The Land of the Slow Boiling Frog

The Economist offered a column the other day that compared Taiwan to a frog that is slowly boiling.

One former prime minister of Taiwan gives his island 15-20 years before it is part of China again. Another former minister says Taiwan feels like a frog placed on top of the stove in a pan of cold water. The beauty of this cooking method is held to be that, if the water is heated gently enough, the frog does not think to jump out.

We are not told what political party "the former prime minister of Taiwan" belongs to, so such information cannot be placed in any context. Omissions of context are par for the course in the international media when it writes about Taiwan. Of course, here in Taiwan, almost everyone is a former prime minister...

The magazine also offers this observation:

Taiwanese businessmen love China. The mainland’s charm offensive has at times been subtle. For instance, by offering to open its markets to Taiwanese farm goods, the mainland has undermined traditional DPP support among the island’s southern fruit-growers.

Have fruit exports to China really had such an effect? Fruit exports amount to just 5% of the island's fruit production and more than a third go to Japan, with 12% to Hong Kong. The China market is comparatively minuscule. The real goal of the opening is identified in a Taiwan Review piece from last year:

China appears to be a promising market and currently Taiwan's government imposes no restrictions on the export of agricultural products across the Taiwan Strait. However, Chinese demand for Taiwan's high-priced fruit is extremely limited, and the lack of direct transportation links also hinders developing a market there. China has, according to some reports, been suggesting to Taiwanese fruit growers that they set up in China itself. The government, however, is opposed to this because of the risk of intellectual property theft. Large quantities of both money and effort have been expended on improving both plant stock and growing techniques, and these superior materials could easily be stolen and techniques copied in China, with the possible result that China-grown fruit of Taiwanese varieties could end up replacing Taiwan's own produce in international markets. In 2005 China (not including Hong Kong) accounted for 3 percent of the total value of Taiwan's fruit exports, according to COA statistics.

I'm sure that farmers were switching the KMT left and right, thanks to the impact of that 3% of the 5% of the fruit market. The Mainland Affairs Council noted last October that:

"...Taiwan’s fruit exports to China amounted to only US$2.49 million in the first eight months of 2006, representing just 3.4 percent of total fruit exports. If fruit exports to Hong Kong are also included, the total is US$8.8 million, representing a slight increase of 13.3 percent as compared to the same period in 2005."

Just to put that in perspective, iceberg lettuce sales to Japan last year were worth US$1.2 million. I think our friend the Economist columnist has spent too much time listening to mainland triumphalists, and not enough poring over the numbers.

The article also demonstrates other misunderstandings of Taiwan, including the pro forma nod to Ma Ying-jeou as the favorite for the 2008 race:

Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), and the presumed favourite for the presidency next spring despite also facing corruption charges (it seems to come with the territory), says he favours seeking an “economic partnership agreement” with China.

Hmmm...and once again, a foreign media outlet fails to call the KMT by its formal English name, the Chinese Nationalist Party. On the whole it is partial to Beijing, and advances a common view, namely that economic closeness must mean political integration:

Taiwan’s economic role ought to be clear. Instead of fretting about the loss of manufacturing to China, the island should be fostering competition in services—design, logistics, finance and so on.

As with Hong Kong, that can be Taiwan’s path to greater prosperity. But also as with Hong Kong, it means being joined ever closer to China, and that process may prove both irreversible and unstoppable.

"Inevitability" is a common pro-Beijing theme -- one that abjures the victim to "Lie down and stop struggling!". History teaches that nations with close linguistic and cultural ties need not become one no matter what the level of economic integration (see history of US and Canada) and will actively resist even if annexed (see history of Ukraine and Russia, Poland and Russia...). The fact is that annexation to China is neither necessary for enjoyment of the economic benefits of close integration, nor inevitable.

It is sad when columnists from democratic states, instead of engaging in a robust, thoughtful, and historically-informed discourse about the island's fate, simply repeat Beijing's claims as if they constituted some repository of wisdom and insight. If Taiwan boils slowly, it is because the international media keep helping Beijing schlep logs for the fire.

[Taiwan] [China]

Confluence of Interest

Last week I had to give a presentation in Business Research Methods class. There were three presentations due that day -- one on the philosophy of science as it related to research, one on qualitative methodology, and one on research ethics. Here's a test to see whether you really understand Taiwan: if you can spot which presentation was given to the foreigner without having to think about it, congratulations, it's time to go home. You've been here too long.

