Monday, April 12, 2010

Daily Links, April 12, 2010


Practicing for a dance contest in Taichung. Who is performing on the blogs today?

BLOGS:
MEDIA:
SPECIAL: Dans, the well known photographer, has a copyrighted photo used without permission by Taipei City government website. Verdict says "it's ok."

RIDES: Apr 24/25 we'll be reprising the ride in Nantou last month. This ride has two starting possibilities. If you like, you can get to Taichung and bike with us on Friday down to Jiji or Shuili and overnight there, meeting up with more people on Saturday morning. If that doesn't work, you can come down on Saturday morning from Taipei and take the local train to Shuili, meeting us at 10 in Shuili. If you'd like to come, contact me.
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(Permalink) 6:08 PM

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Obama steps forward in China relations


Karl at Liyutan. Yeah, I bring all my dates there.

An look at recent progress in China-US relations from John Pomfret, the former veteran Beijing correspondent, appeared in WaPo this week, generating much commentary around the blogosphere. An excerpt:
"It was exceptionally deft handling of the Chinese. It was a choreographed diplomatic deal," said Bonnie S. Glaser, an expert on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There was a recognition on the part of U.S. officials that China was ready to reengage but needed help to get out of the corner that they'd put themselves into."

The "handling" began days after Obama's Feb. 18 meeting with the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing has described as a "splittist" intent on fragmenting China. Weeks before, the United States had announced that it was going to sell $6.4 billion in weapons to Taiwan, China's nemesis, sending relations into a tailspin.

......

Steinberg and Bader visited China from March 2 to 4 and were confronted by angry Chinese officials making demands. First was that Obama never again authorize the sale of weapons to Taiwan. Second was that the president never again meet with the Dalai Lama.

But behind the Chinese bluster, the two Americans sensed that Beijing was looking for a face-saving way for Hu to attend the nuclear summit. Once they returned to the United States, more talks were held with China's outgoing ambassador, Zhou Wenzhong, and its new one, Zhang Yesui, even before Zhang formally presented his credentials to the U.S. government.

To mollify Beijing, the United States offered to reaffirm, in a public setting, its policy that there is "one China." At the same time, it also agreed to China's request that the new ambassador be granted a meeting with Obama. In return, U.S. officials requested that China take part in talks on imposing sanctions on Iran -- which it had refused to do.

The US did reiterate the One China policy, which is different from China's -- it doesn't include Taiwan in that. The requirement that the US reiterate the One China policy shows how much China's bluster is aimed at satisfying its domestic critics, as is the fact that the tensions -- which it is almost wholly responsible for -- had to be handled privately.

Note that the media once again forthrightly failed to pinpoint the source of tensions: it is China, not weapons sales to Taiwan. So often when China-Taiwan-US tensions occur in the mainstream media, they are referred to in the passive voice. Sad.
As for China, Zhu Feng, director of the international security program at Peking University, said he thinks Beijing needed to calibrate its responses better. "Yes, Taiwan and Tibet are both Chinese 'core interests,' " he said, "but if an arms sale is strictly defensive, why is it automatically counted as a grave violation to China's core interests?
New media propaganda theme being pushed out of China: Taiwan is a "core interest" -- yea, Beijiing has the same interest in Taiwan that a thief has in his neighbor's television...

Pomfret made a significant error in quoting Steinberg as saying the US "opposes" Taiwan independence and in representing his remarks. Steinberg said, with practiced diplomatic nuance.
Indeed, this past year we just marked the 30th Anniversary of the normalization of our relationship with the People’s Republic of China under that one China policy. We’ve made clear that we do not support independence for Taiwan and we oppose unilateral attempts by either side to change the status quo. And we in particular welcome recent improvements in cross-Strait relations and hope that they will continue to expand, and we urged our counterparts in Beijing to continue to work to that end. That PRC-Taiwan dialogue contributes to the objective of a peaceful resolution that has been long central to our approach.
The US does not support Taiwan independence, which is diplomat-speak to avoid saying that the US opposes it -- since we do not oppose it. Beijing correspondents... *sigh*

Also on tap on US-China relations was a good piece from Nat Bellocchi in the Taipei Times today on what Obama should tell Hu when they meet.
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(Permalink) 7:23 PM

Out of Taiwan: It's more complex than thought

New article out of Australia challenges the current view that Polynesian agriculture and language arrived together from Taiwan. A cite from the news article:
A detailed look at the linguistics of the region also casts doubt on the explanatory power of the “out of Taiwan” model, according to Donohue and Denham. Languages change over time and as populations move around. If the Austronesian languages came to the region through a southward Taiwanese migration of peoples, one would expect that the languages spoken in the northern part of the region would be more similar to the original source language than the ones spoken in the southern part, which matches the dispersal of some archaeological markers. But that is not the linguistic pattern in Island Southeast Asia. According to Donohue and Denham, there is no linguistic evidence for an orderly north-to-south dispersal.

