Why the missile launch conspiracies are, at best ignorant

Because nothing says popsicle like an egg yolk flavored popsicle

This week the 1996 DPP candidate for president, Peng Min-min, a stalwart of Taiwan independence for decades, commented in the Taipei Times that the accidental missile launch from the naval ship in K-town last week may not have been accidental....

It just so happens that the leader of Country B is abroad on a diplomatic visit, which offers an excellent opportunity for implementing the plot. Everything is in place, the lowly soldier is on stand-by over his launch button and all the other officers have cleared the deck to be able to present an alibi later they were not present.

A simple order is issued, the lowly soldier presses the button with the finger he was taught to use, the cannon really does fire and the lowly soldier is elated. The conspirators cover their ears and hold their breaths as they wait for Country A’s mighty “counterattack.”

However, the missile does not live up to expectations: It never reaches Country A. Instead, it hits a house in Country B and kills and injures some of its own people. In disarray, the conspirators realize that their plan has failed. They hurriedly discuss how to clean up the mess and agree that the launch should be presented as a “mistake.” They then make a big fuss as they rush to punish the lowly soldier and a few unfortunate officers, hurrying to close the case in the hope that everyone will forget about it.

This is a heaping pile of incompetent conspiratorial nonsense, and the Taipei Times should never have published it. A longtime expert pointed out the simple fact that you can't fire the missile without setting its path coordinates: the same person has to do both, more or less. No one who wanted to cause trouble with China would have kept the missile within Taiwan's airspace. Hence any talk of conspiracy is nonsense. It was just a not-very-unusual screw up.

When analyzing events, its important to retain a simple filter: never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

This article is interesting as a relic of the way that generation of independence activists automatically reaches for conspiracy when it wants to explain events. Sad, and very out of date...
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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!

Typhooned! and Train Bombed

Lots of tourism sites in the hills of Miaoli

Last night a local train was bombed at Songshan Station in Taipei. Various injury reports are circulating in the media, but it seems at least 24 were injured. No deaths, luckily. I'll be updating this as more news comes in... seems to be a fireworks package, no dedicated explosives such as plastic explosives, military weapons, or homemade fertilizer bombs, etc. Still looking for more details...

Imagery and video of bombing from SETV
LATEST: Major crime, not terrorism, say police.
LATEST: Suspect identified
LATEST: Suspect identified from DNA, is 55 yr old male, injured in blast, cannot communicate

Typhoon links are below the READ ME line. It is now pounding southern Taiwan as of 4:30 PM, the eye has already entered the Taiwan Strait. Heaven help the poor people in China who have to suffer under its pounding.

Ted Galen Carpenter, Returns from 2006 to Haunt us, and Cole on Ferguson (why?)

Cute bugs everywhere!

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. "Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!"

As we batten down for a typhoon here in central Taiwan, Ted Galen Carpenter, the Ghost from 2006, moans and rattles his chains once more in The National Interest:

Rejecting the 1992 consensus was hardly Tsai’s only offense from Beijing’s standpoint. Allies of her administration have pushed Taiwan’s independent territorial claims in the South China Sea. She had embarked on an extremely conciliatory policy toward China’s archstrategic adversary, Japan. And in early June, Taiwan for the first time held a commemorative ceremony for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. That was an especially bold thumb in the eye of Beijing’s authorities. And to top matters off, Taiwan will be testing its new antimissile systems in the United States later this month.

Oh noes. All I can say is that it is a good thing we in Taiwan had Carpenter to tell us things were tense in Taiwan because of the accidental missile launch, otherwise we might never have noticed. As a friend of mine put it on Twitter, he's like a Hugh White who isn't even trying.

More serious than that was J Michael Cole's strange response to Forbes Editor Tim Ferguson. Cole is entirely correct to note Forbes' longstanding contempt for the island's democracy and democracy parties, and longtime readers of this blog will recall Forbes Editor Russell Flannery's sterling admiration for the failure that is Ma Ying-jeou. Cole spent eight paragraphs tackling this turd line by line:

Another Asian uprising was Tsai Ing-wen’s election as president in Taiwan. Democratic resistance to an overweening China is understandable (and Beijing has greeted Tsai’s win with just such bumptiousness), but in my June visit to Taipei I sensed an impetuous bent by her party. To wit: Shutting off one’s own nuclear-power sources might not be the wisest course in an economy struggling to regain its footing.