After I gave the presentation on research ethics the teacher gave a short talk to the whole class. Americans, he said, have a good handle on the ethical problem of conflict of interest, while Chinese are not apt to see it in places that Americans might. Why? Guanxi networks. Relationships in Chinese society are fed and watered by reciprocal exchanges of gift and favors, and because there is no civil society where people are expected to interact with each other while maintaining a proscribed distance, everyone, especially in the upper levels of society, is busily establishing, maintaining, and cultivating their guanxi, regardless of who with. Conflict of interest is simply not an issue. Thus, it is no suprise to read in the Taipei Times today that a prosecutor appears to have taken a gambling vacation to a foreign casino with an alleged mobster. The article is a classic and every sentence is pregnant....

Minister of Justice Morley Shih (施茂林) said yesterday that the ministry had launched an investigation against a senior prosecutor who was reported by local media to have frequented a South Korean casino with a gangster.

Next Magazine reported yesterday that Shen Ming-yen (沈明彥), 65, of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office, had engaged in gambling activities at a casino on Cheju Island, South Korea, in December 2002 accompanied by suspected gangster Huang Ju-yi (黃如意).

Former speaker of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly Liu Ping-wei (劉炳偉) was also on the trip, the report said.

Shen lost more than NT$5 million (US$151,000) at the casino, while Liu lost about NT$100 million, the report said. The report added that Huang allegedly lent NT$5 million to Shen to cover his losses, of which Shen has only returned NT$1 million and refused to repay the rest.

Shih told a legislative judicial committee meeting yesterday that Shen would be severely disciplined if it was discovered that the casino trip in the company of a suspected gangster took place.

In November 2002, Huang also organized a gambling trip to Cheju Island for former deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office Chen Che-nan (陳哲男) and former Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp vice chairman Chen Min-hsien (陳敏賢).

Chen Che-nan, accompanied by Chen Min-hsien, was photographed gambling at the casino and the publication of the picture by media in October 2005 triggered a probe into Chen Chen-nan's activities.

The two Chens were subsequently found guilty of corruption.

In 2003, then Taipei prosecutor Ko Chin-chu (柯金柱) launched an investigation into Huang over suspicions of his criminal activities, but asked Huang to pay him a bribe of NT$1.2 million in return for the promise that Huang would not be indicted.

Ko was indicted earlier this month on corruption charges related to the bribe.

Taipei prosecutors said Huang was currently in China.

Conflict of interest? What conflict of interest? Here is a rich array of connections -- Huang takes prosecutors and DPP politicians out for a gambling expedition -- a month after that, he is the object of an investigation by the Taipei prosecutor's office -- who ask him for a bribe to forget the case. Where is Huang? China, of course.

This kind of relationship is par for the course. The prosecutor who investigated Ma Ying-jeou and recommended leniency had the former mayor and KMT chairman as a witness at his wedding. During the Chen Shui-bian investigation, the lead prosecutor had dinner with Lee Teng-hui at his home, to question him there, instead of bringing him into the office to question him formally and with witnesses. And a couple of weeks ago the nation's top prosecutor enjoyed a four hour dinner at the home of a man who is an important suspect in the Chen Shui-bian mess:

Lawmakers across party lines criticized the nation's top prosecutor for dining with the the first family's former doctor, Huang Fang-yen (黃芳彥), a suspect in the Sogo voucher scandal.

"It proved that state public prosecutor-general Chen Tsung-ming (陳聰明) has close ties to political figures," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Kuo Su-chun (郭素春) said yesterday.

The KMT legislative caucus questions whether Chen is able to fairly lead prosecutors in the fight against political corruption, she added.

In response, Chen told reporters he thought there was nothing wrong with dining with Huang, an old friend, saying they talked about private matters only.

Chen dined at Huang's residence on Monday evening, staying there for four hours.

A neighbor who is a Taipei judge saw Chen enter Huang's residence and later told the media about the visit. Chen admitted he met Huang at his home.

It's OK. I can visit because the man our office is investigating is "an old friend."

