling here, while I took on his KMT propaganda claims in a letter to the Taipei Times
• The Writing Baron rips Ma for accepting both a leopard's head and having an audience with the insane ruler of Swaziland
• Craig offers the May 2012 Desktop calender of Taiwan imagery for download
• Richard climbs Mt Kinabalu in one of my favorite places, Borneo.

MEDIA:

• China's meat consumption passes US, its food demand reshaping the world.
• South China Sea standoff and its implications for US and China from the Asia Times Online
• US Air-Sea battle against China is conceptually wrong, says this author
• Ma says Taiwan must shed its protectionist mindset. Right. 
• Commonwealth Mag on Taiwan's Barren Waters: Taiwan's Fish are Gone, Taiwan's Dwindling Squid stocks
• Rupert Hammond-Chambers: Make Taiwan part of the US pivot in the WSJ
• China's space capabilities a threat to the US, Taiwan
• Road to Lishan still not fixed
• More on Formosa Plastics' attempt to silence a professor for remarking on pollutants from the Formosa Plastics plant in Mailiao
• Consumer confidence drops.
• Three cases of severe enterovirus in S Taiwan -- parents, make sure your kids wash their hands!

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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.

The Good Old Days

From about 1951 or thereabouts. My thanks to a dear friend and longtime reader for sending this around.

My father in law gave my wife a great old rain jacket made in the late 1960s which he had kept all these years. In a pocket she found an old NT$50 bill printed in 1972.
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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.

Saturday Round up

Lots of stuff going on....

DPP takes by-election in Lukang. A friend writes: "DPP candidate Huang Chen-yen (黃振彥) scored a major victory in Saturday's by-election for the mayorality of Lukang Township in Changhua County, defeating KMT candidate Tsai Ming-chung by a margin of 22,225 votes to 8,889 (as of 5pm) . The 70.5% to 29.5% margin was considerably more decisive than the margin by which Tsai Ing-wen took Lukang on January 14 (25,150 or 50.7 percent to Ma's 22,863)." True enough, but it is a mayoral election in a small town in Changhua.... when we see a trend across several elections, it might be meaningful. But Ma's current unpopularity won't last.

CNA reports that Christopher Marut will replace William Stanton as head of AIT in August.

Huge news.... Josh Rogin at The Cable over at Foreign Policy says the Administration has done an about-face on F-16s for Taiwan.

The White House policy shift was codified in a letter sent to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) Friday as part of a deal to get the Texas senator to release his hold on the confirmation of Mark Lippert, a close confidant of President Barack Obama whose nomination to become the top Pentagon official for Asia has been held up since October over the issue of selling F-16 fighter planes to Taiwan.

"We are mindful of and share your concerns about Taiwan's growing shortfall in fighter aircraft as the F-5s are retired from service and notwithstanding the upgrade of the F-16A/Bs. We recognize that China has 2,300 operational combat aircraft, while our democratic partner Taiwan has only 490. We are committed to assisting Taiwan in addressing the disparity in numbers of aircraft through our work with Taiwan's defense ministry on its development of a comprehensive defense strategy vis-a-vis China," Robert Nabors, director of the White House office of legislative affairs, wrote in a letter today to Cornyn.

"This work will be a high priority for a new Assistant Secretary of Defense in his dialogue on force transformation with his Taiwan counterparts. The Assistant Secretary, in consultation with the inter-agency and the Congress, will play a lead role as the Administration decides on a near-term course of action on how to address Taiwan's fighter gap, including through the sale to Taiwan of an undetermined number of new U.S.-made fighter aircraft."

The White House does not explicitly promise to sell Taiwan new F-16 fighter jets, as Cornyn wants, promising only to give the matter "serious consideration." But it does pledge an "underdetermined number" of new aircraft and the White House promised that Lippert would use the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Review Talks to conduct a full review of Taiwan's long-term defense strategy.

It's a positive and significant step, but let's recall that the Ma Administration and the KMT do not want these fighters. There's a long way to go before we see any new fighters, so basically I'll believe the Administration's noise when I see the verifiable physical results -- new aircraft on Taiwan's runways. Paul Mozur's WSJ piece has more.

I wrote a couple of posts down about how the ROC's bizarre claims to the South China Sea are dragging Taiwan into conflict with its neighbors. Today the Taipei Times published a commentary from an academic arguing that the Philippines claims to the Scarborough Shoal are bogus and the ROC actually owns the shoal and the Spratlys. It's a good insight into the kind of mind that lives in this alternative universe.