Irregular patterns in the vocabulary and grammar and other linguistic anomalies throughout the region call into question the idea that the language came to the region through mass migration. Rather, Donohue and Denham suggest that the profile of the Austronesian languages in Island Southeast Asia is “consistent with the mechanisms of language shift and abnormal transmission.”

Taken as a whole, the evidence from genetics, archaeology and linguistics calls into the question the idea that agriculture and language spread together, Donohue and Denham conclude.

“The demonstration that farming and language did not reach Island Southeast Asia together has implications for other places where that idea has been applied, including Europe and sub-Saharan Africa,” Denham said.
Here's a link to the journal article: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/650991
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(Permalink) 1:17 PM

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Satuday musings

Passed around a script from the TV show friends in class the other day for the students to translate and perform. One group called me over to discuss one of the pages, and after a few moments, I explained that Janice was dumping Ross, whom she had a fling with. Couldn't penetrate the problem they were having until, after I explained a bit more, several of them chorused: "What? Ross is a man?" Yes, never having see the show, reading his lines, they thought he was a girl....

FT got itself spanked over a loony comment in an otherwise good article on the US and Taiwan. It said:
"In recent weeks US officials, including Barack Obama, the president, have publicly repeated a long-held US policy stating that Taiwan and Tibet are part of China."
The comments appeared in a piece from April 7, and were written, said FT in replies to people who wrote them, by a reporter based in Beijing. I have often observed that Beijing reporters write awful stuff on Taiwan. Just another bit of evidence....

WSJ had a really excellent and wide ranging piece on the foreign bride/children issue in Taiwan...

Fear among some conservative Taiwanese of an overwhelming wave of mixed-nationality children has faded; studies show that most mixed-nationality couples have one or two children, in line with their all-Taiwanese counterparts.

"It's actually kind of disappointing for demographers," says Dr. Lan.

Today, conservatives are more likely to fret about the lack of newborns than the nationality of the mothers. Taiwan's birth rate is among the world's lowest. With prosperity and education, more Taiwanese women have embraced the freedom of single life, leaving more men casting around overseas for wives. In the 1990s marriage brokers began organizing trips for single men, mostly to Vietnam, Indonesia and mainland China.

Articles on the foreign bride issue often argue that locals select foreigners because those women still want to have kids, but it is not female preferences but economics that shapes family size. Until the government lowers the cost of having children, gives women more rights over their children, and makes the island more kid-friendly, Taiwanese will continue to shun child-rearing. Note that Montlake's position, which is a commonly heard one, blames the changes in females -- those irresponsible, freedom-embracing femmes who won't stay properly barefoot, preggers, and in the chufang, not the economic costs of having children, for Taiwan's low fertility rate. The fact that females in Taiwan largely make the same choices irrespective of national origin or economic status simply indicates that the problem is not any particular group of females, per se, but some structural factor in Taiwan. Montlake's article thus contains the evidence that refutes its own gender biases.

It's interesting that the mail-order bride phenomenon is invariably regarded as a phenomenon worthy of reportage, but the incredibly large number of foreign males married to local females is taken for granted by everyone and is never explored in the media as a phenomenon worthy of reportage. It seems to be a kind of Orientalization of Taiwanese females in which when the Other marries into Us, this is deemed so normal and understandable that it need not be contemplated, but when Others marry each Other, it is a thing well worth discussing. I suspect gender bias as well; Taiwanese males marrying foreigners is inherently interesting; Taiwanese females marrying foreigners is inherently dull. Females marrying "up" is normal, after all....

Harvard's awesome Michael Porter, boy wonder of business strategy, appeared at a forum in Taipei the other day and pushed Taiwan to adopt ECFA. It was Porter's Competitive Advantages of Nations that first got me interested in Taiwan's economy. Porter clearly knows little about cross-strait politics or about ECFA (if no one knows the contents of ECFA, how can Porter?) or about the effect of China on the nations around it or on China's habit of not honoring its agreements. He was simply voicing theological commitments to the "free trade" position in a forum where they would not be challenged. In B-schools in Taiwan strategy study has the highest status, which means that Porter's voice carries special weight.