Ferguson "sensed an impetuous bent"! One can only imagine his experience in the Celestial Dragon Kingdom:

TAIPEI POLICE OFFICER: Sir, can you tell us what that contraption is you have set in front of the presidential office? Our security people are very concerned.
CARACATUS FERGUSON: It is an impetuousness sensor, officer. Very delicate piece of equipment, I assure you. Stand back! You're interfering with the reading! Yes, I am getting a very strong bent reading here. I'm afraid the situation is most serious.

This crap isn't worth Cole's time and talent, and surely does not suit the dignity of his high position. In fact it isn't worth mine either, which is why I wasn't going to waste any time on it. Ferguson is basically the Jon Snow of Taiwan, and I don't see how he can be educated, either.

The typhoon is bearing down. Trains have stopped traveling, the military is on alert (readers may recall that Ma's delay in activating the military after Morakot that helped began the long slide in his approval ratings), activities along the coast are forbidden. This is supposed to be an absolutely titanic typhoon. May random factors operate in your favor, everyone.
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Daily Links:

• Foreign travelers up, Chinese tourists down. The tourism news just keeps getting better and better... but more arrivals meant less revenue in 2015
• News Lens on a pair of foreigners teaching entrepreneurship in Taiwan's rural areas.
• Interesting piece on coming out as an aboriginal
• The Holiday situation, explained
• With falling exports, Central Bank warns on economic stagnation. Alas, the economy is in the doldrums and no rescue in sight...
• US reassures Taiwan after missile accident

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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!

Links + English Editor and Translator Job at Exec Yuan

One way we beat the heat: soak our clothing every hour or so at roadside temples.

Enjoy some links while you ponder the typhoon's imminent arrival...

• ANNOUNCING: The awesome duo of Russell Hsiao and Chieh-ting Yeh have started an organization in the US. Global Taiwan. Congratulations, guys. Send some work my way!
• Solidarity analyzes the latest TSIR party loyalty polls. "Put another way, the declared pan-green base is now 70% bigger than the declared pan-blue base."
• CNN says supertyphoon Nepartak will hit Taiwan.Latest news says it will cross the center of the island on thurs night....
• K-town introduces new tram service
• Part-time lecturers protest low pay at universities
• The military missile launch was screwed up because the military wanted it to look pretty. This problem of drills is universal and goes back many years. Check this 2003 piece...
• Taiwan to impose greater penalties for illegal fishing. Yeah, that'll work.
• Foxconn IPO shows problems of tech industry
• Ruling on fraud suspects from Kenya delayed
• Apologizing to the aborigines not enough -- there must be an effective and meaningful policy to go along with it
• New Bloom: Taiwan missile firing incident political controversy

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Job opening. These are big shoes to fill, trust me. Salary is 70K for starting, higher for experienced individuals.

Opening for English Editor
The Executive Yuan is seeking a full-time English editor:
• University graduate or above
• Competent in Chinese-to-English translation with strong writing skills and two years’ formal editing experience
• Able to meet deadlines and work overtime
• Native English speaker with good Chinese reading abilities preferred
• Knowledgeable about Taiwan affairs
Please send a resume, two translation samples and copy of highest degree attained by July 15, 2016 to:
Compilation and Translation Section
Department of Information Services
Executive Yuan
No. 1, Sec. 1, Zhongxiao E. Rd.
Taipei City 10058
alain@ey.gov.tw
Tel: (02) 3356-8420
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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!

Review: Green Island: A Novel

Got a nice chair for you to curl up with this book

Green Island: A Novel
Shawna Yang Ryan
401 pages
Knopf

"Who won the war, Kane?"
"I did."
"You didn't win a thing, Kane. You only survived."
"It means the same thing."
"But there must be more to victory than just survival."
Kane nodded to the fallen as he carried her from the temple. "Ask them now. Ask me in a hundred years."

This book has been watching me.

A few weeks ago the writer's publicist sent me a copy so I could review it. It has sat on my desk, watching me, drumming its fingers on my table, dropping little hints that I was procrastinating.