Manila's claims are laid out in the Manila Times. The author of the Taipei Times piece is correct, the Mapa General, Islas Filipinas Observatorio de Manila does not appear to color the shoal the same as the Philippines. Ironically, his rhetorical question "If all land shown on the map belonged to the Philippines, why would the southern part of Taiwan be shown at the top and part of Borneo at the bottom? Does this mean these places belong to the Philippines too?" actually reveals his ignorance: to this day Manila claims the northeast side of Borneo island. Nor does the author of the Taipei Times piece seem aware that Manila has not given up its claims under UNCLOS. The commentary in the Manila paper states that clearly, observing that Philippines has been trying to resolve the issue under UNCLOS in international court. Today's paper says the Dept of Foreign Affairs is trying to get the Court to hear that without Chinese consent, as the standoff between China and Manila has now reached its 17th day. No doubt if the Court rules in Manila's favor, as seems likely under UNCLOS, China will simply ignore the Court.

Note also that the Philippines has pretty much the same clause in its Constitution saying that  "all other areas which belong to the Philippines on the basis of historical rights or legal claims" belong to Manila. In other words Manila can assert a historical basis for its claims -- just like the Chinese do -- under the Philippine Constitution. *sigh*

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Daily Links:

• AP piece on the WantWant group's bid to expand its pro-China empire in Taiwan.
• Pertinent to the commentary above, Ian Storey has a nifty piece in the Jamestown Brief on ASEAN and the South China Sea
• Taiwan activists fight to preserve old brothel
• Pat Cowsill with a great post on 1930s information for travelers to Formosa.
• Taiwan set for invasion of Chinese investors -- excellent comment on China's claims to Taiwan slipped into that piece. Nice work, Ralph.

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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.

Taiwanease App Out at Apple iTunes store!

Anthony van Dyck of Taiwanease sent around the press release for their new app....

Taiwanease.com, a website created for Taiwan’s International Community by a small team of long term foreign residents, has just released the eponymous app “Taiwanease” on the iTunes App Store.

The Taiwanease App is an essential tool for international living in Taiwan. Access our massive database of events listings and venue addresses with or without an internet connection. Fast, sleek, and intelligently put together, the Taiwanease App is elegant in its simplicity. Whether it’s Nightlife, Shopping, Dining, Hotels, Art, Theatre, Events, or Addresses and Maps, the Taiwanease iPhone Application puts all you need to know about Taiwan at your fingertips.

Key Features of the Taiwanease App include:

• Up-to-date Event Listings
• Thousands of Directory Listings in dozens of categories, from Restaurants, to Accommodation, to Travel.
• A “Near Me” feature to tell you what’s close by.
• A “Favorites” function that stores all your preferred locations in a handy list.
• Full Screen Taxi Cards that tell your driver exactly where you want to go in Chinese.
• Maps that will pinpoint your current location, even in a moving vehicle, as well as your destination. If your taxi driver is taking “the scenic route”, you’ll be the first to know!
• Up to date contact information for restaurants, including addresses in English AND Chinese, clickable links to websites from within every listing, as well as “one-tap” phone dialing.
• Emergency Numbers, for Police, Fire/Medical, English Directory Assistance, and the Foreign Affairs Police.
• MRT Maps for Taipei and Kaohsiung
• An “Add an Establishment” feature that lets you instantly submit a venue to our directory right from your phone!

The Taiwanease App is available on the iTunes App Store now, for only $2.99.
For more information please contact Anthony van Dyck (潘龍泉) at admin@taiwanease.com.
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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.

Combo Post: Beef, Polls, Economy, ECFA

The stock market is still in shock that stock transaction tax and capital gains taxes are being contemplated by the Ma Administration. These are good moves, like raising prices for gasoline and electricity -- though if the taxes fail to go through, it will leave the impression that, once again, regressive policies fall on the poor and middle class while the monied classes get off with low to no taxes. In any case, kudos to the Ma Administration for at least contemplating these eminently sensible and long recommended moves.

Meanwhile the cutting of growth predictions continues apace as TIER released its latest prediction, dropping 2012 growth from 3.96% to 3.48%. Note that this is .48%, not .50%. Actually, research shows that 61.57% of all statistical claims are simply made up on the spot....

ADDED: The Taipei Times observed a couple of weeks ago:

Last week, the Asian Development Bank predicted GDP growth of 3.4 percent for Taiwan this year, which was lower than the 3.85 percent projected by the government in February. Some foreign banks have recently adjusted their GDP growth forecasts for Taiwan in response to the new risk factors, with UBS saying the economy would grow by just 1.5 percent this year, compared with Barclays’ 3 percent, DBS’ 2.9 percent, ANZ’s 3.56 percent and Citigroup’s 3.7 percent.

Apparently outsiders are far more pessimistic than the locals about the state of the economy.

The Ma Administration took another hit on the heels of the price increases for gas and electricity. US Beef imports? Hahaha. Another case of mad cow found in the US. This will only increase the dread factor and probably stop the Ma Administration's drive to resolve the beef mess with the US dead in the water.