[Taiwan] [corruption]

AP. Jerusalem Post on the Taiwan Nazis

The Simon Weisenthal Center has an analysis of the Nazis in Taiwan in the Jerusalem Post:

The party envisioned by Lan is not the typical initiative by European anti-Semites with nostalgia for the Third Reich and definite anti-Jewish proclivities, but rather a completely different, much less dangerous, but still extremely worrying issue that we have failed to address adequately.

While high school and university courses in Taiwan cover European history, they clearly do not devote sufficient attention to the Holocaust and its universal implications. This also explains why in the relatively recent past, possibly well-intentioned if woefully ignorant Taiwanese entrepreneurs have used Nazi symbols and the likeness of Hitler to help publicize products or restaurants.

Most Europeans today have granted the Holocaust iconic status as the ultimate genocide and a watershed event in the annals of mankind, and share a revulsion to anything associated with the Nazis and their collaborators.

But in the Far East, there is little knowledge of the fate of European Jewry and almost no understanding of the deeply-rooted disgust most Europeans feel for Nazi images.

For obvious reasons, Israel and the Jewish world have focused most of our Holocaust education efforts in places where we assumed it was most needed. Asia, the Far East in particular, have basically been ignored.

The AP ran a story on them, quoting Emile Sheng. Haven't heard from him since he vanished into the Taipei City RDEC after Hau was elected. It seems the Tainazis want traditional values....

But Chao, studying for his a graduate degree in political science at Taipei's prestigious National Chengchi University (國立政治大學), denied he was anti-Jewish, and maintained his intention was to foster greater nationalism in Taiwan, an island of 23 million people off China's southeastern coast.

"My main goal is to develop Taiwan's strength and to foster national unity," Chao said. "I think we have to work hard to restore traditional Chinese values like Confucianism."

[Taiwan]

"If we dig straight down from Taichung....

......we hit Paraguay. Those taike are all gauchos on the other side of the world....

[Taiwan] (hat tip to Joel Haas)

Loch Ness and the Taiwan Strait

Loch Ness and the Taiwan Strait have something in common. They are both home to elusive, difficult to see or photograph creatures that excite all who come into contact with them, and exasperate the duly constituted authorities, even though they agree that their continued existence is good for the locals.....

John Tkacik published an excellent piece in the Taipei Times today outlining some of the issues regarding Taiwan's homegrown version of Nessie, the Status Quo. Tkacik, a longtime supporter of the island who grew up in Taiwan and went to international school in Taipei as a wee lad, has very interesting comments on Washington's policy drift (the piece is top-drawer and should be read in its entirety):

Beyond that third point, Kelly had to admit he was "not sure" he "very easily could define ... `our' one China policy." Nonetheless he continued, "I can tell you what it is not." It is not the "one China" principle that Beijing suggests, and it may not be the definition that some would have in Taiwan. Alas, that is as close as a State Department official has ever come to defining "our one China policy" in private or in public. Nor, as it happens, has any US official ever "defined" the "status quo as we define it."

Which raises two core questions for US policy: First, what are the "use of force" and the "threat of force" and what, exactly, is Taiwan's status, as far as the US is concerned? And second, what is the US going to do if either side does something the US "does not support?"

The fact is that Washington has no answers to these core questions -- either publicly or in confidential policy documents circulated among decisionmakers. Hence, Washington's political leaders should not be surprised when Washington's Delphic pronouncements are interpreted arbitrarily in both Beijing and Taipei.

As Tkacik notes, as a result of Washington's lack of a clear public or private policy, Beijing just does whatever it damn well pleases. The antidote to Beijing's growing awareness of Washington's weakness and vacillation is a clear statement of policy in response to Beijing's recent changes in the status quo, such as the missile buildup and the revolting Anti-Succession Law:

The US government must also understand that so long as Taiwan refuses to accept Beijing's sovereignty, Beijing's long-term strategy will be to isolate Taiwan in the international community to the most extreme extent possible.

Thus, when China gets obstreperous on the Taiwan issue, White House and Cabinet spokespersons should publicly articulate the common-sense stance that "the United States does not recognize or accept that China has any right whatsoever under international law to use or threaten the use of force against democratic Taiwan." (This has the advantage of actually being US policy, but it has never been stated in public.)