I was, because this is a deeply personal book for me. I spent a lot of time crying while reading it, and only read it a few pages at a time. I have been listening to the story that Ryan tells since 1989, and especially since 1991, when I began working at the Center for Taiwan International Relations in Washington, DC, which was run by WUFI, one of the more "radical" independence groups. There Taiwanese in their 40s and 50s would tell me stories about Taiwan under martial law, how their parents had spoken Japanese to them and considered themselves Japanese. How they have been arrested, detained, tortured, just like the people in this novel. How they had come to America, run businesses or worked for the government or done science. How they were blacklisted and could never return to Taiwan. How they hated the KMT.

I was young then, and quite stupid. Now I am not young. Those stories were one thing I experienced, but I also experienced another thing in the movement, which I shoved into the past and try not to think about but have carried with me all these years: the bickering, the blithering, blinkered incompetence, the needless amateurishness, the lack of calculation, the short-termism, the constant infighting, the inability to set aside personalities and work together, the ruthless exploitation of fellow beings, the struggle for control, the lies and betrayals, and the demand from people above me that I tell lies and betray. That generation of the Taiwan independence movement in the US was full of... human beings.

All of this is in the book: Shawna Yang Ryan has captured these stories, presenting a kind of universal story of how these human beings in Taiwan lived and loved and endured. Their stories are not about triumph, but betrayal -- the terrible betrayal of 1945 engendered, like Zeus on Leda, a cascade of calamities, all betrayals, of everything from Allied promises, to democracy to friendship to marriage vows, bent and broken under the savage weight of martial law. In the end the Taiwanese, like the people in the story, did not so much triumph as survive.

The narrator of the story is born on March 1, 1947, her mother having gone into labor as the 2-28 revolt was beginning. Two weeks later her father is picked up by the police. The family loses everything. The narrator's life then takes her through the martial law era, the US in the 80s and the Henry Liu murder, and numerous other events that shaped the Taiwanese consciousness of that generation, so different from this one. It is also the tale of the Taiwanese encounter with the US -- from servicemen to American officials, and how that shaped them. If this is a tale of how the Taiwanese endured, it is also -- perhaps truly -- a tale of how the women endured, for each man who fought the regime and was taken into custody, betrayed his family by leaving them in poverty and uncertainty.

Green Island is powerful. The history is chronicled without romance. The prose is lyrical, full of concrete details. The dialogue is perfect -- so very Taiwanese, with more left unsaid than said. The tone is bittersweet. The lives are full to overflowing.

Read it.
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REFS

• Interview with writer Shawna Yang Ryan at New Bloom
• Interview with Ryan at Bookish.Asia
• Ryan talking about the novel and the writing process on Youtube

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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!

Notes on the 1992 Consensus and KMT-CCP United Front Against Taiwan + Links

You'd be hard pressed to come up with a better name for a tourist transportation vehicle than this one.

The Diplomat offered a piece on the faux 1992 Consensus by a former China Post writer, Katherine Wei. Most of it is filled with conventional pro-KMT wrongnesses...

The so-called “1992 consensus” refers to an understanding Taiwan and China achieved during a meeting in Hong Kong the same year, that there is only one China and both sides are free to interpret the meaning. Namely, each side considers itself to be the true government of a single China, but Beijing is today worried that Tsai is about the break the post-1992 status quo.

No understanding was reached in Hong Kong. It grows tiresome to keep saying that. Not only was there no consensus, but Beijing still doesn't accept the codocil of "two interpretations." That's been out in public for years. Why do people keep writing this nonsense?

Speaking of nonsense...

For one panicky moment, many in Taiwan thought the country was going to war with China. And then the tension seemed to subside, as the government announced an investigation into the missile’s firing and the fisherman’s death; China seemed to be momentarily pacified.

Nope, nobody in Taiwan thought this. I was sitting in the studio at ICRT recording a show when the texts started flashing round the internet. Not a single one said ZOMG WAR!!! Instead, they were all along the lines, mostly amused, that the military had screwed up again and fired a missile over Kaohsiung. We didn't know then that the fishing boat captain had lost his life, killing all possibility of humor.

There wasn't any tension. And none subsided. But this, ironically, bears on the 1992 Consensus as an example of United Front KMT+CCP tactics against Taiwan:

China’s reaction was speedy; it demanded to know Taiwan’s reason for firing the missile. Although Taiwan’s Navy Vice Admiral Mei Chia-shu explained that the missile was fired during an unsupervised moment during a drill inspection, and that there was no political motive behind the accident, TAO Director Zhang Zhijun once again brought up the “1992 consensus.” “While China has continued to stress that the two sides must maintain peaceful development of relations under the political basis of the 1992 consensus, this is a very serious incident,” said Zhang.