Also on tap: Shadows in the Cloud: the investigation into cyber attacks on India and Tibetan activists. Read that and the recent accounts of Chinese cyber attacks on Indian targets, and of course, the Google experience in China, in which attacks on Google originated from Chinese government sources, against Porter's purblind enthusiasm for an ECFA with that nation.
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(Permalink) 6:29 PM

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Ma Calls for China to Remove Missiles

President Ma this week once again called on China to remove its missiles facing Taiwan. This occurred during a videoconference at Harvard, a repetition of the very common pattern in which Ma announces outside Taiwan that China should remove its missiles (or makes some other important policy statement to outsiders -- like telling a Mexican newspaper that Taiwan was a region). Remember when, in 2006, he announced in London that China should remove its missiles before any talks could be held, and then he was forced to backtrack? The China Post reports on the latest missilectomy call:
President Ma Ying-jeou renewed Tuesday his call for China "to remove or actually dismantle" its missiles targeting Taiwan as a prerequisite for talks on a cross-Taiwan Strait peace accord.

Ma also reaffirmed his policy of maintaining the status quo across the strait, saying the conditions are not yet ripe for unification.

He made the remarks in response to questions on cross-strait relations, during a video conference linking Taipei with Harvard University faculty and students.

According to Ma, Taiwan is well aware of China's ambition to annex Taiwan, but it has to face up to the reality, try to temper cross-strait tensions and prevent China from using force against Taiwan.

"We also demand that the mainland should remove or actually dismantle all the missiles that are targeted against Taiwan.

Otherwise we won't be interested in making further step to negotiate a peace agreement with them," the president said.
It's actually a good example of Ma/KMT cynicism: talks are underway to annex the island through financial and economic integration, as well as the arrival of Chinese workers (see Taiwan News today, and more in Taipei Times tomorrow). So a "peace agreement" is basically superfluous to the reality of creeping annexation; it is a mere diversion. As always, one must watch what elites here are doing, not what they say. This is merely words aimed at placating foreign audiences. If there are real negotiations on missiles, they don't have anything to do with Ma's words here.

Kudos to the CNA for putting "annex" into their article, which was picked up by the pro-annexation China Post for this article. Haha.

Reuters also reports, and they have a good precis of The Formula describing the cross-strait situation.
Taiwan officials say China has aimed from 1,000 to 1,500 short- and mid-range missiles at the self-ruled island, which Beijing has claimed as its own since the Chinese Civil war of the 1940s.
Nicely nuanced "...since the Chinese Civil War of the 1940s." Apparently it is possible to describe the situation pithily without the historically inaccurate "split in 1949" formulation so beloved of AP and AFP. Reuters says it is possible that trade might be harmed by Ma's call for missiles to be removed, although trade rose steadily under the DPP despite their much more pro-Taiwan cross-strait policy.

Ma's remarks on online complete at Isria. Search for them and then log-in for free seven day access.

This event also sheds light on Beijing's strategy to isolate Chen Shui-bian and paint him as a radical. Anybody recall in May of 2007 when Beijing whined and peed on the floor because a sitting Taiwan President, Chen Shui-bian, appeared at the National Press Club in teleconference? And the kerfluffle that accompanied his appearance? Now President Ma does the exact same thing at Harvard, and what comes out of Beijing but .... silence. The idea that Chen is some radical is a idea fostered by Beijing, to serve its interests. Nothing else.
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(Permalink) 1:58 PM

Now Online: The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Advocacy of Local Autonomy, by Christine Louise Lin

Mark from Pinyin News writes to tell me that he has put online Christine Lin's 100 page magnum opus on the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the independence and democracy movement originally published in Sino-Platonic Papers. The file is 8.44 mb, so give it some time. Lots of fascinating detail on language, politics, and culture:
By the end of World War II, Japanese was the primary means of written communication among the educated. However, churchgoers who did not know how to write in Japanese continued to use romanized Taiwanese to communicate with each other. The romanized Taiwanese vernacular was mostly used by Taiwanese Christians and was not a widely used means of mass communication outside of the Presbyterian Church. Although romanization was an easier system for people to learn, the government prohibited non-church publications from using it, and the knowledge of Taiwanese romanization was regarded as a symbol of being Christian. Tainan Theological College promoted literacy in Taiwanese by using romanization for the register used for teaching classes. The College also used romanized Taiwanese script for drafting sermons, reading the Bible, and singing hymns.
...or....
In 1974, copies of a Taiwanese-English dictionary, compiled by a Canadian Presbyterian missionary, Bernard L. M. Embree, under the auspices of the Taipei Language Institute were smuggled into Taiwan after the Nationalist government had banned their circulation on the island. The Nationalists banned the dictionary because it contained romanized Taiwanese. A government official said, "We have no objection to the dictionary being used by foreigners. They could use it in mimeographed form. But we don't want it published as a book and sold publicly because of the Romanization it contains. Chinese should not be learning Chinese through Romanization." The irony of this statement was that the dictionary not only gave the romanized forms of words, but also the Chinese characters. The romanization was present since it allowed for a more accurate pronunciation of the words. However, the government did not fmd any use of romanization tolerable since it believed romanization promoted the Taiwanese language. From the beginning of Nationalist rule in Taiwan, the KMT government limited the use of Taiwanese and implemented a program of "Mandarization," in which they forced schools, the military, and the government to use only Mandarin Chinese. Native Taiwanese, who were much more comfortable with their own language, despised this policy since the government limited television programming in Taiwanese to only one and a half hours per day.
Go thou and read!
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(Permalink) 8:01 AM

