Stephen Yates at the Shannon Meet up, Dec 9, 2007

Stephen Yates (left) talks with former AIT official Syd Goldsmith

Our speaker at the Shannon meet up was Stephen Yates, the former advisor to Vice President Darth Dick Cheney. Despite the impression one gets from the media that Bush Administration officials tend to suffer from a singular lack of human feeling, Yates turned out to be eminently approachable, personable, funny, balanced, and very insightful. Probably they revert to normal after the implant is removed....

Anyway, Yates took his listeners on a tour of Bush Administration Taiwan policy, and gave some surprisingly frank assessments of affairs on the inside (which I'm not sharing with you because -- dammit -- you should have been there). Along the way he confirmed the worst of my fears about the Bush Administration's view of the world.

What's the problem with Chen and the Bush Administration? Yates explained that back in 2000 the Administration came into office with a group of people who were fairly knowledgeable about and interested in Asia. Cheney's fascination with Asia dated back to the 70s when Cheney worked in the Ford Administration. Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage were two other neocons with Asia connections.

But then came 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. At the same time, overtures from Chen Shui-bian were being rebuffed by China. In 2002, during the planning for the Iraq War, Chen announced the "one country on each side of the Strait" paradigm in response to Chinese intransigence. The Bush Administration, caught up in war planning, complained that Chen was making trouble for it. Doesn't he know he's rocking the boat? Yates said that he had explained that of course Chen had no idea what was going on, because he lives in an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean. After that the Bush Administration simply wanted Chen to shut up so it could get on with its war in Iraq. As I've noted numerous times, since China chooses when Chen should be defined as "provocative," the Bush Administration position essentially concedes its strategic flexibility and moral high ground to China. Nor does Chen help when he makes moves without informing the US beforehand.....no wonder I need strong drink after blogging on our Taiwan policy.

Yates discussed the National Unification Council flap, whose termination by Chen was criticized by the US. Yates said that in Washington there were complaints that the move was entirely symbolic -- you're imposing your symbolism on us! The Administration kvetched. But you're imposing your symbolism on us, complained Chen back, an elegant refutation of the KMT talking point one often hears that Chen is "ideological" -- always given, of course, with a wink and nod that assures that the speaker himself is entirely objective and not motivated by any ideology.

Yates also observed that US complaints about Taiwan's behavior, when such behavior is largely harmless and symbolic, risk US credibility. Given the jeers that met Sarkozy's kowtow to China on Taiwan and Tibet after the recent French visit there, I can only echo that fear. But then, given our behavior in Iraq, I'm afraid we don't have much credibility to put at risk anymore. Someone remarked -- I can't remember who -- that Chen Shui-bian is saying the things about China that the US really ought to be saying.

According to Yates, another structural problem with the US approach is that since the Bush Administration has curtailed high-level contacts, Bush Administration contact with Taiwan is carried on by mid-level officials who come out of policy backgrounds. Those are the kind of people, Yates pointed out, who think politics is dirty and shallow. They have never run for office and do not grok the mentality of politicians. Taiwan is also beset with other problems -- too many voices attempt to speak for Taiwan, they don't all say the same thing, and they work at cross-purposes, sometimes deliberately. And China's lobbying power is much greater, with many powerful people having heavily monied connections to China (see the end of the post).

Yates, who did time at Heritage, repeated many of the same criticisms of officials in key Taiwan/China policymaking positions in the Bush Administration that other conservatives have offered. He also noted that there are no Congressman for whom China/Taiwan is a top five priority. Time was when powerful Congressman made China policy their business, he said, noting that someone like Jesse Helms would hold hearings and take other action. He compared recent statements by Sen. John Warner, whom, he said, spoke out without bothering to get informed (as I pointed out on this blog). Gone are the days when Congressmen like Sen. Claiborne Pell and Reps. Stephen Solarz and Jim Leach worked to keep Taiwan a priority and put an effort into understanding its gonzo politics.

Because the Administration wants Taiwan to keep quiet while it pursues its war in Iraq, Yates says it favors Ma Ying-jeou, who is perceived to be the one who will keep Taiwan quiet. To those of us watching from the outside, its bias is as obvious as it is erroneous-- the same kind of short-sightedness, driven by Realpolitik (Real Men Decide the Fate of Nations^©), under which the US will make permanent concessions to China in exchange for ephemeral gains. Yates and others commenting noted that Kissinger got taken to the cleaners by the Chinese. But Kissinger was a Manly Man, who decided the fate of nations.....US officials are going to be quite surprised by the big changes the pro-China ideologue Ma will make in the cross-strait relationship. Don't say you weren't warned....

As for arms sales, Yates at one point remarked that they were generally a very good thing. Speaking on President Bush's statement that the US would defend Taiwan, Yates said that this statement was more or less implicitly in response to China's lack of cooperation in the incident in which a Chinese fighter had a mid-air collision with a US military intelligence aircraft. Yates said that the White House picked up the hotline and called China....and incredibly, nobody answered! Personally, I have no doubt that nothing nefarious was happening. Instead, the hotline rang and everyone in the room froze: "Does anyone here speak English".....?

All in all, Yates proved to be engaging and informative, the kind of person you'd be equally happy with running your Taiwan policy or swapping beers with at the Taiwan Beer bar. A good time was had by all, and too bad you weren't there.

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My friend Marc Anthony was kind enough to forward some links for Yates. Here's some of his Heritage Foundation Stuff:

Why Normal Trade With China Should Continue
No Concessions to China - After the Mistaken Embassy Bombing
Put Reform Before Reward at the China Summit

...along with an interview from those days. Best of all is this World Net Daily piece on how Elaine Chao, who came in to head up the Asian program at Heritage and has good connections to the Chinese leadership, got rid of panda bashers and helped tone down criticism of China at Heritage. Chao is the wife of powerful Sen. Mitch McConnell (R). On the other side of aisle, powerful Sen. Diane Feinstein (D ^(DINO)), is the wife of a major investor in China. Wonder why we don't have a China policy? Now you know.....

UPDATE: the Taipei Times interview with Yates, the article appearing on the 19th of Dec.

[Taiwan] [China] [Kitty Hawk] [US]

Ignoring the Kitty Hawk Lesson

The media are reporting on yet another warning from the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Thomas Christensen, on our referendum. This report is from the DPA, which doesn't even need to slant the piece the way it often does; Christensen's remarks are already pro-China enough. To wit:

A senior US official Thursday reiterated Washington's warning against Taiwan's planned referendum on joining the United Nations, calling the move risky and provocative, according to Taiwan press reports.

The warning was made by Thomas Christensen, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, at a news conference held specially for US-based Taiwan reporters, the Central News Agency said in a dispatch from Washington.

Tawian is planning to hold the referendum alongside the presidential election in March 2008 to ask voters if the island should join the United Nations under the name Taiwan.

At the news conference held at the State Department, Christensen said the US had openly and privately expressed objections to Taiwan's UN referendum.

The US believed the referendum signified that Taiwan was seeking to change the status quo of the Taiwan Strait, violating the pledges President Chen Shui-ban made when he began his first term in 2000.

The pledges included not changing Taiwan's title - the Republic of China - and not holding a referendum on independence from, or unification with, China.

These remarks do not differ from the normal Bush Administration script, in which China's missile buildups are never labeled provocative, but a referendum from Taiwan which cannot possibly succeed -- and whose ultimate end is entirely under China's control -- is considered "risky" (Chen smacked back the following day). US behavior must drive the Chinese absolutely wacky -- on one hand, the US maintains a studied silence on the Chinese military build up, does not sell Taiwan needed weapons, and labels Chen's behavior "provocative." It almost looks like a clear invitation to invade. Yet the Navy sent Kitty Hawk through the Taiwan Strait. And Congress keeps issuing expressions of support.... US inconsistency is neatly encapsulated in the State Department's rapid response to the UN Sec-Ban's claim that Taiwan was part of China -- it insisted that the status of Taiwan is not determined. But look on that selfsame department's website, and there the status of Taiwan is indeed determined -- it is part of China.

Arrgh.

I said it before, but let's say it again, with a more expanded version:

Anyone who has observed China's relations with the outside world for any length of time has seen this pattern again and again. In the midst of negotiations with the Vatican, it consecrates two bishops for the state Church. In the midst of negotiations over the Torch coming to Taiwan, it denies a visa to the representative of the city of Kaohsiung to discuss games held there in 2009. Arriving in India for negotiations, its ambassador announces a whole Indian state is part of China. Some months back the Chinese government shut down an expat magazine in China that was widely considered the most sympathetic and supportive expat rag in the nation. After attending the ASEAN meeting in November where it has positive interactions with ASEAN members, it immediately goes out and holds war games in waters disputed by those nations, without informing them. China gets the Olympics, and crackdowns on the internet, and journalists intensify, while state security arrests double.