It was probably just a coincidence that KMT legislators and officials demanded that the government talk to China, while China was demanding to know the reason for the missile. It is almost as if the two sides were coordinating...

Note how the China spokesman comes back to the 1992 Consensus, China's clever way of getting the international media to enforce its one China policy. The phrase "1992 Consensus" became currency after Su Chi used it in the run-up to the 2000 elections. But it was actually first used in a PRC document in 1997, as someone pointed out the other day in a discussion group. It was then picked up in English by some pro-PRC writers in the very late 1990s, but I have lost those links. It was Su Chi who promoted it, but he had picked up signals from Beijing, it seems. After Lien Chan's visit to China, as many have noted, usage picked up. The truth is that the 1992 Consensus is just another United Front tactic against Taiwan...

It is interesting that by 2001 there was even "academic" discussion of the 1992 Consensus from a clearly pro-China writer, which is actually a useful recapitulation of events, though its interpretations should be ignored. However, prior to 1997, when the KMT claims that this "Consensus" had been in force for 5 years, there do not appear to be any academic articles or analyses in English of it.

You'd think, if they'd agreed on something, there would have been an announcement. It would have been huge...

Nothing was ever agreed upon. There was no Consensus. It didn't exist until Su Chi promoted it. When the KMT and CCP insist that Tsai adhere to "the Consensus", which no democratic procedure ever affirmed, they are really demanding that she say Taiwan is part of China.

Not that the international media is ever going to lay out any of this complexity, or ever note that the "Consensus" is the alleged product of the unelected representatives of two authoritarian parties. Instead, by using the word "Consensus" it makes it seem that there is something everyone has agreed upon, which Tsai has violated by not adhering to it.

That's a score for China.
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Daily Links:

• Activists protest against Taiwan's brutal land seizure policies, which are used to subsidize government projects and place wealth in the pockets of the rich. How progressive is the DPP going to be on this? Probably not very.
• DON'T MISS: Frozen Garlic with great piece on the media.
• Fruit prices soar in Taiwan
• Labor brokerage system is broken, leading to protests
• Is teaching English well-paid? Don't think so, says Jenna.
• Interesting review of book on ROC and Xinjiang politics before 1970. A fascinating bit of history with deep resonance for today.
• NPR on the Jan election
• WSJ publishes a fantasy that Taiwan. could. go. nuclear. if Trump is elected.
• Ominous sign out of China: Canadian citizens of Chinese descent must travel in China using Chinese travel documents, not Canadian passports.

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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!

July 4 Message on US Voters from American Institute in Taiwan...

In order to vote in the November 2016 elections, all overseas U.S. citizens need to have completed a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) in 2016.  Whether you are a first-time voter or have already received ballots and voted absentee in past elections, you must complete an FPCA each year to participate in elections as an overseas absentee voter. 

You can always get voting assistance from the American Institute in Taiwan or drop off your completed voting forms and ballots, addressed to your local election officials, at AIT’s American Citizen Services Unit.  If you’re in Taipei, drop off your materials any Monday thru Friday from 8:30 to 11:00am.  If you’re in Kaohsiung, please email us first atVoteKAOHSIUNG@state.govto set up a time to drop off your voting materials. Normal transit time from Taiwan to the United States is approximately 3 weeks.

If you have never voted while overseas before, the process is easy ­-- just follow these steps:

Saturday Links...

Bridge building continues...

From Forward Taiwan

蕭美琴: 我們要做一個積極規劃移民的國家, 還是要做一個封閉型的國家?
Hsiao Bi-khim DPP, Hualien: Do we want to be a country that proactively plans immigration or a closed country? 4:00

This video is from April 18th. She is questioning the Ma administration's Minister of the Interior about Taiwan's refusal to permit naturalized citizens to be dual nationals.

Her bill to amend the Nationality Act would remove the requirement to renounce original nationality and permit dual citizenship for both naturalized and native Taiwanese citizens. It is still in committee under review.

http://ivod.ly.gov.tw/Play/VOD/87809/300K/Y
拜託有台灣國籍的朋友, 特別是花蓮人, 支持蕭美琴的勇氣!!立委諸公需要聽到您的寶貴的聲音!!!