China and Future HSR

China Reform Monitor says China will be at hub of an HSR network connecting Europe and Asia:
China is constructing three primary high-speed rail lines: a southern line through Southeast Asia to Singapore; a western line from Xinjiang through Central Asia; and a northern line through Russia’s gas fields to Europe. A proposed South Asia branch will start in Kunming and run through Burma to New Delhi, Lahore and on to Tehran to join the Central Asia line. Beijing has concluded agreements with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and negotiations with over a dozen countries are underway. Construction has begun on the southern line, running from Kunming to Singapore. In the best-case scenario the rail link will be completed by 2025, when a train from Beijing to London will take only two days. But differences in countries’ track gages and poor track quality in some areas hinder the project. In Cambodia, over 650 km of track needs renovation and Burma’s track is below the required standards, The Hindu reports.

[Editor’s Note: In December, China opened the world's fastest rail link between Wuhan and Guangzhou, where a 350 kmph-speed train covers the 1,068 km journey in three hours. By 2012, China will have the world's largest high-speed domestic railway network including 42 high-speed lines running 13,000 km.]
Meanwhile our vision-free, Middle East-obsessed elites blow the national budget shoring up their pals on Wall Street while making Afghanistan safe for Chinese expansion and funding our disaster in Iraq. Our elites think too small. Think big! And the people will follow.
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(Permalink) 7:51 AM

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

ECFA Referendum Debate: Ma vs Democracy

Stimulating a debate over a referendum on ECFA has been a sharp political move by the DPP. Not only is it an example of the positive pro-democracy policies of the DPP -- a rebuttal to the pan-Blue talking point that circulates as conventional wisdom in Taipei that the DPP has no policies -- but also shows how the KMT Administration is inherently anti-democracy, patronizing, and out of touch with the public. Taiwan News recounts the latest Ma error on ECFA. Ma had dismissed calls for a referendum based on the Swiss FTA into the EEC in 1972:
Asked about the relevance of this case to citizen calls for a referendum on the proposed ECFA in a news conference in Palau March 26, Ma said he was unaware of the 1972 Swiss referendum, but nevertheless dismissed it by saying that "Switzerland is a special country which has the most referendums to decide even the smallest matter."
TN observed that the Swiss example is particularly relevant because it was the "was the first vote on European integration." Ma rejected it, saying that a democratic society should rely on the representative principle. But as TN pointed out, the Swiss-EEC FTA is much like ECFA:

Moreover, the decision by the Swiss federal government to submit the FTA signed with the EEC on July 22, 1972 for a "mandatory referendum" was not a "routine" action but constituted the conscious adoption of a "higher standard" because of the potential impact of the FTA on Switzerland's economic and political and social future.

Moreover, the Dec. 3, 1972 referendum marked another break with the past as it was the first time that the Swiss government provided each and every Swiss citizen with a pamphlet outlining the issues, including the content of the FTA and detailed descriptions of arguments for and against approval, to ensure an "informed" decision by the electorate.

This confidence in the Swiss citizenry paid in a resounding 71.5 percent popular vote majority and approval by all 23 cantons.

Taiwan News goes to argue that Ma regards Taiwan's democracy as an obstacle to his plans, while even polls from pan-Blue media show that referendums are supported by the majority of the public.
Sadly, the Ma administration has chosen to treat Taiwan's democracy as an obstacle even though the requirement for ratification by national citizen referendum would turn Taiwan's democracy and openness into a major bargaining advantage as any ECFA that did not clearly and tangibly benefit the overwhelming majority of the Taiwan people would not stand chance of passage.

However, even opinion surveys by KMT - friendly agencies show that most Taiwan voters perceive the advantage of ratification by referendum, especially given the dismal lack of public confidence in the capability of the KMT - controlled Legislative Yuan to substantively review the proposed ECFA.

A survey of 1,005 Taiwan adults conducted late last month by the TVBS cable television network found that only 35 percent approved of the ECFA with the PRC, down 11 percentage points from last October, with 32 percent opposed and 33 percent undecided.

Moreover, the TVBS survey found that 54 percent agreed that there should be a referendum before the pact is signed, compared to 48 percent in October, while only 25 percent agreed with Ma's rejection of an ECFA referendum, down 11 percentage points from October with 21 percent undecided.
A televised debate on ECFA held yesterday showed some interesting results consistent with these polls:
A poll of audience members before and after the debate showed that the former DPP lawmakers did manage to change the minds of some.