In background to journalists and reporters, US "senior officials" could explain that even a Taiwanese declaration of independence would just be "words on paper" and would not change any country's behavior or affect China's security posture? This wording would make it clear that the US does not now recognize, and never has recognized, China's territorial claims to Taiwan.

I should add that one consequence of the policy drift in Washington is that without clear guidance from policymakers at the top, the US State Department is for practical purposes increasingly adopting a pro-Beijing position on the Taiwan question. After all, Beijing is the only one with a clearly defined position: Taiwan is mine Mine MINE! Almost by default, State has defined the status quo as "whatever is acceptable to Beijing." It goes without saying that this lack of will or leverage in our East Asian policy is yet another pernicious effect of our criminal, and criminally stupid, war in Iraq.

[Taiwan] [Tkacik] [US] [China] [US Foreign Policy] [State Department]

DPP Presidential Candidates -- Striking that Moderate Tone

The local media reported yesterday that DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun, currently hoping to become the DPP Presidential candidate, said yesterday that he would scrap the Four Noes (Taiwan News):

Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Yu Shyi-kun (游錫<方方土>) said yesterday that he would drop the so-called "four noes" pledge of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and press for Taiwan's "normalization" if he wins the March 2008 presidential election as the Democratic Progressive Party candidate.

In his May 20, 2000 inaugural address, Chen declared that "as long as the Chinese Communist Party regime bears no intention to use military force against Taiwan," he would not declare independence, change Taiwan's official name or promote a plebiscite on independence or unification.

However, in an interview with Formosa Television yesterday evening, Yu, said the "four noes" were "a product of the Cold War era" in which the United States held to a "one China policy" founded on the contesting claims by the CCP regime and the then ruling Kuomintang in Taipei that they represented "China."

Yu said that the 12 years of rule by Taiwan's first native born president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was devoted to the task of "political democratization" and that, after the transfer of political power to the DPP in May 2000, the two terms of President Chen administration had been devoted to "the Taiwanization of the state."

"The historical mission after 2008" will be "normalization of the country, for which we need full governance, full reform and full independence," said Yu, who is who is running against Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) for the DPP's nomination.

Virtually all Greens are pro-independence; that is by definition what being Green is. Appealing to that base means stoking Taiwan nationalism. This applies to anyone who runs on a Green ticket and chooses to play the identity politics game. Yu was one of the original conveners of the DPP; it was he who formally opened the Yilan chapter of the tangwai ("outside the party") Public Policy Research Organization in 1984 that helped lay the groundwork for the establishment of the DPP in 1986.

[Taiwan] [2008 Presidential Election] [DPP]

Daily Links, Mar 14

The United States of Creationism.

While I am working to have the phrase Enter the letters as they are shown in the image banned, you can read these great blog posts:

As I did with Spain and Italy, Jerome Keating points to still more examples of how a nation coming to grips with its past replaces authoritarian monuments with symbols of hope, freedom, and remembrance. What Taiwan is doing perfectly normal.

Orz Orz Orz That's Impossible! has been putting up one informative post after another. Orz Orz Orz. Read this speculation on Wang and his hopes for a Presidential run. And this round up post on the political news. And this useful map of the election districts.Orz Orz Orz fnord

The Foreigner is back and posting on the apologetics for Chiang Kai-shek. Welcome back!

Taiwan Airpower gives the list of ROC navy port calls in Taiwan this year.

Wulingren has a long and informative post on the Nazi phenomenon in Taiwan.

[Taiwan]

New articles on China at Japan Focus

Japan Focus offers two interesting articles:

A well-illustrated article using Braudel's work on the Med to think about China's historical relations with southeast Asia. Very interesting. A second article discusses China's expansion into the ASEAN region. It's a good thing our President is focused on losing two (soon to be three) wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, instead of on silly sideshows like global warming and China.

[Taiwan] [China] [Japan]

Nazi Group Seeks Out NGO Status

Aneglica Oung reports on the group of Taiwanese students who want to be Nazis -- and reflects on some of the contradictions of Nazism in the local context.

With Alberts' help, the Taipei Times located the apartment in which the Nazi flag was displayed. It was located in a gated community in Tienmu. A man in his late thirties answered the door and agreed to speak to us, on condition of anonymity.