Thanks, Bi-khim.
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Daily Links:

• Good piece on Youth and Politics in East Asia from Brookings.
• The latest Taiwan Braintrust newsletter is out.
• The Diplomat: Why Brexit is bad for Taiwan
• Taiwan wants five more from Kenya instead of sending them to China
• Formosa Plastics steel plant in Vietnam gives $500 million payout over environmental case
• Number of students from China decreases by about 20%
• Brian H at New Bloom speculates on possible future actions by labor groups
• Brian H at New Bloom on KMT's continued reform failures

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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 Military has a bad week...

Drying...

The military had a couple of huge problems this week. First, a couple of marines and a marine MP hung a dog with a chain. I am not linking to this story in any way. I can't bear to think of that poor animal and the light punishment they apparently received. KMT Vice Chair Hau Long-bin complained that the morale of the military was hurt by having to issue an apology. The KMT has long had a tight relationship with the military...

The major mistake was the accidental destruction of a Taiwanese fishing boat by a missile fired from a navy ship in Kaohsiung. This story broke on Friday morning with texts and videos of the missile crossing Kaohsiung flitting around the social networks. To wit:

[Defense Minister] Feng traveled to Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, to offer the apology in person to the family of Huang Wen-chung (黃文忠) at their home. He promised to help them obtain state compensation and repair the damaged fishing boat, which has been towed back to Kaohsiung.

Accompanied by Navy Commander Adm. Huang Shu-kuang (黃曙光), Feng also vowed to improve military discipline.

The locally developed Hsiung Feng III missile was accidentally launched from one of the Navy's 500-ton Chinchiang-class corvettes at Zuoying Military Harbor in Kaohsiung during a drill at 8:15 a.m. on Friday and hit the fishing boat about two minutes later, according to the Navy.

The Defense Ministry confirmed that the missile ripped through the "Hsiang Li Sheng" (翔利昇) fishing boat, causing the death of the captain and injuring the three other crew members on the boat.

The ministry has issued an apology and has blamed the incident on human error; it said a petty officer on board the Chinchiang (PGG-610) did not follow standard operating procedure and launched the missile during a simulated attack.

It might have been humorous in its way, except that the Captain was killed and several of the crew injured. Luckily the warhead didn't detonate when it hit the ship. The military is trying to figure out why the missile didn't self destruct as it should have.

Rumors: a knowledgeable person reported the rumor that the missile has a set course correction for a misfire, which it executed. During the turn, it hit the boat. The electronics were at a minimum during the launch so it is unlikely the PRC obtained any useful intelligence from it...

Pro-Green Liberty Times reported that KMT heavyweight Alex Tsai heard about the erroneous launch before the premier did. That would not be surprising as many people on social networks heard about it right away, since the errant missile flew over Kaohsiung where tens of thousands saw it.

Blogger Ben Goren sardonically predicted on Twitter that the media would hype it. Sure enough, several outlets reported that the missile flew in the "direction of China" or "toward China" or some other tension-hyping configuration (like AFP). Why they stopped there I have no idea -- after all, the missile was also launched in the direction of Russia's arctic bases, and after it executed its turn, it was briefly aimed at North Korea. Surely the media should have reported those important facts...

China, which is getting better and better at managing such things, immediately "demanded an explanation". The KMT attacked the government for not notifying China. The People's First Party (PFP), a KMT ally, complained:

The caucus said that top national security officials should establish a crisis hotline to Beijing to help avoid unnecessary military tension.

Hmmm... struggling to remember here... something about communications being cut off, and Beijing...

OH YEAH: There's some truly fruitcake theories about the missile accident. Such accidents are normal (1982 Danish frigate incident, Royal Navy sub launches missile at dockyard, Zuni missile accidental launch causes fire on USS Forrestal, US Navy launches missile at St Croix). More may easily be located on the internet.
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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!

Brexit Wrecks it

Can't find true love. I know just the place...

UBS observed:

“We had expected the electronics-heavy Taiwan market to report its worst earnings figures in Asia and EM this year – a 5% y/y decline due to weak external demand and, more importantly, muted consumer electronics product cycles. Brexit is likely to make matters worse for Taiwan, since it has the highest revenue exposure (15%) to Europe among Asian countries, resulting in further earnings downside risks.