The audience, made up mainly of university students, had originally polled nine to seven in support of the agreement. However, another poll half way through the debate showed support for the agreement had dropped to one in favor and 14 against, with one undecided.

After the conclusion of the debate, 10 audience members said they were now against the agreement with five in support and one undecided.
Michael Danielson, a Dane prominent in support of Taiwan, argued in an interview today in the Taipei Times that the government needs to engage the public better:
“Through a referendum, politicians will debate it and the people will be able to see what the agreement is about,” the Danish political observer said in an interview with the Taipei Times in Taipei last month. “Maybe in the end they will say, oh, this is not so bad.”

If the people rejected the proposed pact then the government would need to go back to the drawing board and negotiate a better deal, which in the long run would benefit the country, he said.
Once people see the reality of what ECFA will do to Taiwan, they turn against it. That is why the Ma Administration has not moved to educate the public, and to submit ECFA to a referendum. Instead it will go through the legislature, controlled by the KMT.

People are often down on Taiwan's democracy, but anyone who has been here for a long time has seen substantial progress on that score. Just today a Taiwan court rescinded the fine and rebuked China for censorship in the case of a man fined for protesting Beijing's treatment of the Falun Gong in front of Chinese tourists at Taipei 101. Ma should similarly let the people speak on ECFA.

ADDED: Ma's comments also appeal to the democracy=anarchy propaganda theme that is a prevalent Blue talking point.
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Daily Links
Special:
  • US troops slaughter Reuters employees in Iraq, from Greenwald. Kudos to Wikileaks for obtaining this video, which the US government has been trying desperately to keep from becoming public. There must have been many similar incidents, which we will never hear about, because the dead were merely ordinary Iraqis with no international connections. As Gen. McChyrstal said of Afghanistan:

    In a stark assessment of shootings of locals by US troops at checkpoints in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in little-noticed comments last month that during his time as commander there, "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."

    The comments came during a virtual town hall with troops in Afghanistan after one asked McChrystal to comment on the "escalation of force" problem. The general responded that, in the nine months he had been in charge, none of the cases in which "we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it.

    Greenwald also discusses the pathetic mainstream media coverage of the Afghan murders and coverup. What a colossal, criminal mistake those wars are, leaking their insanity and criminality like a poison into the national political discourse and causing a generation of people across the Islamic world to hate the US. A new RAND report has more on the colossal ineptitude that is the Iraq invasion.

    As Glenn says, every American should watch the 2007 video of the Reuters employee killings. Then Americans can understand why they hate us for our freedom.
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(Permalink) 8:11 AM

Monday, April 05, 2010

Daily Links, April 5, 2010


Tomb Sweeping Day -- families out in force cleaning the family tombs and burning trash around them.

BLOGS:
MEDIA:
LOTSA FUN: 10 simple Google Search tips -- more in the comments~!

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(Permalink) 8:16 PM

Sunday, April 04, 2010

China, Taiwan Defense Cooperation?

Unredacted has a great post on a State Dept analysis of how US plans to nuke China would precipitate a general nuclear war over the islands that Chiang held in just off China, Jinmen and Matsu.
According to today’s hot doc, the US Air Force was ready and willing to drop nuclear bombs on Communist China at the outset of the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis. This 13 August 1958 State Department memo describes blow-by-blow how a dispute over two islands in the Taiwan Strait could have evolved into “general nuclear war between the US and the USSR.”

This memo, sent to President Eisenhower’s Under Secretary of State, Christian Herter, depicts how nuclear war between the USA and USSR could have evolved from a dispute between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Taiwan held these two strategically important islands, but the PRC also claimed (and shelled) them. America’s “existing contingent war plans,” derived from its 1954 security agreement with Taiwan, “call[ed] for the defense of Quemoy and Matsu by nuclear strikes deep into Communist China, including military targets in the Shanghai-Hangchow-Nanking and Canton complexes where population density is extremely high.“
It reads like a computer game player's fantasy of global destruction.... and it also shows how far things have come since those horrible days. Recently the China Reform Monitor offered a couple of paragraphs from the Chinese papers on possible KMT-CCP military cooperation over "Chinese territory".
The Beijing-owned Ta Kung Pao that People’s Liberation Army Major General Luo Yuan, deputy secretary general of the Chinese Military Science Society, has called “for military cooperation between China and Taiwan under the ‘One China’ principle.” He blamed U.S. arms sales for damaging cross-Strait relations and advocated the development of “a cross-Strait military trust and security mechanism.”

[Editor’s Note: Four days later the Wen Wei Po, another Beijing-owned Hong Kong daily, published a similar report claiming “there is vast space for defense cooperation in the South China Sea between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.” The article said “the basic foundation for cross-strait cooperation in the South China Sea is that neither side is willing to cede Chinese territory to other countries” and it could include the joint exploitation of oil resources.]
Cross-Strait military cooperation. What a nightmare of complications that would present. Both Taiwan and China have, since 1969, claimed the Senkaku Islands, which had previously been undisputed Japanese territory. The US bound by Treaty to defend Japan. What if China moves on that once it has settled the Taiwan Question?