Catch the pattern?

The US Navy struggled for the better part of a decade to establish good relations with China, to erect early warning systems to help stabilize the regional military situation, to engage in exchange programs, offering access and information to the Chinese. It got little in return, and then the Chinese decided to block Kitty Hawk's access to Hong Kong. Slap! Remember your place in relation to the Throne!

The reaction of China-watchers was quite interesting, sort of like a tribe of natives, their village destroyed by lava, trying to find some rational reason for the whims of the volcano god. China was angered by weapons sales to Taiwan. Nope, it was Tibet. No, they wanted to demonstrate their ambition to boot the US from Asia. Of course, all this was but to say: if only our men had been braver and our women more chaste, the volcano god wouldn't have wiped out our homes.

Looking at Kitty Hawk, what results do you think the Bush Administration is going to get for State's support of the Chinese position on Taiwan?

[Taiwan] [China] [Kitty Hawk] [missiles] [US] [US Navy]

AFP Again *Sigh*

Yesterday, as I was watching the mess over at the Memorial Formerly Known as CKS Memorial on TV in the school cafeteria, I thought to myself that this was certain to trigger a flood of really bad articles in the foreign media about Taiwan. Already AFP is ahead of the curve on that one....

Note how the anti-DPP framing begins with the headline:

Taiwan leader defends move to downplay Chiang legacy

Imagine an article written about getting rid of the memorials of Soviet colonialism in Eastern Europe entitled Polish Leader defends move to downplay Communist legacy. No one would regard "downplaying" the authoritarian past as a move that required a "defense." This is just another demonstration of the double standards that infest the discourse on democratic change in this part of the world -- the world press cheered the removal of statues in Eastern Europe, but it doesn't appear able to present the same forthright position on Taiwan. Just read this BBC article on a very similar situation in Estonia, which I'll be getting back to.

From the opening frame of the article, it is very clear where the writer's sympathies lie.

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian Thursday defended a move to take the name of Chiang Kai-shek off a memorial gate, calling the late leader a "dictator" who should not be honoured.

"This is the question of whether we should worship a dictator, an authoritative ruler who had suppressed human rights, as a god or a feudal emperor," said Chen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in a letter posted on his website.

Chiang, who died in 1975, is remembered by many as the leader who laid the foundation of Taiwan's economic prosperity and safeguarded the island from Chinese invasion.

He led the Kuomintang (KMT) party, which ruled Taiwan for 51 years until 2000 when it lost power to the DPP.

It's quite blatant here -- the accusation of being a dictator -- which is a historical fact -- is placed on the lips of the DPP President (by contrast, AFP has no trouble calling Stalin a dictator. Double standards, anyone?). The reporter then writes the counterargument from the narrator's own perspective, where it carries more weight than it would if it had been placed in the mouth of some KMT spokesperson. Note the soft language as well -- Chiang safeguarded Taiwan (that was actually the US Navy) and the KMT ruled Taiwan -- no mention of martial law in association with the KMT, never mind the political killings. The KMT argument repeated here by AFP is the functional equivalent of Russia's claim that its army saved Estonia from Nazism, and omitting mention of the Communist Party's authoritarian rule. Note below that the BBC has no trouble referring to Soviet control of Estonia as "occupation" but the parallel term martial law is AWOL in the AFP article -- with one telling exception. Because AFP omits key historical facts, no reader can understand what is going on unless they already know.

By contrast, consider the BBC article on Estonia:

The president of Estonia has signed into law a bill allowing the removal of a controversial Soviet war memorial from the centre of the capital Tallinn.

The bronze statue of a Soviet soldier, erected in 1947, is regarded by many as a symbol of Soviet occupation.

However, the large ethnic-Russian population in Estonia see it as a symbol of liberation from the Nazis.

The decision has angered Russia too. The Russian parliament is expected to adopt a statement denouncing the law.

The BBC reports the respective positions, and more importantly, who they are associated with. The AFP article does not mention that the pro-Chiang position is held largely by "ethnic" mainlanders. Imagine if AFP had written:

The large memorial in downtown Taipei, the final manifestation of the personality cult the KMT fostered around the dictator, is regarded by many as a symbol of the martial law era in Taiwan, and an anachronism in the new democratic era.

The AFP piece continues in this vein:

However, the DPP holds Chiang responsible for a February 28, 1947 massacre in which thousands of local people were killed by nationalist troops during riots.

I've highlighted the slant -- it is not history but the DPP that claims Chiang was responsible for 2-28 -- and again, no mention of martial law. Observe that so far in this article, the position held by mainstream scholars and historians is depicted as the DPP position, but the opposite position is not connected to any party. It is the position of 'many.' The reporter also softens the KMT-228 connection in another, subtle way -- while in this sentence it is the nationalist troops who do the killings, the term nationalist is never used elsewhere in the article in conjunction with the KMT.

After describing the situation, AFP then brings up the KMT -- late in the article:

The opposition KMT denounced the name change, calling it a campaign ploy by the DPP to appease supporters ahead of January parliamentary polls and a March 22 presidential vote.

"Any people with a conscience will not accept such a move. Closing the memorial hall is no different from imposing martial law to crack down on Taipei," said KMT lawmaker John Chiang, grandson of the late leader.

Finally, the term martial law appears in the piece -- and in what context? An accusation against the DPP!

Great work, AFP.

UPDATE: Enjoy this AP article, where a photo is captioned:

Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian last month pushed for the removal of late leader's name from the memorial in hopes of downplaying his legacy in Taiwan, where many remember him as a dictator during his rule.

UPDATE II: Don't miss Taiwan Echo's fantastic post at Taiwan Matters on the visual material AFP provided for this highly biased piece. There's something seriously wrong with AFP.

[Taiwan] [KMT] [DPP] [media]

Daily Links, Dec 7, 2007

What's being celebrated on the blogs today?

Maddog has a great post on the lying KMT ad about the economy, and on the clash at the CKS Memorial/Taiwan democracy hall. Alive and Kicking, the blog of a local reporter, has a post on covering the mess at the hall. The always-good A-gu describes the political and legal aspects of it. ESWN has pictures and media captures; the Liberty Times said today the 'Taiwanese truck driver' was a lifelong Deep Blue who had participated in the Shih Ming-te faux protests, protested against Ma's mainstream moves for leaving the Deep Core behind, and was helping the campaign of a KMT candidate who described himself as running for legislator of China.

bent blogs on criticism of the DPP Thomas offers a pro-Blue hack on the "transitional justice" position.

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Craig has some wonderful pics of The Bushman jamming with a local Thai worker band.

David does Museums in Taichung.

Savvy finance guru Mark finds no way to get a debit card in Taiwan.

Fili on a massive Taiwan temple celebration, and with scholarship info for foreign students.

Jeff Miller has another great post on the Sino-Japanese War and Taiwan.

Jerome Keating has a post on the Taiwan's Presbyterian Church and the democracy movement.

Kerim introduces Kao Yi-sheng, one of the many remarkable Taiwanese who came out of the Japanese period, executed in 1954.

Patrick finds that someone has a Zero fighter sitting on their house An appropriate find for a link on Pearl Harbor day.

Scott blogs on Taiwan's transition into a global economy. Clearly we're not there yet, since fresh parmesan is not available everywhere.

Tea Masters on Organic Red Tea from Taiwan.

Min blogs on a woman who heard Guan Yin's voice explaining it was OK for her son to be gay.

MEDIA: Don't miss J Michael Cole's assessment of the Kitty Hawk mess. Jimmy Carter makes public the fact that Deng agreed privately that the US could go right on selling Taiwan weapons. Taiwan's exports probably increased in November, says Bloomberg. Our economy is doing so well that the KMT has been forced to claim we're making up the statistics....

EVENTS: Wild at Heart on the anti-global warming march TOMORROW, the 8th, in Taipei. Also on Saturday, here in Taichung, AmCham says: "On Saturday, December 8, 2007, the Hsiang Shang Children’s Welfare Fund is holding an international physically and mentally challenged carnival. This event will take place in the plaza of Feng Le Sculpture Park on the corner of XiangXin South and WenXin South 5th Roads. Its purpose is to raise awareness of the mentally and physically challenged among the general public, to encourage the general public to show their concern to this disadvantaged group, and most importantly to allow the mentally and physically challenged to obtain respect, dignity and self-esteem.Activities will kick off at 10:00 am and end at 4:00 pm and will include a children's coloring competition, remote-controlled plane show and performances by mentally and physically challenged groups."