I was suspicious of the pro-Green Taiwan Thinktank poll that showed Ma's popularity at post-Morakot levels but the rabidly pro-KMT TVBS backs them up. Their latest poll has Ma's approval rate at just 22% with 61% disapproving. It's just temporary; he'll return to the basic 30% approval level sooner or later.

Finally, a friend reminds me that the trade figures for March are out. He points out that March trade statistics showed that while overall exports declined by a y-o-y 3.2%, exports to China were down 7%, on par with the decline of exports to the US, but worse than the fall off in exports to Japan. Further, the only export growth was to the ASEAN-6, a large 11% increase. For the whole first quarter, the decline in exports to China (-9.7%) is greater than the decline in exports to the US (-7%), Japan (-6.8%), and Europe (-6.8%). Once again the only bright spot is the ASEAN-6 with a 7.7% growth in export to the region. (Total exports for QI are down 4.0%).

Remember when ECFA was going to save the economy by boosting exports to China AND give us FTAs with many other nations? Exports to China are not exactly exploding, while the growth is in the region where we don't have the FTAs we were promised. In fact, we have no FTAs at all. As my friend pointed out, the economy under the Ma Administration is actually vindicating the Lee Teng-hui/DPP "go south"/diversification policies.....
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Daily Links:

• Shockingly, wealthy young high status male has affair with slinky babe. 
• Shockingly, warrant issued because pan-Blue legislator misses date to go to jail. 
• Shockingly, tests find more pesticides in fruit.
• Ben Goren rips various entities over Wen Zao's silly dress code policy.

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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.

ROC Drags Taiwan into Beijing's South China Sea Cloud Cuckoo Land

Cain Nunn had an excellent piece in The Diplomat that echoed the concerns in my post from a couple of days ago....basically because Taipei claims to be the government of China, it claims the entire South China Sea (remember, the ROC proffered the famous Cow's Tongue map showing the entire area as China's prior to the PRC). This claim puts it at odds with potential allies, and hugely complicates America's security picture. Nunn has some great quotes:

Taipei makes its claim under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which would be fine if it was a party to UNCLOS, or any other U.N. body or agreement. But the Republic of China was expelled from the United Nations in 1971, when the General Assembly recognized “the Peoples’ Republic of China as the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations.”

While Beijing’s oft-criticized “nine-dotted line” claim has been ridiculed by its Association of Southeast Asian Nation neighbors, Taiwan’s virtually identical declaration has been hammered as “frivolous” and “out of touch with Asia’s diplomatic reality.”

“I wish they would shut up. There isn’t a single Asian country that even recognizes them. How are they relevant?” asks one Southeast Asian diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They lost their war 65 years ago and they still act like they are a great power. You would think show some humility where these frivolous claims are concerned. Discretion being the better part of valor, and all that.”

Even more importantly....

“They are working with China on this because our claim backs up Beijing’s. It’s this arrogance of a grand ultra-nationalist vision. But I would argue that if you want to use claims like this as potential bargaining chip in negotiations with China then there should be some credibility to them,” says Michael Kau, a former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs under the independence leaning Democratic Progressive Party. “This idea of treating this huge body of water as ours by right of dubious historical claims, it’s not only not credible, it’s crazy.” 

The DPP/KMT stability effect is not so easy to sort out. The PRC might be happy with Ma because he shares their right-wing Chinese nationalism -- in some ways the ROC is even farther right than the PRC. Recall that when the US handed back Okinawa to Japan the ROC protested -- Okinawa is "stolen territory" to many right-wing Chinese, awaiting recovery....

But here, as I have noted many times, is where Washington's Asia policy embodies a serious contradiction. Having Ma in office complicates things in the South China Sea -- where the US just conducted military exercises with Manila. Beijing rescuing Taipei in a confrontation is not yet in the cards, but it is barely visible on the horizon, like a false dawn, the kind the Arabs call the wolf's tail...

Ideally the DPP might be persuaded to be more rational about Taiwan's claims, as the quote from Michael Kau indicates. Problem is, that when the DPP was in office it used those islands for PR stunts while enhancing sovereignty claims. President Chen visited the Dongsha Islands three times while in office, and it was under him that they were designated a national marine park. He also visited Taiping Island in February of 2008 just before the election. It would be great if the DPP would spend some time educating its followers that Taiwan independence means being independent of Beijing's claims to the Senkakus and the South China Sea.

BTW, Nunn's claims about the national territory of China and the ROC Constitution are mostly wrong. Bo Tedards took the Taipei Times to task for similar mistakes a few weeks ago. Great article....