More interesting is whether such cooperation would call upon KMT military authorities in Taiwan to suppress independence activists if the PRC demands it.

A longtime observer of Taiwan defense affairs noted that a military pact is probably in the cards for Ma, especially if gets elected to a second term. Or sooner, if it looks like Ma will lose.
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(Permalink) 8:43 AM

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Musings on Teaching

I'm really enjoying my current university position, in which I teach the required English courses for students from across the university. This semester I have two classes with my awesome nursing students.

One of things teaching here has done is made me a believer in same sex schooling. I've noticed that as the sex ratio in my courses approaches 50-50, the behavior of students in the class declines mightily. My single sex classes, male or female, appear to be better behaved and easier to handle. Fewer stupid jokes and giggling, more attention to the front where the teacher is. Better overall performance in assignments too.

Another interesting thing I've noticed over the years, since I've taught at two universities where nursing students play a prominent role, is the high quality of the nursing students. Not only do they outperform my other students, they also have better attitudes, are more willing to interact, and are interesting and fun to teach. They seem to want to get more out of their education. They tend to be overwhelmingly female, so this may have something to do with the way females are socialized in educational settings in Taiwan. It may also be related to the fact that nursing in Taiwan is highly competive -- the island produces more nurses than it needs -- and the requirements for getting into a nursing program are strict, meaning that the human material is often outstanding. I always look forward to my nursing classes. Students in medical programs here generally tend to be excellent, doctoring being the most popular career parents pressure their children to enter.

This leads to another thing I suspect many teachers at medical universities here have noted: the number of students in medical programs who don't want to be there. Most of the nurses seem to want to be nurses, but I keep running into people in the pre-med programs who don't want to be doctors, but explain that their parents have pushed them into it. Several students have told me that they switch to Chinese medicine programs because they are easier -- and the health system covers traditional Chinese medicine, meaning that there are jobs out there for traditional Chinese docs. Interestingly, the traditional medicine and western medicine programs have considerable overlap -- a smart student once argued to me that traditional Chinese medicine has become so extensively westernized that it has lost much of its "tradition."
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(Permalink) 10:02 PM

Why is Ma so Unpopular: Take II

Asia Sentinel, which often has wonderful stuff, became the latest news organization to grapple with the uncomfortable fact of Ma's lack of popularity with a piece that says that Ma has hit a rough patch -- yeah, basically since he entered office. AS begins:
Over the nearly two years since Ma Ying-jeou was sworn in as Taiwan's president, his popularity has seesawed from a high of 58 percent when he was elected to a low of around 20 percent when his government was perceived as arrogant and incompetent in the wake of Typhoon Morakot, then recovered strongly on the government's performance after the global financial crisis. Now it has plummeted again, with just 23.8 percent of the electorate approving of his performance.
I got curious to see what "strong recovery" occurred after the government's poor performance on Morakot due to the response to the financial crisis (which was as lame as the response to Morakot, it just unfolded over a longer period of time), so I looked up the Global Views poll, which helpfully has the numbers on Ma since June of 2008. Here's their track:


The dark blue line at the top is the dissatisfaction/disapproval rate, the aqua line at the bottom is the satisfaction/approval rate. Once they elected Ma, the public seemed to wake up rapidly and his approval rates, as the global views poll notes, peaked at around 40 just prior to Morakot in August of 2009. Since then Ma has been unable to break 30. I wonder what poll Asia Sentinel was looking at, because there was no recovery after Morakot in this one.

The Asia Sentinel piece does a much better job than Shelly Rigger's latest piece at identifying the root of the current problem: ECFA.
Ma's popularity now is at risk over the ECFA – the Economic Cooperation and Framework Agreement with China, a preferential trade agreement being discussed in Taipei and one that voters widely believe will sacrifice the island's autonomy to Beijing.
Voters also widely believe it will trash the economy. The AS report doesn't dig deeply enough...
His American education and approach to governing appeared to present a clean break from the country's previous deeply scandal-tainted politics, especially those of his own predecessors in the Kuomintang.
Folks, nobody disputed that Ma had downloaded government funds into his own accounts for personal use. Anyone remember the court's verdict? An excerpt:
According to the indictment, Ma collected NT$4,129,073 from the special funds between December 1998 and July 2006, but the judges upheld Ma's innocence as they said that during his two-terms as Taipei mayor between 1999 and 2006 he had also donated NT$63,078,949 to charity, which is over five times the amount of money from the special fund.
At least one other individual had been convicted and imprisoned for doing what Ma did. But you can be sure that this reality will never see the light of day in the international media. Another fun instance:
And, when in 2008 the world financial crisis hit, Ma Ying-jeou's cabinet reacted quickly and positively. The government issued consumer shopping vouchers, with each eligible Taiwanese receiving NT$3,600 (US$113) to attempt to revive the domestic economy. This went well with the public.
The voucher program (my post) went well with the public? My perception was that the public found it an amusing but pathetic substitute for real economic action, as Jon Adams basically reported. But others may remember differently.