NEW BLOGS: Taiwan First! contains work on Taiwan in several languages. This week I also stumbled across Pashan, a beautiful blog about hiking on The Beautiful Isle. Living in Taiwan is a new forum courtesy of the Real Taiwan.

[Taiwan]

Japan's Imperial Networks: Taiwan and Manchuria

Japan Focus, where there are always interesting articles, has two good offerings this week. First, an interesting connection between the Japanese puppet state of Manchuko and Taiwan under Japanese imperial rule emerges in this piece on Manchuko. One of the ways that being a Japanese colony affected Taiwan was that it enabled thousands of Taiwanese to travel around Asia to do things they otherwise might not have had the chance to do, with a historically new status as probationary Japanese. It also provided protection for Taiwanese operating in China, by giving them Japanese rather than Chinese citizenship (Manchukans by contrast had no citizenship, since they were going to be incorporated wholesale into the Japanese empire at some point, according to one view expressed in the article). On to the excerpt....

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Just as Korea was linked to Manchuria because it was a Japanese colony, Taiwan also developed ties with northeastern China.

Hsu Hsueh-chi (Xu Xueji), 54, who heads Academia Sinica's Institute of Taiwan History in Taipei, has since the 1990s conducted research on Taiwanese who lived in Manchuria. When she studied the February 28, 1947, massacre of residents by the Guomindang government and the oppression that followed, Hsu noticed that many victims had returned from Manchuria.

Researchers on Japanese colonial rule had focused on Taiwanese who joined the Guomindang in Chongqing in southwestern China but not on those who went to Manchuria, she said. When she gathered information on some 700 people who lived in Manchuria, Hsu was impressed with the large number of doctors involved. Graduates of the Manchuria medical college alone topped 100, followed by government employees.

Hsu said many Taiwanese went to Manchuria where they were treated equally as Japanese and could play active roles in society. "Taiwan at the time had few institutes of higher education," she said. "Landing jobs was not easy, and there was a wide gap in wages between Taiwanese and Japanese workers." In addition, many young people went to Manchuria because they admired Xie Jieshi, a Taiwan native who became Manchukuo's first foreign minister, according to Hsu.

Hsu interviewed some 50 people who had returned from Manchuria, but they were reluctant to talk. The returnees feared for their safety because Xie Jieshi was labeled a "traitor to China" after World War II. One of those Hsu interviewed was Li Shuiqing, who was among the first graduates of Kenkoku University (national foundation university), Manchukuo's highest institution of learning.

Li, 89, said he was passionate about the ideal of Gozoku Kyowa when he entered the school. It had Korean, Russian and Mongolian students in addition to Japanese and Chinese. Li spent six years living with them in a dormitory. "I still retain close ties with old students who are like my brothers," he said in fluent Japanese.

Li was poor, and the tuition-free Kenkoku University was like a dream come true. The school not only paid for meals and other living expenses but also provided students with an allowance. While it was common in Manchukuo for Japanese to eat rice and for Chinese to sup on gaoliang grain, students at the dormitory ate the same meals in protest against such discrimination. Looking back on his experience, Li said that Kenkoku University entered a period of turmoil around 1940 in its third year and eventually collapsed.

The Kwantung Army cracked down on dissidents at the end of 1941, when Japan entered into war against the United States and Britain. Some Kenkoku University students were arrested and died in prison.

During the Guomindang government's crackdown on Taiwanese residents in 1947, Li's junior in school was killed. While Li himself spent 2 1/2 years in prison, he believes he was fortunate to have attended Kenkoku University. "I was able to learn to see things from different viewpoints because I went to school with people of different nationalities," he said.

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A second article discusses the probable Asian policies and policy shifts of new Australian PM Kevin Rudd, who once studied Mandarin here in Taiwan, and has considerable experience of both Taiwan and China. There are four long pieces collected inside this Japan Focus piece, too long to meaningfully excerpt here; don't miss the two pieces that argue that while Rudd is a lot like "Tony Blair," he is seeking a way to preserve the US Asian presence while not acting as Washington's lap dog.

Martial Laws and Marred Reporting

UPDATE: Now updated with massively awesome Taiwan News editorial on the law....see bottom. Lately their editorials have been fantastic....

First all, I had a letter to the editor in the Taipei Times today in which I stated that the term "martial law" should never have crossed Chen Shui-bian's lips. I was wrong; it hadn't. My bad, because I didn't fact-check enough. What actually happened is that several people had made several suggestions, including martial law, to deal with the KMT's refusal to implement CEC-mandated election regulations. Chen merely said he was considering all alternatives, which the media immediately blew up into a claim that Chen had said he was thinking of using martial law. It was not as dumb as I thought, but still not wise. So disregard everything I wrote on my blog.

Plenty of other action went on with martial law recently. What's the new draft bill on the 2-28 compensation that the DPP has going? It's the end of the world, according to the pro-KMT China Post:

Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers are all set to start the first reading of a bill on compensation for victims of the Feb. 28 Incident of 1947 and the reign of the white terror that followed.

They may face a boycott by their Kuomintang colleagues when they begin acting this morning on the bill they have often proposed but failed to get on the agenda.

If passed, the bill requires relatives of the dead persecutors to stand trial for the crimes they know nothing of.

No law in the world compels relatives to be litigated for the crimes committed by the dead.

That's why the bill, sponsored by Wang Hsing-nan and endorsed by his 33 colleagues, has never gotten a chance to be acted on.

The irony of Wang Hsing-nan, former letter bomber, leading a charge for compensation, was not lost on the KMT, as the Post indignantly reported:

"If you have your way," [KMT legislator] Hsieh told Wang Hsing-nan, "you may be sued by Hsieh Meng-hsiung." Hsieh Meng-hsiung, a well-known gynecologist, is the son of Hsieh Tung-min, a former governor of Taiwan and vice president under Chiang Ching-kuo.

The ex-governor had one hand blasted off by a letter bomb Wang Hsing-nan mailed from the United States in October 1976.

"If you excuse yourself, shouldn't your wife appear in court to defend you?" Hsieh asked.

In fact, three packages, each containing a Chinese dictionary hollowed out for explosives, were sent from the United States. The two other recipients were Lee Huan, a top Kuomintang official, and Huang Chieh, minister of defense.

Lee had fingers burnt. Huang was spared.

For the terrorist attacks, Wang was finally induced to come back to Taiwan to stand trial. Police had detained Wang's relatives in Taiwan to force him to return.

In one respect Wang is totally different from all the people who murdered for the KMT: he went to jail. Meanwhile the pro-Green Taipei Times gave a completely different take:

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男), who, along with caucus whip Wang Tuoh (王拓), Legislator Wang Shih-cheng (王世堅) and 30 other DPP legislators, initiated the legislation, said that the proposal was about clearing up White Terror incidents through judicial processes and learning how officials from the former government had oppressed citizens.

Wang said the proposal stipulates that relatives of those responsible would represent their family members by attending the hearings and that they would enjoy legal rights and be protected from bearing criminal responsibility for the acts of the deceased.

The DPP legislative caucus yesterday held a press conference to make the details of the proposal public.

Wang Tuoh said the facts about the killings would only be learned through investigations and that because many documents related to killings that took place during that period have been classified as confidential, the DPP had no choice but to come up with the proposal to facilitate the investigations.

Wang Tuoh said the relatives of those responsible would attend the hearing and be confronted by victims' families, but would not be expected to assume criminal responsibility.

Any way you slice it, someone is misrepresenting. The China Post reported on why the bill was permitted to come up for a reading -- and gave a little insight into why Ma cannot move toward Taiwan's pro-independence mainstream -- remember, this is published in the pro-KMT paper:

Kuomintang leaders think the DPP move is going to backfire.

In fact, they believe the bill will help them recover the support of hardcore unification supporters, most of them mainlanders, who had been disenchanted by the Kuomintang's call for a referendum on Taiwan's return to the United Nations as the Republic of China.

The DPP wants a referendum on Taiwan's admission to the United Nations as Taiwan. Both referendums will take place alongside the presidential election, scheduled for March 22.

These disenchanted Kuomintang supporters are likely to boycott the election, because they think Ma is moving closer to the DPP policy line of creeping independence for Taiwan.