"Hitler did a lot of bad things which I don't condone, but he also turned Germany from a weak and divided nation into a world power," he said. "I admire that because unity and strength is what Taiwan needs. Democracy and capitalism have their good qualities, but they have left our collective spirit chaotic, flagging and mired in defeatism."

These comments mirrored the rhetoric found on the NSA blog.

"We have seen relentless societal and political chaos since democracy was instituted in this country ... wake up, youths of Taiwan!" an open letter said.

However, the man claimed he had never heard of the NSA and had a view of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) legacy that was diametrically opposed to Hsu's.

"Taiwan used to be a part of the axis as a part of Japan," he said. "Who did more for Taiwan than Goto Shinpei as the governor-general?"

"When the KMT came, they were the brutal occupiers, they oppressed the Taiwanese," the man said.

Asked if he believed he would have fit in society if Taiwan were still under Japanese occupation, the man replied: "I am in contact with hard-right [sic] elements in Japan ... they all love Taiwanese people. If the KMT did not take over Taiwan, I believe that in time we would have been accepted as Japanese."

The group is apparently meeting somewhere in Taichung on Saturday the 17th. I'd love to drop by and engage in a little citizen journalism...anyone know where it is?

[Taiwan]

Letter: absolutely the last word on AP and Lu

The Taipei Times was kind enough to run my letter on the AP's use of the "scum of nation" in describing Vice President Lu:

What AP Did

The recent "scum of the nation" flap, and the response to it from the Taipei Times, Associated Press (AP) and other organizations, shows that the media still do not understand why Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) -- along with those of us who follow international media coverage of Taiwan -- find the story so offensive.

The issue is not, as the Taipei Times framed it in a recent editorial ("Annette Lu tames the world press," March 10, page 8), one of naive bias on the part of CNN and AP. Nobody is accusing either organization of slanting stories to favor China. Rather, the issue is the foreign media's uncritical incorporation of propaganda from Beijing into its reporting on Taiwan in a way that is automatic and unconsidered, allowing those opinions to shape its discourse on the nation, instead of developing a robust understanding of Taiwan in its own context.

(more)

For historical purposes, here is the paragraph on the assassination attempt in its entirety as originally written:

"Near the end of the article the writer refers to the assassination attempt by a pan-Blue supporter on Chen and Lu in 2004, noting "The opposition alleged the shooting was staged to win sympathy votes." Fundamentally, there was no reason to mention the shooting; it is irrelevant to Lu's presidential candidacy. The use of "the opposition" coyly refuses to name the KMT (the failure to use "Chinese Nationalist Party" as the correct name of the KMT is widespread in the international media). The writer also failed to mention that no evidence supports the opposition claims, making a hollow pretense of the sound journalistic ethic of balance in ssigning equal weight to nonsense claims, and using the phrase "the police said" as if no investigation was conducted and no chain of evidence was followed. Note that opposition's claim is set off in a sentence of its own, and that it comes last in the discussion of the assassination attempt. It goes with saying that Beijing supports the opposition on that one."

The editor was forced to shrink it a little; my habit of writing long sentences filled with parenthetical comments doesn't really work in the newspaper context. One thing I could kick myself for was forgetting to mention how the Scum of the Nation flap illustrated yet another silly habit of the international media -- its reliance on people based in Beijing and Hong Kong for commentary on Taiwan. As Tetsuo at Forumosa put it, commenting on another blog, that is like asking your Washington DC correspondent for a report on what is going on Canberra.

[Taiwan] [media] [AP] [Annette Lu]

Daily Links, March 13, 2007

Hiding out from the Soviet Bloc weather we've been having? Enjoy some blog posts....

Alton discusses a Taiwan Review article on the Taipei Artist's Village.

Scott offers a long piece on Ming Chuan U's plan to get accredited by the Middle States Accreditation organization.

Paogao, one of my favorite bloggers, comes down on the Flickr side in Flickr vs. Zoomr. Agreed. Speaking of online content management, check out Kerim's post on WordPress.

Taoyuan Nights explains Suwadee.

Pinyin News notes the use of Hanyu Pinyin by Taiwanese mandarin teachers in Thailand.