Few in Taiwan would argue that the Ma cabinet reacted quickly and positively to the economic crisis; quite the opposite. That is one reason for Ma's long-term popularity drop-off. As with the Rigger piece, the fact that Ma is widely perceived to be incompetent, and the reasons for it -- with the exception of Morakot -- never truly surfaces in the AS piece.

There's an interesting thesis on the beef issue. AS argues that Ma sacrificed his popularity to show China a thing or two:
Since Ma's government must have been aware of what happened in Korea, the decision to risk his standing with the Taiwanese public could have been a political maneuver: in times of ongoing ECFA negotiations the demonstrations gave Beijing the signal that the Taiwanese are still likely to hit the streets if there are developments they don't approve of. Beijing has good reason to fear TV-footage of demonstrations going on in ‘Greater China,' regardless whether they happen on the mainland, in Hong Kong or in Taipei. Ma Ying-jeou's approval ratings dropped, yet through this sacrifice he kept an overly pushy China at bay.
I think this argument that Ma used the beef demonstrations to send a signal to China fails for two reasons. First, the decision on beef appears to have been former NSC head Su Chi's, for which his head rolled. Second, massive and violent demonstrations occurred during the first two visits of Chinese negotiators to Taiwan. It is hard to imagine how China could be affected by demonstrations aimed at Washington and Taipei, when it had already been the target of much larger and more violent demonstrations.

The last paragraph contains words worth remembering:
Taiwan's next presidential elections are to be held in 2012. That's a long way ahead. Since Taiwan is a vibrant democracy, things can change overnight, and it's far from certain that Ma's approval ratings won't bounce back. Given that the stakes are so high, it's in the interest of both the Taiwanese business community and China that they go up again. To make things go smoothly for Ma, the Chinese government could easily resort to economic aid in a form as subtle as in 2009, when it awarded orders to Taiwanese companies to supply a large scale program that brought cheap household electronics to China's provinces. Money makes the world go around and the Chinese government, which least wants to see a failing Ma, holds US$2.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.
2012 is a long way off, and recovery is possible -- indeed, I suspect many of those complaining about him now will fall into line and vote Ma when the election comes around. The AS piece assumes the default posture that ECFA will be good for Taiwan and its businesses.... "it's in the interest of both the Taiwanese business community and China that they go up again" ... although that is a problematic assumption, especially on the Taiwanese side. Will China actually come and spend the big bucks for Ma to keep him in office for another four years? 2012 will definitely be an interesting election campaign....
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(Permalink) 9:16 PM

Friday, April 02, 2010

Witches Brew of Players in Nan Shan Deal

99% of the time, the photos I put next to posts have nothing to do with the post itself, I just randomly select them. But I had been talking with a pal about the financial mess, and he flipped me this highly appropriate pic. So enjoy...

Despite the huha over the China email hacking I commented on below, the most important news was the financial machinations of the Chinese groups involved with the Nanshan sale. The Taipei Times ran a front page piece on the 31st discussing the Nanshan sale. American International Group (AIG), an insurance company with deep historical links to Shanghai and pre-war China, sold Nan Shan to Primus Financial on Oct. 12 for US$2.15 billion. Primus Financial then filed an application with the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Investment Commission in November. On Feb. 12, Primus and China Strategic sent a revised application to provide more information on investors and funding sources (borrowed much of this description from Taipei Times report). Nanshan, BTW, insures more than 4 million Taiwanese, and is the largest insurance firm on the island. As the TT noted in an editorial today, this bit of financial arcana is like a window into Taiwan's future. The TT reported:
An electronic copy of a report obtained by the Taipei Times on the yet-to-be-approved sale of Nan Shan Life Insurance Co claims that the backers of the Hong Kong-based consortium led by Primus Financial Holding Ltd and China Strategic Holding may include individuals found guilty of financial irregularities as well as close relatives of senior members of the Chinese Communist Party.