Perhaps that is the reason why the Kuomintang let the Wang bill get on the agenda of yesterday's sabotaged judicial committee meeting.

Wang introduced the bill on Oct. 5. It was turned down. A week later, on Oct. 12, it was introduced again.

Knowing it won't be passed by any chance, the Kuomintang let Wang get the bill on the agenda in his second try.

"We purposely let Wang win the other day," claimed a Kuomintang heavyweight, who declined to be named.

Whose reporting is correct? I have no idea, without the text of the draft bill.

UPDATE: The KMT distortion machine has been really busy with this one. Taiwan News with another kickass editorial:


EDITORIAL

'State crimes' bill merits support

Taiwan News
Page 5
2007-12-04 02:55 AM

We urge all political parties to support passage of a draft special law that would provide a legal channel to expedite the determination of legal responsibility of state crimes committed during the decades of "white terror" under the KMT authoritarian regime.

Besides the estimated more than 10,000 persons who were slaughtered by KMT forces during the suppression of the February 28 Incident of 1947, there were close to 29,000 cases of political imprisonment under the KMT martial law regime in which 140,000 persons suffered, of whom up to 4,000 were executed, according to the official "Foundation for the Compensation of Improper Verdicts of Sedition and Communist Espionage."

Despite progress in opening official files and securing compensation for victims or their survivors, Taiwan's history remains one in which there are tens of thousands of victims but not one identified victimizer.

Introduced earlier this year by the Democratic Progressive Party's legislative caucus, the draft "Special Law on the Determination of Responsibility for Government Illegalities during the February 28th Incident (of 1947) and the Martial Law Period" was slated to be reviewed in the Legislative Yuan's Committee on Judicial Affairs yesterday, but met with a passive boycott by KMT lawmakers and a concerted campaign of distortion by KMT leaders and by pro-KMT print and electronic media.

On Sunday, the KMT legislators offered a number of excuses to justify their plan not to allow the committee meeting to be held, including claims that the former ruling party "has already shown the greatest sincerity and made the greatest efforts to compensate" victims and charges that the draft DPP bill aimed to "execute nine generations of paternal and maternal relatives" for the alleged actions of perpetrators of the KMT "white terror."

One KMT lawmaker even declared that the "green terror" allegedly imposed under the seven and half years of DPP governance has been "over 10 times worse" than the four decades of KMT "white terror."

KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou, who has a doctorate in law from Harvard University and served as justice minister, said the draft bill was a "manifestation of hatred" that "violated the spirit of reconciliation and coexistence" promoted by his DPP counterpart, former Premier and human rights lawyer Frank Hsieh.

Regretfully, few of the KMT leaders, legislators or media "mouths" who have claimed that this bill aimed to launch a "liquidation" campaign, stir up ethnic hatred or "manipulate '228'" bothered to look at what the draft special law actually states.

Truth, responsibility, forgiveness

Essentially, the draft special law aims to realize the aspirations of thousands of surviving victims or their relatives and Taiwan's human rights community for the formation of a legally grounded "truth commission" to clarify the history of state repression, determine responsibility and open the door for reconciliation.

The draft bill clearly defines the use of state power to "illegally arrest, persecute, sentence, abuse, torture or murder" citizens as a special type of "government illegality" that requires special procedures that target the clarification of truth and the determination of criminal responsibility.

In keeping with the realization that ordinary legal concepts cannot be effectively applied to the crimes of a dictatorship, Article Four would set aside the maximum 20-year statute of limitations on criminal offenses embodied in the criminal code and expunge the ban incorporated into Article 9 Section Two of the draconian National Security Law of July 1, 1987 that has blocked the filing of appeals by victims or their survivors to martial law era military court judgments.

The same article mandates that trials of persons indicted for committing such crimes will not be halted if the defendant has died, but states that the court should instead "order the defendant's spouse, descendent or third-level family members" to "continue the proceedings and substitute for the defendants in executing their rights under the Law of Criminal Procedure."

Although this clause is now the focus of controversy, it is obvious that its purpose is to provide descendants or close relatives of deceased, alleged victims, such as the late KMT dictator Chiang Kai-shek himself, the chance to defend the innocence and reputation of the defendant in court and is absolutely not intended to subject the descendants of alleged victimizers to the same type of discriminatory treatment or persecution suffered by survivors of martial law victims.

The draft law would allow the two foundations that have provided "compensation" or "reparations" for "228" and white terror "improper verdicts" to file suit for reparations from guilty parties, but does not state that direct descendants or other family members will be held responsible for such obligations.

If passed, the law would require the Executive Yuan to form an independent task force under the supreme public prosecutor to pursue legal responsibility for government crimes committed during the "228" Incident or the "white terror" and mandate that the Judicial Yuan establish a special court to hear cases arising from indictments filed by the new task force.

The draft law would also set aside restrictions imposed by the national secrets law or the archives law on the access to prosecutors of historical files or documents held by any government office.

The draft law implicitly would also provide full justification for prosecutors to file for court warrants to secure access to related documents in the KMT party archives, the opening of which is essential for both the clarification of truth and identification of responsibility.

In our view, the DPP should be chided for not introducing this legislation long ago, but we also believe that the bill cannot be justly accused of "manifesting hatred."

Instead, the draft bill has the potential to provide a legally-grounded path to promote reconciliation and ethnic harmony by allowing the judicial system to clarify the fact that most Taiwan citizens of mainlander ancestry or "new immigrants" were not responsible for the commission of crimes by the party-state which were directed and carried out by relatively few of the KMT leaders under the orders of Chiang and his son, Ching-kuo.

Even if Ma cannot grasp the importance of this bill, we hope that KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung can show the political wisdom to support a draft law that can finally allow him to realize justice for his uncle, Taiwan High Court Justice Wu Hung-lin, who was butchered by KMT troops in the 228 Incident.

[Taiwan]

Lies, Damned Lies.....

Now that we have chimps outsmarting college students -- a finding that will come as no surprise to college professors everywhere -- it's not surprising that the numbers out of China have serious problems....

Blinded by China’s false statistics —Jonathan Power

Beware of extrapolation, a British Chancellor of the Exchequer once remarked: it can make you go blind. It’s about time this little piece of wisdom was applied to China. But there seems to be a mental block that inhabits newsrooms, academic common rooms and the bureaucracies of many governments. This is despite the pioneering research done by the likes of Professor Lester Thurow and the conclusion of long-time Hong Kong-based China watcher, economist Jim Walker, of Asia’s leading independent investment bank, CSLA, both of whom have rigorously deflated the wild claims of China’s official growth statistics, which once again recently got the big headline treatment. Walker concludes that official GDP statistics are a “fantasy world”.

In China’s provinces, the statistics are notoriously unreliable, as local officials inflate them to avoid being punished for poor management of the economy. For its part, the central statistical office calculates GDP through counting increases in value-added production even though much of its statistical information comes from state-owned enterprises that provide poor data. Walker routinely deducts 2 percent from official Chinese growth statistics. This summer, in a little noticed announcement, the Asian Development Bank lopped 40 percent off previous Chinese income per head statistics. That is some revision.

Even if we use Chinese statistics, the overall rate of progress between 1978 and 2003 is not overwhelming. In that period China’s per capita GDP grew at a compound rate of 6.1 percent. This gives an increase of 337 percent over a quarter of a century. Compare this with Japan’s, which increased by 490 percent between 1950 and 1973. Both South Korea and Taiwan have done even better the former with 7.6 percent compound growth a year between 1962 and 1990 and Taiwan with 6.3 percent between 1958 and 1990, the years when they were bursting through the industrialisation sound barrier.

The statistics we do have show up some near-insuperable problems. One is that 40 percent of Chinese bank loans are considered “bad”, a gigantic misallocation of capital. Another is that China could grow old before it grows rich. Not very long ago China was one of the world’s most youthful countries. But the one-child policy has had an enormous impact. As early as 2015 China’s working age population will begin to fall. By 2040, just a decade before China hopes to be a middle-income country, it will have 100 million citizens over 80. That is more than the current worldwide total.

Arnaud de Meyer, deputy dean of INSEAD, the European business school, author of a study on Asian innovation, writes that in relation to its huge development needs, China may already have too little skilled manpower. McKinsey, the management consultancy, reports that only 10 percent of China’s graduating engineers are good enough to work for foreign companies. It is not surprising that China’s software industry lags behind India’s because of its fragmented structure and poor management.