[Taiwan]

Pig DNA: Pacific Colonizers originated in Vietnam, not Taiwan

A new study on pig DNA says it's Vietnam:

Scientists from Durham University and the University of Oxford, studying DNA and tooth shape in modern and ancient pigs, have revealed that, in direct contradiction to longstanding ideas, ancient human colonists may have originated in Vietnam and travelled between numerous islands before first reaching New Guinea, and later landing on Hawaii and French Polynesia.

Using mitochondrial DNA obtained from modern and ancient pigs across East Asia and the Pacific, the researchers demonstrated that a single genetic heritage is shared by modern Vietnamese wild boar, modern feral pigs on the islands of Sumatra, Java, and New Guinea, ancient Lapita pigs in Near Oceania, and modern and ancient domestic pigs on several Pacific Islands.

The study results, published today in the prestigious academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, contradict established models of human migration which assert that the ancestors of Pacific islanders originated in Taiwan or Island Southeast Asia, and travelled along routes that pass through the Philippines as they dispersed into the remote Pacific.

Source

I may be prejudiced, but it seems to me that there is no contradiction here. Pigs came from one place and were carried to and from places where people already were.

[Taiwan]

Taiwan in Post-Colonial Era (French)

Blogger Ed en Vadrouille said in a comment on another post....

++++++++++

........I received an invitation from the "Centre of French Studies on Modern China" (CEFC) for a conference entitled "Interpretation of Taiwanese history in the Post-colonial era".

I will stress out the "Post-Colonial era" which I found very telling.

The email goes on about how since the end of the martial law a new collective conscience has emerged and has tried to provide a new reading of history in line with "the community of shared fates" Taiwanese want to be.

If any of you happen to understand French and are interested in the topic, it is taking place on the 23rd of March at 2.30pm, in the room B-202 of the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, at the Academia Sinica.

You can contact cefc(@)gate.sinica.edu.tw for more info.

+++++++++++++

[Taiwan]

China Times early Presidential Poll

The China Times has a new poll out with early predictions of the election. It has Ma up over Su or Hsieh by 20 points, 48-29, with 23% having no opinion, while Su/Hsieh beat Wang 38-32 with 30% having no opinion. The China Times organization also polled on Ma as an independent:

如果王金平代表國民黨、馬英九獨立參選，蘇貞昌或謝長廷代表民進黨出馬，受訪者的答案又有所不同，11.1％表示會支持王金平，42.5％表示支持馬英九，27.6％表示將會支持蘇貞昌或謝長廷，18.8％表示沒意見。

If Wang Jin-pyng represents the KMT, and Ma Ying-jeou participates as an independent, and Su or Hsieh represents the DPP, among those surveyed, 11.1% said they would support Wang, 42.5% said they'd support Ma, 27.6% said they'd support [DPP candidate], and 18.8% had no opinion.

The article went on to note that if Ma were convicted, those numbers are 13.5, 35.2, 31.1, and 20.2, respectively.

The survey was conducted by phone, probably in northern Taiwan, since I deem it unlikely the organization would spend all that money making long distance calls. Polls from Blue organizations are notorious for their wild inaccuracy, and these numbers should be read as indicative of the preferences of the China Times rather than as a valid representation of the electorate. Laughably, the paper claims it has a margin of error of 2.9%. Yes, and did you know that 63.8% of statistics are made up on the spot?

UPDATE: From the comment below, A New Taiwan poll has Hsieh up on Ma 53% to 47%, which seems a very reasonable figure.

[Taiwan] [DPP] [KMT] [Ma Ying-jeou] [Wang Jin-pyng]

And in this corner, Wang....

It seems a pity to leave the blogging day without a pointer to the ongoing discussions in the KMT over who will be on the ticket. Wang-Ma? Ma-Wang? Lien-Wang? Wang-Soong? Anything seems possible these days. But Wang Jin-pyng has the insightful comment:

Meanwhile, Wang yesterday said that he favored a Wang-Ma rather than a Ma-Wang presidential ticket, saying that the former one was a winning combination.

"If [I were to be paired up with Ma], of course it should be a Wang-Ma ticket," Wang told reporters when asked for comment on Ma's earlier remarks.

"Everyone wants the best for himself and will strive for it. I don't remember whether I have spoken about this, but what I am thinking about in my heart is a Wang-Ma ticket," Wang said.