I was on ICRT on Friday (podcast) but more importantly, Michael Boyden, the longtime business and finance expert here was on talking about Brexit (and very hilariously too). He emphasized that Taiwanese firms had entered the UK to use it to enter Europe, so all those firms will take a hit shifting elsewhere in Europe.

Today I rode with a friend of mine who owns a firm that exports motorcycle accessories to Europe. She alternated between anxious and fuming. Orders suspended or canceled. Everyone in a panic. With the Euro sliding people are reluctant to purchase her stuff, which is now more expensive for them. She's taking a huge hit. Many other Taiwanese OEM firms and exporters are taking similar hits.

Here are the figures for exports to the EU-15 countries from the Bureau of Foreign Trade.

2010 24,448,492,671
2011 25,601,628,017
2012 23,238,132,050
2013 22,191,676,688
2014 23,506,365,134
2015 21,013,351,866

For comparison, our 2015 exports to China were $71 billion. It's going to be a very tough year economically in Taiwan.

DON'T MISS: The Diplomat: Why Brexit is bad for Taiwan
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Links and Comments for Thursday

This was a woman who knows how to pack stuff...

Many pieces in the international media noting that Tsai wants communication with China. A sharp friend of mine observes that Tsai is playing China the way she played Ma: moral high ground, give them rope, let them hang themselves, stay calm and quiet. Each display of calmness and earnestness from Tsai is a victory.

One interesting way China is handling the international media is its repeated use of the faux 1992 Consensus. The 1992C is, of course, just another way to say Taiwan is part of China. But Beijing is not bluntly insisting "Say Taiwan is part of China." Instead, Beijing is cloaking this claim in the "1992 Consensus" verbiage. For listeners, this softens the demand by calling it a consensus -- even though nothing happened and only the unelected representatives of two Leninist authoritarian parties were present to disagree with each other. But nowhere does the international media ever make that clear...

Forward Taiwan, which works on issues affecting foreigners, notes on Facebook:

Apple Daily reports that a bill to amend the Naturalization Act has made it through the first reading in the Interior Affairs Committee.

1. Foreign spouses applying for citizenship would no longer need to prove that they can support themselves financially

2. A foreign national applicant for naturalization would renounce his or her original nationality one year after becoming a Taiwanese citizenship (currently original citizenship must be renounced before naturalization causing some applicants to become stateless).

3. The good moral character requirement to become a Taiwanese citizen would change to a negative requirement that the applicant has "no [record of] reprehensible conduct and no criminal record".

4. A naturalized citizen whose citizenship is revoked would get a hearing before a committee at the Ministry of the Interior at which the naturalized citizen will have a chance to plead his or her case before revocation.

The report makes no mention of any provisions that would allow a naturalized citizen to be a dual citizen.

The text of the bill is not yet available and the bill will still need to be passed by the full Legislature to become law.

Would love to have dual nationality, like Chinese who marry Taiwanese. UPDATE: See discussion in comments below.

• Indian columnist calls for hardball with China: use levers like Taiwan
• Taiwan whisky poised to conquer the world
• Apple scouts Taiwan for a new data center
• Indonesia pushes back against China in the SCS
• Blatant sexual harassment during China Airlines strike
• Taipei Times editorial: KMT too entrenched to change
• China, the US, and extrajudicial abductions
• Academia Sinica became latest institution to say economic growth this year will be crap
• Working more than six days in a row to be illegal
• Synaptic rides the south

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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!

In Which Cole again makes a point others have been making for years

High on the Bogusness Index: this sign in Fengyuan says this is the Fengyuan Boulevard Bike Route. Notice any dedicated infrastructure? Me neither. But you know this is on a government promotion material, somewhere. This is simply a big road that cyclists regularly use to get where they want. The government had nothing to do with it. 

J Michael Cole observes at News Lens that the media is always predicting China's anger, which helps China...

So keen have international media and alarmist experts been to create an atmosphere of conflict in the Taiwan Strait that Beijing rarely has to say anything anymore — they’re doing the job on its behalf. All Beijing needs to do is to give media an occasional push, to send a well-timed signal, for the scribes to escalate the rhetoric and foster a sense of alarm.