In a related view, The Taiwan Link has another high quality post that asks how the US should adjust its policies to the new realities in this part of the world. A taste:

The key question we should be asking is this: How could U.S. policy toward Taiwan best reflect a more accurate representation of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait? An unintended consequence of a thoughtful review of the TRA is the introduction of alternatives. When compared side by side, normalization of relations with both sides of the Taiwan Strait -- the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) -- is more consistent with US interests than abandonment of principles through repeal of the TRA. The more the Beijing and its supporters push for abrogation of the TRA, and by extension full adoption of the CCP position on sovereignty, the more attention should be directed toward the most viable alternative -- normalization of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Go thou and read!
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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.

Democrats Abroad Global Primary!!

Come out and vote! This is your chance to actually cast a ballot for a US primary election right here in Taiwan! If you haven't and don't plan on participating in your home state's primary election this year, you can vote in this year's Democratic Party Global Primary.

What is the Global Primary? Basically, Democrats Abroad, internationally, is treated as if it were a 51st state party -- and just like the states have presidential primaries, so do we! Now, our choice for president is really simple this year -- it's Barack Obama. However we'll also be electing the delegates from within the Asia-Pacific region who will attend the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC in September!!

Click on Read More for more information!

Yet another convicted big name goes missing before prison date

When is it going to stop? In Taiwan, after you have been convicted, the judiciary orders you to appear to start your sentence instead of remanding you to custody immediately like the do in many other countries. This results in countless cases like the one this week where a major criminal simply doesn't show:

Former legislator Lo Fu-chu (羅福助), who was convicted of securities violations, has gone missing days before starting a four-year prison term, leading to airports and seaports being put on a state of alert.

Lo is a famous politician and former "spiritual head" of the island's organized crime alliance (more). Lo has probably not left the island yet, but if he does, the likely goal is China, the land of choice Taiwan criminals who fail to show up to start their sentences. Ironically, there's a trickle in the other direction, the China Post notes in a case about a judge who had been repatriated after fleeing to China to avoid a bribery sentence:

Such bilateral cooperation goes both ways. A 30-year-old Chinese national surnamed Huang, who was charged with murder in Jiangsu Province, China, and had been hiding in Taiwan for eight years. Huang was repatriated from Taiwan to China via on Friday night.

However, as the Taipei Times reported in the massive Rebar case in 2007, when Rebar head Wang You-theng fled first to Hong Kong and China ahead of the bankruptcy of his company....

Although China and Taiwan have a very low-key extradition program, it is almost invariably reserved for petty or violent criminals. It is rare, if not unprecedented, for people suspected of white-collar crimes or corruption to be returned to Taiwan.

The Taipei Times observed three years ago: "Of the 85 major Taiwanese economic criminals who have fled to China over the past 10 years, only one has been returned to Taiwan..." Famed white collar criminals now in residence there include Chen You-hao, who left behind US$2 billion in bank loans, and Tseng Cheng-jen of the Kuangsan Group. National Security Bureau chief cashier Liu Kuan-chun, who allegedly embezzled US$5.9 million, disappeared to China in 2000. While China has repatriated over 100 criminals, few have been really big names such as those.

Notoriously, many Taiwan gangsters have moved across the Strait to start new lives in the rich criminal underworld of China. If Lo flees there, it seems likely he'll fit right in....
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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.

Daily Links, April 23, 2012

Some links for you to wallow in....

BLOGS:

• New bike models on display at Cycling Satin Cesena
• Individual combat training from Bala Daily
• The Hengchun Incident of 1894 from Patrick Cowsill
• US Navy helps rescue Taiwan fishermen from J Michael
• Links to Taiwan's first human rights report from the Taiwan Law Blog
• Taipei Transports of the 1960s from the USTDC 
• Not funny chauvinist joke defended by CiTV from Ben
• Drew says Taipei is urged to follow Kaohsiung's lead on bicycles.
• The Jinshi of Lugang from The Bradt Travel Guide
• A trip for birding in Taiwan
• BAE challenges Lockheed for the F-16 upgrade deal

MEDIA:

• Russian puts a hand in the South China Sea, with Gazprom exploring two blocks in Vietnamese waters. Another article on same, with detailed map of Vietnamese offshore blocks vs Chinese claim.
• China reinforces with another ship in the standoff with Philippines
• Another excellent piece from James Holmes on how the US should handle China
• Tiny group of students protests against US beef imports even as health minister denies setting allowable level
• Gov't declines to comment on reports of frigate purchase
• WantChinaTimes reports on Bruce Jacobs' admonition that Taiwan should focus on decolonization, pointedly drops KMT government from list of colonizers.
• There's no global warming and anyway it isn't caused by humans. That's why predictions from 3 decades ago can't be right.

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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.