Wang said that a Ma-Wang ticket would not be a threat to the DPP because the DPP has prepared itself for beating Ma in next year's presidential election.

"Only a presidential ticket led by a pro-localization candidate can help the KMT win the election," Wang said, without elaborating.

Not much else to be said; Wang hit the nail on the head. A ticket with Wang at the fore might do very well, but doesn't seem likely. That's Impossible doesn't think there is much chance of a Wang-Ma pair-up, either. The pro-KMT China Post, in an article by "China Post Staff" -- which usually indicates a translation from their sister publication -- noted the growing chill in the KMT leadership:

An emerging chill in the relationship among top leaders of the Kuomintang (KMT) is likely to complicate an earlier emergence of a consensus candidate for the main opposition party.

In spite of calls for restraining presidential hopefuls' aides from spreading public and controversial statements that might sow discord, the cold relations between Ma Ying-jeou, a former KMT chairman, and Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng seemed to show no signs of improvement.

The two are currently rated as the two front-runners to win the party's nomination for the 2008 presidential race, although Ma enjoys a commanding lead over Wang in all major public opinion polls.

Analysts said that both of them have shown no genuine and concrete moves to form a team despite their open remarks that they will never cause any rift within the party that will hamper the KMT's campaign for returning to power next year.

Ma has so far refrained to make a commitment on asking Wang to be his running mate as suggested by many, saying the decision should not be made since no one has even formally registered for the party primary.

One thing about Ma -- the man is always on-message:

In response to Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng's (王金平) refusal to play second fiddle and run as the vice-presidential candidate on the party's ticket, Ma said he realized that grassroots supporters did not take the pair-up issue too seriously, adding that he would focus his attention on seeking solutions to Taiwan's economic difficulties.

Bingo. Ma has announced that he's going to run on the economy -- "save Taiwan from poverty" was pretty much how he put it the other day -- and having done that, he's constantly on message: it's the economy, stupid.

I'm beginning to wonder if Ma Ying-jeou, currently without a post in either the government or the KMT and thus, just an ordinary jeou, is fast approaching his sell-by date. If another six months go by it may dawn on some in the KMT that Ma's star has peaked. Time will only improve Wang's longshot bid for the Presidential candidacy. UberChairmanforLife Lien Chan is back in the public eye and liking it. The Taipei Times report mainly focused on the by-play between party insiders over who will get the nod for the KMT Chairmanship, with reference to the influence of Lien Chan, but the Taiwan News also mentioned six-term legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), stirring up the pot with her bid:

To enter the race, Hung needs to collect the signatures of 3 percent of eligible party members. She said in a press conference yesterday, however, that many party members' names, addresses, or telephone numbers were missing in the detailed membership list provided by party headquarters.

The list showed that 278,000 party members had paid their annual membership fees and thus were eligible to vote in the election for chairman, she said, meaning she will need to collect nearly 8,500 signatures to enter the race.

Looking for data

Having paid an NT$2 million entry fee to participate in the election, Hung said she should have access to more complete data so that she can complete the signature-gathering process.

If she cannot successfully register as a candidate in the election by March 18, the party could suffer a big blow to its image, she said.

Soliciting support

Hung urged all party members who hope to see at least two candidates vying for the chairmanship to contact her and help her meet the signature threshold.

Hung, 59, has served six consecutive terms as a legislator and has a reputation for having a sharp tongue.

Believed to be closely associated with KMT Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), she has denied her that her candidacy represents any factional interests, saying she made the decision to run on her own.

The party has taken considerable effort to avoid a split between supporters of Ma and those of Wang and hopes to avoid a contentious internal election.

One opponent

Hung's only rival in the race will be Wu Po-hsiung, seen as an ally of Ma Ying-jeou.The 70-year-old Wu has served as secretary-general to former President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and as KMT secretary-general.

Jason from Wandering to Tamshui pointed out over on That's Impossible! that she was the legislator who taught her dog to attack when it heard the phrase "A-Bian," the President's nickname. Say, wonder how the last chairmanship election was conducted, if so many dues-paying KMT members can't be verified.....cheating somehow? Naw. Not the KMT.

Meanwhile the DPP is arguing over whether to have a primary or simply decide in the time-honored, smoke-filled room fashion.....

[Taiwan] [DPP] [KMT] [Ma Ying-jeou]