The English translation of the report, which is dated March 10 and comes from the office of Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Pan Meng-an (潘孟安), also mentions risks of stock speculation and raises questions about the qualifications of major shareholders and the use of “shell” companies.
The report says, among other things:
  • Primus Pacific Partner (Hong Kong) Co Ltd (Primus Pacific) — which provided funding for Primus Financial — receives “some funding” from the state-owned Beijing Enterprises Holding Ltd
  • China Strategic is a pure holding company in poor financial shape
  • Among the individuals involved in China Strategic, which is backed by Chinese money, is a well-known Shandong-born Chinese speculator who is reportedly at large over his involvement in two cases of stock speculation and insider trading
  • The Shanghai-born Huan is the CEO of Primus Pacific and chairman of Primus Financial, as well as the director of Beijing Development (Hong Kong) Ltd, which is invested by Beijing Enterprises. Following revelations of Chinese investment in the Nan Shan bid, Huan cut all ties to the case, the report says.
  • The Primus group, the report says, “is backed by ... mainland China's princeling party,” alleging that the son of former vice president Zeng Qinghong (曾慶紅), Zeng Wei (曾偉), and his brother, Zeng Qinghuai (曾慶淮), were both members of the group. Primus Pacific president and general manager Li Wenlei (李聞雷) is the son of former Chinese vice premier Li Lanqing (李嵐清), the report says.
  • “China Strategic, Primus Financial or its investor, Primus Pacific, all lack ... experience in managing financial holdings, let alone in [the] life insurance industry. In addition, the newly established Primus Nan Shan Holding Company was registered ... less than a year [earlier] for this case.
It's all there -- on one side, an alleged fugitive on the run from the law for investment violations is one of individuals involved in the alleged shell company. Another group allegedly consists of Chinese "princelings", the children of powerful PRC elites. Still another, allegedly the direct hand of the Chinese state investment system. This is no ordinary case, folks, but the first limning of the shape of things to come. Powerful interests, backed by the global financial system and the Lords of Chaos, are supporting this financial "integration" between Taiwan and China -- where "integration" is a mere euphemism for something like "hollowed out like a gourd." But hey, the stock market might go up....
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(Permalink) 9:59 PM

China Hacks Media and Activist Yahoo Emails

With Hu of China on his way to attend the non-proliferation summit, China scored another major publicity coup this week when it hacked journalist and other emails on Yahoo. Andrew Jacobs, among those hacked, reports:
In what appeared to be a coordinated assault, the e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights advocates, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders. A Chinese human rights organization also said that hackers had disabled its Web site for five days in a row.

The infiltrations, which involved Yahoo e-mail accounts, appeared to be aimed at people who write about China and Taiwan, rendering their accounts inaccessible, according to those who were affected. In the case of this reporter, hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.
Not only were journalists in both China and Taiwan hacked, including people I personally know, but as the report notes, many others working on democracy and freedom issues in Taiwan and China-related areas were hacked. Also hacked were individuals of pro-Taiwan sympathies but who are not necessarily high profile about it. Certain listmembers of the China discussion list ChinaPol were hacked -- we cheeto-eating, pajama-wearing troglodyte bloggers are not allowed on that list, for it is where the great and powerful foreign policy experts confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with their brother experts about China policy. Yes, that's right, China hacked members of a list of people who influence the foreign policy of a number of western nations. Great move, Great Wallers. Many of those amenable to reason on China's place in the world must be wearing frowns this week. Yup, that demon that you guys thought could be safely confined to the pentacle of the international trade system? It isn't going to be held by incantations to Free Trade.
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(Permalink) 9:39 PM

Thursday, April 01, 2010

4/21 GWU Conference: Navigating Coss Strait Relations

This got passed around:

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The Sigur Center for Asian Studies Cordially Invites You To a Conference On:

Navigating Cross-Strait Relations:
Taiwan's Domestic and International Imperatives

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
10:00 AM - 3:30 PM
Lindner Family Commons
The Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, 6th Floor

10:00-10:30 am - Welcome and Opening Remarks
Welcome: Shawn McHale, Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Opening Remarks: Jason Yuan, Representative, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office

10:30 am - 12:00 pm - Panel I: Taiwan's External Environment: Implications for Cross-Strait Ties
Shirley Kan, Specialist, Congressional Research Service
Phillip Saunders, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University
Teng Chung-Chian, Professor and Dean, College of International Affairs, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
Moderator: Bruce Dicskon, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, The George Washington University

12:15 - 2:00 pm - Luncheon and Keynote Lecture
Douglas Paal, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
City View Room, 7th Floor

2:00 - 3:30 pm - Panel II: Domestic Sources of Taiwan's Cross-Strait Policies
Sara Friedman, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Indiana University
Megan Greene, Associate Professor of History, University of Kansas
Shelley Rigger, Brown Professor of East Asian Politics, Davidson College
Moderator: Edward McCord, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, The George Washington University

Please RSVP to gsigur@gwu.edu with your name, affiliation, and contact information by Monday, April 19, 2010. **Please also include which session(s) you plan to attend (Panel I, Luncheon, Panel II).**

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(Permalink) 7:52 AM
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