Lin Cho-shui analyzes LTH indictment

Lin Cho-shui, former DPP politician and current political commentator, sets out some of the problems with the Lee Teng-hui indictment:

All the evidence presented in Lee’s indictment is identical to that set out in the charges against former National Security Bureau (NSB) chief accountant Hsu Ping-chiang (徐炳強). Hsu was found not guilty, so there is no good reason to indict Lee on the same grounds.

Based on the principle of double jeopardy, the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) states that a case in which a final judgement has been reached can only be retried if it meets certain conditions, such as the original evidence or testimony was false, new evidence has been discovered or the prosecutors, investigators or judges in the original case acted unlawfully or negligently. If these conditions are not met, the case cannot be brought to trial again.

This regulation exists to prevent malicious prosecutors from heaping endless litigation on a person. The principle of double jeopardy also preserves the order and stability of the legal system by ensuring that the courts do not get bogged down with frivolous cases.

The case against Lee is based on the same grounds as Hsu’s indictment. The evidence is the same and the conduct of the original prosecution and trial has not been found to have been in any way unlawful, so the case does not meet any of the conditions required for a retrial.

This is a long, ringing defense of Lee and a scathing denunciation of the prosecution and should be read in its entirety.  It has a problem that the Taipei Times editors should have spotted and removed:

It was correct to indict former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) for instances of blatant corruption. It is true that the president’s state affairs fund is much larger than a mayor’s special allowance fund and that Chen and his family employed all sorts of means to misappropriate government money.

Chen Shui-bian was found innocent of misappropriating government funds -- the prosecutors lost the trial and then two appeals on the charge of embezzling the state affairs fund. It would be nice if Lin's antipathy to Chen was smacked down by the editors before it lands the Taipei Times in legal trouble.

ADDED: Maddog comments insightfully below:

Shorter Lin Cho-shui (林濁水): "Despite their history of 'crying wolf' with charges against DPP officials, Itotally believe all of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) charges against Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁)."

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

F-16s? Now's the time

This earth god shrine is on the Floo Network. Poor fellow got splinched....

In The Diplomat Matt Anderson of CSIS argues for the sale of F-16s to Taiwan:

The first difference is that the F-16 production line could be permanently shut down if no new orders are received by the end of this year. On the surface, it appears that this will prompt the typical reaction by the military industrial complex to push arms sales in order to boost revenues and save jobs. But this time things are different. After the F-16 production line closes, there will be no other similar US fighter jets to sell to Taiwan. And other foreign militaries are probably less likely to anger China with sales of their own planes. After the F-16, the only options that could address the problem would be even more capable planes, like the F-35. If Beijing strongly disapproves of the sale of F-16s to its renegade province, the sale of more advanced aircraft would likely evoke exponentially stronger protests from China.

Another difference is how the debate is coinciding with US electoral cycles. Arms sales to Taiwan have been a part of US presidential politics before. However, awareness of and potential resentment toward China has rarely been so heightened. China’s rise has increasingly taken the lead in US geopolitical calculations of both policymakers and average voters. The last mid-term election saw a trend toward anti-China pandering on the economic front, and, since that time, China’s image has plunged in the eyes of many Americans because of its perceived belligerence. The underdog story of Taiwan, with its liberal, democratic society, could become prominent in the foreign policy debates of the next presidential election if the arms sale debate is still simmering.

A final difference in the current situation is that Beijing and Washington have a rare convergence of interests in the next Taiwanese election. Both sides would prefer to see Ma Ying-jeou re-elected. But to secure victory, Ma will likely have to prove to Taiwanese voters that he isn’t selling out their hard-fought de facto sovereignty with his pro-mainland policies. Ma could help his re-election chances if he could show to the Taiwanese electorate that he’s still prepared to defend the island from any unilateral move toward reunification by the PLA. US arms sales could be a clear signal that Ma is steadfast in his intent to adequately provide for the defence of Taiwan. In the event he fails to secure what is perceived to be a needed arms sale, then more provocative actions or statements may be required to co-opt the Kuomintang’s pro-independence rivals and move Ma closer to the middle.

Aside from the pro-forma hacks on the pro-democracy crowd, which is Provocative^®:, Anderson advances the argument that it would actually be better for stability to sell F-16s now than have to sell more advanced fighters later. The idea that Ma is going to become "provocative" if he doesn't get F-16s is laughable -- he need merely make noise in their favor, as he is doing now. But he really doesn't want the aircraft, and the Obama Administration really doesn't want to give them.