Of course, over the years, many of us have made this exact point. In fact a decade ago, Johnny Neihu, who stopped writing, got heavily into gambling, and now lives a dissolute life somewhere in the warrens of Taipei, wrote as if that trope were already old:

In other travesties, this week saw a particularly egregious trotting out of the "in a move likely to anger China" saw.

You've seen it before: it's the stock phrase the wires insert to build anticipation on cross-strait tensions, which more often than not fail to materialize, and instead only serves to coddle the hypernationalist sensitivities of the bullying Chicoms across the Strait.

In 2010, I observed in a long analysis:

Finally, wouldn't it be a good idea to wait and see what Beijing actually does, rather than propagandizing for its policy of using "anger" to manage its relations with foreign countries and to impact foreign media reporting?

There are others. Cole's piece could have been strengthened considerably if he had pointed out that he sat within a long stream of writing on this, that this trope is old and it is high time it disappeared. Cole even notes at the beginning that we have "traveled back in time"...
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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 Dunning-Kruger Party Swings (further) Right

Timber Processing in Miaoli.

Were you thinking the KMT was going to change? Doesn't look like it. The last couple of weeks have been filled with news item like these....

The Liberty Times, which is deeply pro-Green, reported the other day that a Deep blue organization within the KMT has demanded that the Party kick out its two leading Taiwanese: Wang Jin-pyng and Huang Min-hui. Huang ran against current Deep Blue Chairman Hung Hsiu-chu in the recent chairmanship election. This sends a strong signal to Taiwanese in the Party that they will never be accepted by the ruling elites and the Huangfuxing, the deep Blue old soldier base of the KMT.

This week the KMT decided to expel outspoken critic and former spokesman Yang Wei-chung...

The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) decision yesterday to axe the party’s outspoken former spokesman Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) has drawn ire, with some interpreting the move as the beginning of the party’s shift toward a deep-blue ideology.

....

Due to the political sensitivity of the case, the disciplinary committee decided to convene a second meeting after spending two-and-a-half hours discussing whether Yang should be expelled over his frequent critical remarks about the KMT during its first meeting on Friday last week.

Yang was initially invited by the disciplinary committee to defend himself in person at the second meeting, but he was unable to attend due to a prearranged plan to participate in summer camps held by the Taiwanese Association in the US. He is scheduled to return to Taiwan on July 11.

“Members of the Evaluation and Discipline Committee made the decision by a consensus vote,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee director Chow Chi-wai (周志偉) said.

"Consensus vote" in local parlance means "whatever the Chairman of the committee decides. Note that they held the disciplinary hearing when Yang was out of the country, a final little dig at him.

The article on the Yang case observed that there was continued rumbling among the Deep Blue base to expel Wang Jin-pyng, who was once the unofficial leader of the Taiwanese KMTers in the legislature. The Party lost because it wasn't Taiwanese enough...

Hau Long-bin, the former Taipei mayor, now a vice-chairman of the KMT, accused the President of belittling the ROC in her visit to Panama this week...

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday accused President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of “belittling the official title” of the nation by describing herself as the “President of Taiwan” during her first overseas state visit.

“The Republic of China, abbreviated as ROC, is the title of our nation. It is the official national title under which we have repeatedly endeavored to seek global recognition,” the fomer Taipei mayor wrote on Facebook.

Hau posted a photograph of the message Tsai left in a visitor’s book after touring the sluice gates of the expanded Panama Canal on Sunday, in which she wrote: “Witnessing the centennial achievement, jointly creating future prosperity,” and identifying herself as “President of Taiwan [ROC].”

I'm sure Hau's stance will go over well with today's Taiwan-oriented voters...

UPDATE: Today's Taipei Times editorial on Yang:

A recent investigative report by online outlet Storm Media showed that young KMT members are still complaining about having no stage in the party and about being treated as lackeys “who are called upon only when they are needed for party events,” despite the January election results and the party’s losses in the 2014 nine-in-one elections.

Yang has criticized KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) over the direction she is leading the party. His latest denunciation was against the person Hung invited to speak at yesterday’s Central Standing Committee meeting about the party’s assets, Wu Chi-chang (武之璋). Wu has championed the view that the 228 Incident was a riot by a motley mob of gangsters instigated by political speculators influenced by Japan who attacked waishengren (外省人, Mainlanders) and had to be put down.