India is far ahead in this regard. India has “an enviable pool of high quality talented professionals”, reports a study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Moreover, wages among professionals are much lower in India than China. Living costs in Chinese cities are much higher than in India’s.

It is not surprising that foreign direct investment is now falling in China, albeit from very high levels (and at the same time capital flight is on a fast rise), while India’s is increasing. If one looks at the non-ethnic Chinese component of foreign investment, China does less well than booming Brazil.

US companies earn something over $8 billion a year from their business and investments in China. But they earn around $7 billion from Australia, a market of only 19 million people and over $9 billion from Taiwan and South Korea with a combined population of 90 million. From Mexico, they earn over $14 billion. Moreover, the American companies that have made big money from China are those like Wal-Mart, the retailer. They are the ones who buy from it rather than the ones who invest in it.

Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, has taken a lot of flack from China and from her Social Democratic partners in government for talking to the Dalai Lama and being vocal about Chinese human rights failings. She should have no fear - China needs Germany much more than vice-versa.

It has always been strange. It is quite pathetic that Western countries regularly betray each other, and, in so doing, the human rights activists inside China, in an effort to better position themselves in this quite modest marketplace. If Western governments could stand shoulder to shoulder and say once and mean it: “stop using economic and trade threats, you are in no position to do so, it is unacceptable behaviour”, Beijing would get the message.

But perhaps after years of propaganda on China’s “remarkable future progress”, we are already blind.

The writer is a leading columnist on international affairs, human rights and peace issues

I can't find the original link for this article; it appears to have vanished from the Statesman's site (A loyal reader found it).

The author is hitting solely on the negative side of things and vastly oversimplifying some extremely complex issues. Harry Wu, one of the economists at the Asian Development Bank who has been working on China's income and growth figures, has a nice little paper that goes over some of the issues online here. To get the flavor of how truly complicated the political and economic scenario is, read these paragraphs:

Together with Figure 1 that shows no any adjustment to 1998 in the real GDP growth rate, this observation has taken us back to the hot debate in the early 2000s about the likelihood of the statistical authorities’ serious data manipulation to arbitrarily raise the growth rate for 1998 in order to meet then the government (Zhu Rongji Administration)’s growth target when China was badly hit by the Asian financial crisis. The official estimate for the real GDP growth rate in 1998 is 7.8 percent, only 0.2 points lower than the 8 percent growth target, suggesting that the target was only missed by a minuscule margin in a very difficult situation. However, this growth rate has been challenged by many researchers. They believe that it overestimated China’s real growth performance in 1998. For example, based on the change of energy consumption for 1997-99, Rawski (2001) suspected that China’s real GDP growth in 1998 was at best ranging from -2 to 2 percent. But his estimation was criticized by Ren (2002) among others for lacking sound empirical support. Other researchers used the expenditure approach (in contrast to the NBS’s value-added approach), but arrived at very different results. Keidel (2001) found that the growth rate in 1998 could be bounded by 6.9 and 7.2 percent, while Shiau’s recent results showed that it could be somewhere between 2.6 and 4.7 percent (2005). Such variations of estimates are largely due to different choices of deflators. There are also different views. Using the principal component analysis, Klein and Ozmucur (2002) find that the variation of the official GDP growth is well associated with the variation of 15 major macroeconomic indicators, suggesting that the official GDP estimates are not an outlier. Nevertheless, since the major indicators are from the same official sources that generate the information for the GDP estimation, surely no sensible inference can be made from their findings in the context of the debate.

Unfortunately, the infamous “7.8 percent” for 1998 is an important issue that NBS could not easily bypass when adjusting China’s GDP growth rate. Apparently, NBS faced a big dilemma. On the one hand, it could not systematically raise the growth rate of 1998 together with the overall upward adjustment for the whole period because that would invite further international criticism. On the other hand, it could not take this chance to reasonably make a downward adjustment for 1998 because that would indicate that they had admitted the original estimates as a mistake, whose implications would be, however, by no means purely technical. Although leaving 1998 intact in this overall upward adjustment means that the growth rate of 1998 is in fact relatively lowered, such an arbitrary treatment has made the whole adjustment less credible.

From the price perspective, the treatment to 1998 also suggests that there were some ad hoc modifications in the adjustment. But it is unclear if such modifications were made after the nominal GDP estimates were systematically deflated. Nevertheless, by assuming that the 1992 benchmark was problem-free, NBS faced more complicated price problems. This assumption simply means that the undercoverage problem is mainly due to the new products or services that only emerged after 1992. Since the growth of new products/services is very price-sensitive, their prices are usually high at the early stages and decline quickly throughout the stages of maturing. It is therefore almost impossible for NBS to introduce a new trend to adjust the original price changes in the absence of necessary price information for new products or services. Then, how did NBS solve the price problem in the adjustment? Our rather heroic working hypothesis is that NBS did not directly work on prices. It is likely that they began with a new GDP growth trend that could satisfy a certain growth target for the period in question and then followed the trend-deviation interpolation method to adjust the original annual real growth rates.

The problems are a legion -- massive overreporting from the provinces -- there are huge discrepancies between the national grow figures and the regional ones. Statistical inflation exists almost everywhere the Chinese economy intersects measurements -- FDI figures, for example, are inflated because Chinese investors send their money out of China, then using the same system in the Caribbean that Taiwanese investors do, return the money to China as "Foreign Direct Investment" through front companies to take advantage of incentives for foreign investment. Hence the "FDI" figure for China actually has a huge Chinese component -- what Powers takes for 'capital flight' in the article above is often funds that will come back to China. This also suggests that if the FDI incentives for Caribbean-based firms are so great Chinese recycle funds to take advantage of them, Taiwanese firms that routinely use that route cannot be suffering too much.

Also in the statistics department, Taiwan has surpassed Korea as the number 2 exporter to China. Gacck!....argh....must...not....say...anything.....

UPDATE: Taipeimarc points to this article on the coming China crash.

[Taiwan] [China] [East Asia] [Korea] [Japan]

Kitty Hawk

The latest updates from inside the Beltway, via the Nelson Report.

+++++++++++

....Basic agreement that Beijing did not do a good job of coordinating message delivery between its politicals and its military, partly because the only real commingling takes place right at the very top, under President Hu.
The net became that while China feels it has consistently sent strong messages on the prime cause of all the difficulties, Taiwan arms sales, the appearance of muddle, (not just limited to when Foreign Minister Yang called the whole thing a "misunderstanding", only to be contradicted the next day by his own Ministry) caused many experts, here and there, to rush around seeking clarity on the message, and the messenger.

Basic agreement that whatever the muddle in message sending, the method was ill-advised, and especially in the decision to ban the two minesweepers seeking refuge from a storm, really a bad idea, one contrary to a thousand years of naval practice around the world. It has potentially put at risk a decade of out-reach by the US Navy, and the Navy's on-going demands for explanations will keep emotions flowing. (Of course, there are those who think that's precisely what some PLA hard-liners want...)

Tibet?...agreement that while the Dalai Lama was part of the political angst being expressed, taking it out on the US Navy should be read as a very loud re-statement of unified Chinese concerns about Taiwan. So...coherent message badly delivered, is one basic lesson or conclusion. FYI, to date, the Chinese have cancelled requests for nine US ship visits, including a Christmas port call. Not to be outdone, the USN has apparently sent seven (7) ships through the Taiwan Strait since the minesweepers were turned away.

[snipped]

As to the current specifics: Bush perhaps felt China should have long anticipated the Patriot-2 upgrade announcement, since it has been on the books since 2001, to be delayed for years by domestic Taiwanese politics; but, proof again that timing is everything in sex and politics, the actual announcement had two problems for the Chinese side which might better have been anticipated by the US:

First, President Hu's performance on Taiwan at the 17th Party Congress was far milder than anyone here had expected...hence the immediate words of praise from President Bush. But...
Because Hu was relatively so restrained, to announce the PAC-2 so soon after almost certainly looked, to Beijing, like the "real response", one pushed by DOD.

This mis-perception was likely reinforced by DOD Sec. Gates failure to give China a "heads up, the announcement is coming soon" when he was visiting...they remember, if we don't, back to 1992 and "Poppa" Bush's warning that he was selling Taiwan F-16's (it being an election year, and jobs for Texas).