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Dana Ter on the changing media environment about Taiwan

The Miaoli 16, pure pleasure...

Dana Ter writes in the Taipei Times about the changing media attitude towards Taiwan...

Up until recently, the international media’s coverage on Taiwan has been either super serious (politics, cross-strait relations) or superficial (cat cafes, toilet-themed restaurants).

.............

There’s been more of these stories on Taiwan in the international media in recent years — stories that look beyond sensationalism. In terms of travel, there’s the occasional New York Times story. “Taiwan, an island of green in Asia” (Dec. 3, 2014) talked about eco-tourism and referred to the Beitou Library (臺北市立圖書館北投分館) and Da-an Forest Park metro station (大安森林公園站) as must-see sites. A BBC article from March 4, 2013, titled “Hiking the landslide capital of the world,” shared a couple of good hiking spots. It also discussed the history of these various sites and included practical information for hikers.

I too hate those toilet-themed restaurant and similar garbage stories and never link to them. Ter's explanation...

Taiwanese millennials are creating more time for leisure activities such as surfing or brewing craft beer. While their parents came of age in an authoritarian era, when hard work and long hours got you ahead, this ethos is becoming increasingly irrelevant to young people who grew up with disposable income in a time of political stability.

Since there are more people partaking in leisure activities, there are more journalists writing about them. Contrary to what has been said about millennials — for example, that we have short attention spans — it’s stories like these that speak to us. While social media has a tendency to disillusion, it’s narrative-driven, human interest stories that gain our trust. Ironically, a Forbes.com listicle puts forth this argument quite persuasively (“3 reasons why millennials want long form storytelling over ‘snackable’ content,” March 8, 2016).

Well, perhaps. She contacted me to chat about this story. I had never formally sat down and thought about it, but there are actually several major categories of stories about Taiwan: tech, finance and economic, politics (but only cross-strait), and travel and lifestyle. The first three are fixtures, but it is the last category that has really evolved. The deeper travel and lifestyle stuff that has emerged in the last decade is I think related to several trends beginning in the late 1990s...

• The end of martial law and especially, KMT rule at the end of the 1990s meant that people here and abroad could talk about Taiwan without fear of retaliation.
• Taiwan became a known destination for foreign English teachers, which meant guides and a mass of knowledgeable foreigners came into existence to promote the island, especially on the internet
• A critical mass of foreigners writing on Taiwan as a travel destination emerged: people like Steven Crook, Robert Kelly, and Joshua Brown, among many others, who could credibly pitch travel narratives outside the mainstream.
• The Chen Administration began promoting "Taiwan" as a thing in itself overseas and the Taiwan government began promoting Taiwan relentlessly as a travel destination. This also led people to ask what was this thing called "Taiwan." Later the Ma Administration continued this policy. This "Taiwan is a thing" idea also helped create a market for Taiwan centered articles, a virtuous cycle of growth in interest.
• In the academic world, scholars began treating Taiwan as a thing in itself, which in turn helped create a market in the lay world explaining what this thing called Taiwan is
• The "ZOMG TAIWAN IS TENZ" political narrative also led to interest in what this thing called Taiwan is that was causing all this trouble.
• Several writers produced general works on Taiwan for educated reader, Melissa Brown and Jon Manthorpe, among others.
• Until a few years ago, the major media organizations all had reporters stationed here who had to churn out stuff, and churn it out they did
• As Ter notes, Taiwan itself changed: there is more to write about.

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Busy Busy Links

Nantou city across the rice fields...

Busy busy busy. Have a few links...

• AIT head Raymond Burghardt again notes that the 1992 Consensus is a faux event that first was known prior to the 2000 election. What does this mean? It means that the US isn't going to pressure Tsai on it like they pressured Chen Shui-bian. 
• Taiwan: Bitcoin tourism destination
• Wonder why things don't change? Gangsters threaten lawmaker on foreign worker bill
• President Tsai makes transit stop in Miami, recieves warm welcome. Yay!
• Project 2049: The Taiwanese Curve Ball: Why Taiwan's New Government Will Put the Brakes on China's Foreign Policy
• Taiwan Explorer looks at the laughable idea that Jason Hsu, interviewed for the News Lens, is some kind of KMT reformer.  
• The next big market for western publishers? Taiwan.
• Sign the petition to get unmarried women fertility treatments in Taiwan

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