In fact, some analysts think the one Chinese Gates apparently did alert, Foreign Minister Yang, probably compounded Yang's troubles with the PLA, and his critics, when all this blew up.
Here's how one scholar here, with good contacts on both sides of the Pacific, sums up:

"The first arms sale notification went to Congress on Sept. 12. The Chinese cancelled all mil-mil exchanges for the month of October. The Pentagon requested Gate's stopover in Beijing. Did China want Gates to go to Seoul and Tokyo and NOT to Beijing?

No. And, since Gates has made a concerted effort to refrain from harsh rhetoric and improve the mil-mil relationship, accepting the visit was essential.

The second arms sale notification to Congress was after Gates had left. The Chinese lost face and are worried that the approval for the F-16s will be next. So they closed the Hong Kong port to U.S. ship visits for a couple of months to send a strong signal (they did this not only in 1999 and 2001, but also in 2002, when Taiwan's sec defense Tang Yao-ming visited the US and gave a speech at the US-TW Business Council conference).

I would NOT chalk all this up to bad decision making and coordination mechanisms. The MFA is in the loop on decisions to deny port calls."

+++++++++++

There you have it. Angered by the US decision to sell upgrades to Taiwan for its missiles, upgrades in the works since 2001, China closed Hong Kong to the US Navy, the one part of the US government that was eager to engage in outreach to China. What kind of signal does that send? You make the call.

[Taiwan] [China] [Kitty Hawk] [missiles] [US] [US Navy]

Digital Sources on The History of Kaohsiung

On H-Asia a scholar asked where she could find pics and maps, especially online, from the 1930s through the 1950s, on the city of Kaohsiung. Just to give you an idea of what's out there, here are some of the replies:

*****

The Kaohsiung Museum of History has set up an online "image bank" through which you might find some pictures of your interests.
http://139.175.13.20/kmh/oldphoto/main.html

If your computer supported Chinese input system, you could even use its search engine to find the pictures relating to your research specifically.

You might also want to check out the KMH's website:
http://w5.kcg.gov.tw/khm/index.asp Meanwhile, the Bureau of Cultural Affairs at Kaohsiung Municipal Government published a book on Kaohsiung's "old pictures". You can download the whole book (digital format) from this site:
http://www.moker.com.tw/download/demokmh/ebook5.html

[snipped]

As for the maps you are interested in, Bureau of Cultural Affairs at Kaohsiung published a collection of maps ranging from the Qing dynasty to 1960. http://www.khcc.gov.tw/ArticleDetail.aspx?Parm=269,7,,,

Unfortunately, there is no digital version of this book. But I guess you can place an order on the Bureau's homepage or any other online Taiwanese bookstore (like this one:
http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010361989).

******

1. There are some nice scans of volumes from the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan at the National Taichung Library. See http://jdlib.ntl.gov.tw/ -- a quick search for Gaoxiong yields a 1931 volume on the Takao Port Exhibition. Usually such volumes have some photographs.

2. The National Heritage Repository has a nice selection of photographs from the Gaoxiong Museum of History . See http://nrch.cca.gov.tw/ccahome/index.jsp -- and click on 'old photos' (lao zhaopian), then 'sources' (ziliao laiyuan), then the Gaoxiong Museum. You'll see all of the photos. You may also find resources other than photos on the site -- I have found the collection of clippings from early postwar Taiwan quite helpful.

*******

For old photos of Kaohsiung, the "Kaohsiung Memory" database (http://139.175.13.20/kmh/oldphoto/main.html) made by Kaohsiung Municipal Museum of History may be most useful. There are about 2,000 photos in the collection. The "Life of the Common People" (cangmin shenghuo laozhaopian) database (http://163.32.121.205/khm2/artsselectlist.asp) which is a collection of the works of Wang shuangfu may be useful, too.

Both of the two databases were incorporated into the website http://163.32.121.205/index.htm. The information about application for credited use can be found on the homepage of the website. However, all of the information is in Chinese.

[Taiwan] [Kaohsiung] [Japan]

Latest Taiwan Communique Out!

FAPA sent this around....

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

Hi TaiwanFocus friends,

We are pleased to announce that issue no. 116 of Taiwan Communiqué is off the press!! In this issue, we present an overview of recent political developments in Taiwan, such as Why the UN Referendum is necessary, in which we give a rebuttal to recent statements by the EU’s Xavier Solana, and Mr. Stephen Young of AIT in Taipei.

In a commentary which was published in the Taipei Times on 18 November 2007, I give an analysis on the origins of the “One China” policy and show how it has become an unwieldy concoction.

We then present an article on the upcoming Taiwan LY and Presidential elections, and discuss the heated debate on “one step” versus “two step” referendums.

Then there is an article about the Presbyterian Church and the courageous stance it took 30 years ago by issuing the 1977 Human Rights Declaration.

After our Report from Washington with updates on Legislation and actions on the Hill, we close with a book review of Prof. Alan Wachman’s new book “Why Taiwan? in which he describes why China is so interested in Taiwan. Prof. Don Rodgers of Austin college (whom you all know) did write the review. You might be interested to learn that in the 1920s both Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek advocated Taiwan independence ….!!

And finally, a focus of former US Senator Claiborne Pell, who played a crucial role in drafting the Taiwan Relations Act. It is written by the Senator’s longtime chief of staff Thomas Hughes.

Below you find the table of contents. The full publication is available on our websites at www.fapa.org and www. taiwandc.org The hardcopy will be sent out in about ten days to those who are on our mailing list.

We wish you happy reading. Do not miss the excellent cartoons, courtesy the Taipei Times. For earlier issues, check out our website at www.taiwandc.org/twcom/

Happy reading,

Gerrit van der Wees


CONTENTS Taiwan Communiqué no. 116

November / December 2007

Why the UN referendum is necessary

Countering Beijing's relentless pressure ........... 1

Concern about Mr. Solana's concern ................. 2

US opposition is undermining trust in US ........... 3

The "One China" policy: back to the basics

by Gerrit van der Wees...... 4

Taiwan's elections heating up

Legislative elections: all politics is local ....... 7

Presidential elections: Hsieh, Ma battling it out .. 9

Referendums: in "one step" or "two steps"? ........ 10

The Presbyterian Church commemorates

1977 Human Rights Declaration ..................... 12

Report from Washington

First Transatlantic Dialogue held in Washington ... 14

High-level visits resolution introduced in Senate . 15

House passes resolution on F-16 sale to Taiwan .... 16

Taiwan-into-the-UN resolution introduced .......... 17

Book Review

Why Taiwan? by Alan Wachman, Tufts University

reviewed by Prof. Don Rodgers, Austin College ..... 18

In the Limelight

Former Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI)

by Thomas G. Hughes ....... 21

Ma's Economic Nostalgia

KMT Vice Presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou released his latest economic plan, with a sustained hack on the DPP:

"My economic policies consist of more than opening up for more Chinese tourists and cross-strait direct links. Expanding domestic demand is also crucial and for the government to invest in the nation shows love for Taiwan," Ma told a press conference on Thursday morning.

The "i-Taiwan 12 projects" include building and linking rapid transit networks in cities and counties across the country, turning Kaohsiung into a tariff-free port and eco-park, turning Taichung into a center for maritime and air logistics in the Asian-Pacific region, turning Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport into an "air city," developing cultural and creative industries, creating industrial innovation corridors, carrying out urban regeneration, revitalizing rural Taiwan, reviving coastal zones, building 60,000 hectares of new forests to meet sustainable development goals, improving infrastructure designed to prevent flooding and fighting water pollution, and improving the nation's waste water sewage system.

The "i" stands for "infrastructure, investment, information, innovation, intelligence and international," Ma's camp said.

Ma and his running mate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) said the projects, including the NT$1.4 trillion island-wide rapid transit system, NT$240 billion waste water sewage system and a NT$30 billion forestation project would boost the economy in a sustainable way to enhance the quality of living.

When asked how the projects would be funded, Ma said taxes and revenue generated by the projects would cover the investment costs. Ma also vowed not to raise taxes in the next eight years if elected.

Ma's approach shows a marked improvement over the KMT's previous election campaign -- offering concrete policies that might actually positively impact the island's life if enacted. In '04 Lien Chan and James Soong mailed in their campaign and blew their 20 point advantage. One reason KMT conspiracy nuts are so insistent that the President had himself shot is that they don't want scrutiny of their awful performance in '04. Ma went on to hack on the DPP:

Later in the day, in an address to the US, European, New Zealand and Australian chambers of commerce, Ma accused the government of neglecting Taiwan's economic development over the past seven years, pursuing unstable policies and running an unstable government. Ma pledged to improve the investment environment for foreign companies by normalizing cross-strait economic relations and allowing cross-strait direct flights.

Ma cited the American Chamber of Commerce as evidence, saying its members had decreased from 900 to 700 over the past seven years as a result of shrinking markets and opportunities in Taiwan as a regional springboard.

In addition to opening up cross-strait direct links, Ma promised to establish "twin golden flight circles" among airports in Taiwan, Tokyo's Haneda Airport, Seoul's Gimpo Airport and Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport.

Ma also promised to revise the cap on investment in China, but added that his administration would not open up the agricultural market to Chinese products or open the labor market to China.

Ma's economic plan is now fully revealed. It consists of doing what the DPP is already doing -- investing in economic upgrading, pushing cultural and creative industries, and opening the links to China. Hsieh too has already promised this. Ma's "more government investment" is simply the updated 21st century version of the old KMT Political Economy -- flows of money from the central government to local construction firms underpinning KMT control. Ma is in effect promising that those who now tap those streams can continue to tap them.

For all that Ma's idea appears progressive, it is mostly copied from the DPP or, in the case of large investment projects, from the KMT of the 1970s, or of old ideas recycled -- like the tariff-free ports, a cross-party dream for a decade now (2003 doc). The DPP had draft legislation going on that in 2002....

Note that Ma says he will retain the investment cap -- "revise" does not mean eliminate -- and that he will not permit opening the ag market or letting in Chinese labor. This too is essentially DPP policy (but if Hsieh had advocated these things, the foreign Chambers of Commerce would have hissed....) -- if Ma were to announce that Chinese labor would be allowed into Taiwan, he can kiss the election good-bye. After the election, I fully expect that this promise will be slowly be bent until unrecognizable.

Ma's platform, largely borrowed from the DPP, met with applause from the European Chamber of Commerce.

The European Chamber of Commerce later issued a statement saying it is very pleased with Ma's comprehensive outline of his economic platform.

The statement expressed support for Kaohsiung becoming a tariff-free port with direct shipping links to China and for the the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport "air city."

The statement also said that Ma had not presented a clear tax roadmap and tax environment or elaborated on how he would improve the flow of human talent to Taiwan and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also said Ma did not touch on issues such as how he would step up intellectual property rights protection.

I think it is great the ECCT asked about greenhouse gas emissions -- the KMT's service to sustainable development is entirely lip service. Improving the flow of human talent into Taiwan would entail massive changes in Taiwan's society and education, which neither party appears capable of bringing off. Finally, the tax questions are pertinent for both local and international firms. I don't believe that all this investment will pay for itself.....thus, Ma is essentially arguing for increased public debt (don't miss AmCham's great article on the development of public archecture in Taiwan).

Sadly, nobody at the listening Chambers appears to have challenged Ma's one-sided construction of Taiwan's economic status.....or noticed that when Ma presented DPP economic ideas to them, the ECCT thought they were great (but then the ECCT is quite confused about our cross-strait policy anyway). Hey, but Ma speaks English! And...he jogs! And went to Harvard, and that is all ye know of Ma, and all ye need know.....

Why are the foreign Chambers so exasperated with the DPP? Consider this editorial from AmCham:

A new regulatory proposal illustrates the problem. At the urging of the architectural profession, the government’s Public Construction Commission (PCC) has drafted an amendment to its Regulations for Selection and Fee Calculation of Technical Services Providers Entrusted by Entities and circulated it to various government agencies and relevant local business organizations – but not foreign ones like AmCham – for comment. Under Chapter 5 of the amendment, only architects would be authorized to take the lead in public projects involving “buildings,” rather than the engineering consulting firms (known as A/Es for “Architect/Engineers”) normally in charge of such infrastructure projects. That would be the case even for a power plant or MRT station, even though the building itself may not be the key portion of the facility.

With this change, all A/Es – regardless of size – would soon end up as subcontractors of architectural firms on major infrastructure projects. The tail would be wagging the dog. The proposal is equally objectionable on other grounds:
• The quality and reliability of projects would suffer. A/E firms employ professional engineers from many disciplines, including electrical, mechanical, piping, and environmental engineering. Architects might hire subcontractors in these fields, but they themselves would be incapable of supervising and reviewing work that is totally outside their scope of professional knowledge.
• Architectural firms are usually operated by an individual architect or as a partnership, and do not have the financial strength of A/E firms organized as corporations. For large-scale projects requiring performance bonds, that financial capability is a crucial factor.
• Under current laws and regulations, foreign investors are permitted to operate A/E firms in Taiwan, but not architectural firms. As a result, the impact of the proposed amendment would be to exclude foreign-invested companies from large segments of the market – a move contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of Taiwan’s commitments as a member of the World Trade Organization.

Implementing the proposed change would be another distressing example of a Taiwan-unique regulation departing from international norms. Already Taiwan is the only country in which A/Es are barred by law from practicing architectural work. Instead they have to rely on external architects either to do the design under subcontract or to take a fee for signing off on the designs of the A/Es’ in-house architects by attaching their “chops.”

One of the major problems with Taiwan's economy, from outsider's perspective, is that it is often a game outsiders are not allowed to play. The Chambers of Commerce appear to be of the opinion that this will change if Ma is elected. Lotsa luck, guys. Because after Ma "opens" the economy, AmCham editorials are going to read like this:

"While in principle we welcome the new openness shown by Taiwan during the first two years of President Ma's administration, AmCham wishes to express its growing concern over the preferential treatment given firms from China....."

[Taiwan] [DPP] [KMT]

Why Chen Made the Martial Law Comment

Last week President Chen intimated that he was considering martial law as a possible alternative to handle the KMT's lawlessness in refusing to obey the regulations for elections promulgated by the CEC. This comment was widely disparaged by observers on all sides of the political debates.

I can only speculate, but this paragraph from Willy Lam's recent piece on the Kitty Hawk affair may offer a clue:

A Beijing source close to the Taiwan policy establishment said the CMC and the Communist Party’s Leading Group on Taiwan Affairs—which was also headed by Hu—were worried about possible “tricks” played by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the pro-independence ruling party in Taiwan, in the run-up to the presidential elections scheduled for next March. The source said that Beijing was most worried that the Taiwan army might engineer a “military crisis” with the PLA, which would then serve as a pretext for the DPP administration to postpone the elections or even to impose martial law. Last Sunday, Taiwanese President and DPP Chairman Chen Shui-bian indicated that proclaiming martial law was an option if the opposition Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party) continues to side-step electoral procedures for the upcoming Legislative Yuan elections (Taipei Times, November 27). While Chen later withdrew his threat, Beijing remained concerned that the DPP leadership might again resort to wild cards given the fact that the KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou has consistently outpolled the DPP’s Frank Hsieh in island-wide surveys.

It could be that Chen was simply trying to yank the PRC's chain, teasing them with the prospect of "tricks." He must have found it personally hilarious, but it certainly wasn't funny to those of us listening on the outside.

This paragraph also shows the extent to which accusations that Chen is a "dictator" who rules by dirty tricks that the KMT routinely makes are simply extensions of the Communist line on Taiwan. The KMT propaganda playbook is entirely subsumed into the Chinese one, and the two cannot be told apart. The idea that Taiwan would foment a military confrontation with China during an election is sheer insanity, as is the suggestion that Chen can or would declare martial law, or postpone the election -- though the latter claim is a common complaint among internet pro-China trolls, and among the weirder fringes of the KMT.

The last line of Lam's paragraph reaches a new pinnacle of absurdity.

.....given the fact that the KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou has consistently outpolled the DPP’s Frank Hsieh in island-wide surveys.

You'd have to be inhaling some pretty strong KMT crack to imagine that President Chen pays attention to the polls from pro-KMT newspapers, which everyone knows to be worthless, or would base policy moves on them. Lam also fails to inform his audience that such polls are from pro-KMT papers -- but that's pretty much the norm in our global media.

UPDATE: Here's what he really said...link is here...
[Taiwan]

Kitty Hawk through Straits; Latest Nelson Report on Kitty Hawk

The Navy finished the Kitty Hawk affair in fine style, sending the carrier through the Taiwan Strait on the way home.

A U.S. aircraft carrier group sailed through the tense waters between China and Taiwan after it was denied entry last week to a Hong Kong port, the U.S. Navy said on Thursday.

The USS Kitty Hawk and eight accompanying ships passed through the Taiwan Strait, seen as one of Asia's most dangerous flash points, on their way back to Japan after China barred the carrier group from entering the Hong Kong harbor for a long-planned visit, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii said.

"USS Kitty Hawk carrier strike group has transited the Taiwan Strait," Navy spokesman Shane Tuck said. "This was a normal navigational transit of international waters, and the route selection was based on operational necessity, including adverse weather."

Nice move, guys. Apparently, as I note in the post below this one, China has refused visits by a number of US ships. Note how China refuses US port calls even though it just sent a ship to Japan for a historic port call -- where they were scheduled to view a ship equipped with US Aegis tech (since canceled). Catch that pattern?

Chris Nelson sent off his last Nelson report for a week -- apparently he's due for some surgery. Heal well, man! Here's some excerpts from the latest Nelson Report:

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

China seems determined not to let the Hong Kong/Kitty Hawk matter rest...see the stunning claim that President Bush was not told by Foreign Minister Yang that the event was a "misunderstanding". Our sources are firm that Yang said precisely this to Bush in Annapolis.

But if China is denying it now, you have to worry about a "spillover effect" into US-China relations generally, right?

Maybe not...see the surprise announcement by USTR Sue Schwab this morning that China had just signed an MOU at the WTO in Geneva, settling the massive subsidies cases filed by the US and Mexico last February. We asked Schwab if there had been any indication of general atmospheric problems due to the Hong Kong situation, and she said none at all.

US-CHINA....continued...senior US sources frankly admit confusion over the command and control issues being revealed here, but the consensus is that Yang's contradiction reveals continued political/military splits in Beijing, and (as Adm. Denny Blair suggested yesterday) when power remains unsettled, tough talk will ensue. Our sources are firm that when Bush met the Foreign Minister in Annapolis this week, the conversation's content was as initially reported...Yang used the "misunderstanding" explanation.

They also say that despite press speculation about various causes of the decision to bar the Kitty Hawk group from Hong Kong, "there's no question the basic issue is Taiwan arms sales."

What about China's concerns over Chen Shuibian and the UN membership referenda in March? "It sounds as though Bush is still being very clear on this, to China's satisfaction...for now".

(Having claimed that, US sources frankly admit to "heightened worry" over how the Chen Shuibian UN referendum battle on Taiwan may yet cause tensions to flair-up, if not boil over next year...more on this, below.)

What about the Dalai Lama's Gold Medal? "Yes, it was on the Yang agenda, but secondary, compared to Taiwan."

No question that Tibet is a corrosive issue, though, especially since President Hu's tenure as the boss of Tibet is not one of the region's happiest periods...nor his. Hu reportedly never was able to adjust to the altitude, and so governed from Beijing as much as possible.

In any event, Hu takes Western accolades for the Dalai Lama a great deal more personally than did Jiang Zemin.

China's inflexibility on Tibet is a world-wide problem. See today, for example, in a sign that the policy standoff between Germany and China is set to worsen, Premier Wen Jiabao warned that the German government needed to "correct" its "mistake" of hosting the DalaiLama.

"Germany is a friend and partner for strategic co-operation. Friends and partners sometimes do wrong things and make wrong remarks," Mr Wen said at the end of a European Union-China summit in Beijing.

"But as long as they are aware of their mistakes and correct them, we will always treat them as friends and partners," Mr Wen said.

Bearing in mind that Wittgenstein was never a foreign minister, parsing the logic of language is sometimes a useful exercise. In our 40 years of reading English translations of Chinese hortatory rhetoric, we've come to the conclusion that Beijing is consistently poorly served in terms of public relations, even when accurately rendered.

Wen's remarks to Chancellor Merkel, quoted above, are comparatively mild, yet typical. It would be difficult to be more condescending..."wrong things...wrong remarks...correct them".

Excuse me? The Chancellor of Germany is not a school girl to be lectured, much less in such simplistic terms, in what sounds uncomfortably like a self-criticism session. So another problem comes to mind ...the very simple mindedness of Chinese exhortations. "Correct thought...wrong remarks"...as if human events can be so easily boiled down to "this is right, that is wrong".

Of course, the US under George Bush and the War on Terrorism is as guilty of any country of over-simplified condescension on a global basis, but we're talking about China, here, and how she continually ill-serves herself, especially on Tibet. A final thought...it seems never to occur to Beijing that the Dalai Lama is seen by virtually the entire civilized world, and certainly by any government that matters to China, as an eminently worthy individual, no matter what a particular government may think about the politics of the Tibet problem.

So, for example, when Chinese denunciations of the Congressional Gold Medal include calling the Dalai Lama "that evil man", Beijing sounds not just tone deaf, it sounds...demented.

A final thought on the Taiwan aspects of this for tonite: the significance of Bush/Yang goes beyond the arms sales and the Hong Kong incident. An assessment of Taiwan Strait risk must look at larger context.

Was this a tipping point confirming a pattern of disconnect in politico-military matters, with errors by USG (Patriot-II timing vs. Gates omission) and, by the PRC, erratic decision-making and poor judgment of international expectations and perception (e.g., ASAT, HK, SARS, EP-3 response, '96 missile volley) not to mention (stove-piping with ministries not in the loop, flip-flopping decisions, flip-flopping rationales,etc.)?

If you have Chen Shuibian throwing hand grenades into that environment and not clearly on the safe side of PRC visceral redlines, one has less confidence that a provocation can be dialed down with good decision-making/crisis management practices. Risk of accident, mistake, systemic forcing events, etc. is higher.

This concern goes to the very heart of the decade-long US Navy "outreach" campaign which Beijing's ham-fisted actions in Hong Kong have now put in jeopardy, since the Navy is now coming under fire for being a Panda Hugger (more than one email using that term came in yesterday, alas) and in any event for having its efforts proven not just wrong, but naive.

Good news includes trade progress, 6PT progress, and having both of the Taiwan presidential candidates recently speak constructively about Strait security matters. But, as no doubt was discussed Bush/Yang in Annapolis, CSB is still in office for a few months.

Complexity -- with multiple dimensions and conditions moving in different, sometimes opposite, directions -- is the hallmark of the US-China relationship (rapidly becoming the most important bi-lateral relationship in the world, as Jim Baker frames it).

Yes, getting better in some dimensions, while the Taiwan Strait continually risks veering off-path with inadequate crisis management mechanisms...a situation which is simply not good enough.

Bush and the Navy have long realized this. How many power centers in Beijing understand?

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

China denies what it told the President? Very typical. They will go right on denying even if the US produced witnesses and a videotape. That too is very Chinese: the act of denial of what is brutally obvious is a manly thing to do that earns points from onlookers in Chinese society. One might also add that in Chinese culture life is a zero-sum game, and thus all transactions produce a winner and a loser. Who won here?

China's lecturing of Germany , admonishing it to do the "correct" thing, is yet another aspect of the Throne's interaction with the world (which I discussed in the post below). The Throne is the center of righteousness, making the Dalai Lama evil and those who abet his evilness "incorrect." China is aware, of course, that other nations have other opinions, but those opinions are merely the expressions of barbarians who have not yet come under the tutelage of the Throne and learned proper behavior. China understands that, and is tolerant. Mr. Wen's admonishing of Chancellor Merkel was actually quite mild, from that point of view. To be correct, Chancellor Merkel would have to align her actions with those of the righteous Throne of China. In Chinese culture, being the Boss has a moral dimension it does not in modern western culture -- the boss became the boss due to his superior moral behavior (Silin's old book has an excellent discussion of this) and is thus an example to us all -- China offers the paradox of a culture where the actions of supreme administrators are to a certain extent normative for those underneath them, but the laws they promulgate lack any normative force at all. Hence, Mr. Wen's admonishment of Chancellor Merkel was actually an invitation to her to enter his moral universe and properly order the world around China. Once in that universe, the Throne will shower benevolence on Germany. This thinking also underlies Hu Jin-tao's "peace offer" to Taiwan -- the island is a source of chaos in the Throne's moral order, and thus must align itself properly with the Throne. Once in, Hu will shower Taiwan with "benevolence".... but first, you have to come in. Sadly, US officials appear to have bought into this line, by seeing President Chen as a problem.

We're going to see behavior like this again and again. Some (nation/agency/organization) will work hard to establish good relations with China, a few years of nonsuccess will go by, and then wham!, China will arbitrarily abuse it, leaving it to feel, like the US Navy (hopefully) does now, that it is extremely naive.

As blogger Feiren pointed out to me in a private chat yesterday, China can only be dealt with from a position of strength. Good work, guys, sending Kitty Hawk through the Straits.

[Taiwan] [China] [Kitty Hawk] [missiles] [US] [US Navy]