Further down he notes that the US public is less happy about China than it used to be, and US corporations, China's main constituency in the US, are also less enthused about China's mercilessly mercantile business environment. This means that the moment to sell F-16s has arrived.

This week Taiwan spokesman Philip Yang was in Washington to ask for the fighters. Yang's public calls for the sale should be read against Peter Lee's piece in the Asia Times which reveals much information about the little game Washington and Taipei are playing. Lee says:

The issue has become a Catch-22 for Taiwan, in which TECRO cannot submit an [Letter of Request] to AIT because [AIT] is under State Department orders to deny it, and then TECRO is told by the State Department that the LoR cannot be processed because it was not received, he said.

This is why we won't get those fighters despite an array of impressive arguments for the sale. But since we can't get the fighters, we should build more missiles, says this analyst in Foreign Policy.

Man, I was saying that in letters to the old Taiwan News 15 years ago. Good to see the rest of the world catching up.
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Daily Links:

• UDN Poll has Ma up 43-37 on Tsai
• Poagao's one hour vid of his trip to Xiamen
• CSIS: China's new wave of aggressiveness in the South China Sea
• China's increasing penetration of N Korea.

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

Taiwan Market Share in China Dropping: ECFA effect?

Former Presidential advisor Huang Tien-lin argued in the Taipei Times the other day that ECFA has led to a drop in Taiwan's share of the China market because Taiwanese businesses are undertaking a new wave of movement to China in the wake of the liberalization of trade:

South Korea’s market share in China rose from 9.6 percent in 2001 to 9.9 percent last year. It is not a significant change, but the small rise shows that South Korea’s market share has approximated the growth in its trade with China during the past decade. On the other hand, Taiwan’s market share fell from 11.2 percent in 2001 to 10.6 percent in 2007 and 8.6 percent last year. The main drop occurred after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came to power and embarked on improving relations with China. The largest drop occurred after the ECFA took effect, from 8.6 percent last year to 7.5 percent in the first five months of this year.

So why is this happening?

The answer is simple: It is happening because Taiwan signed the ECFA. After liberalizing trade, the manufacture of products for the Chinese market has been moved to China, meaning that those goods are no longer imported from Taiwan. This trend has been accelerated by the recent ECFA-related relaxation of restrictions on Taiwan’s core high-tech industries.

If the ECFA, a framework supposed to connect Taiwan with China, is carried out in its entirety, a “center-periphery effect” — the attraction of a smaller market to a much larger market — will occur and production of semi-finished products and other Taiwanese products will move to the “center” — China — and Taiwanese businesses will grow roots there. Taiwanese exports to China would stagnate, before beginning to decrease. This implies that the items on the ECFA early-harvest list would be the only ones to have benefited from the agreement, while the harm caused by the ECFA on the overall economy would greatly outweigh the benefits.

Huang closes by noting, correctly, that the tourism surge from China is simply a way of making locals too besotted with money flows to notice their industries are slipping away and their living standards are falling.

If Huang's assertion is correct, what we should see is a dramatic rise in Taiwanese investment in China.  AFP reported in Dec 2010:

TAIWANESE companies have invested US$13.3 billion (S$17 billion) in China this year, up 119.8 per cent from the previous year, a report said on Friday.

However, remember that China's demand for imported goods has been rising for most of the first half of the year, which means that the South Korean share is a larger, faster growing share of a growing pie -- Taiwan's exports to China are not falling. But a problem here is that 2009 was a down year from 2008's economic crisis, meaning that the dramatic rise may merely be a resumption of trends extant prior to 2008 -- and Taiwan's investment in China was rising under Chen as well. A second issue is whether the trend reflects superior South Korean competition rather than Taiwanese industry moving to China. A third issue is the validity of the statistics -- China announced numbers for 2010 that were half Taiwan's, saying investment was only $6.7 billion. That same article reported that Taiwan firms invested in China saw a threefold rise since 2007 in reinvestments in Taiwan.

I would like to see more numbers that can clearly delineate this trend, whatever it may be. I wish Taipei Times commentators would use more numbers.....
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Ma is Taiwanese Again

Took the train back from Tainan today. Great cloudy blue skies, and clean windows.

It is election time in Taiwan, so Ma Ying-jeou is going to temporarily become Taiwanese. Sure enough, President Ma responded to DPP Presidential Candidate Tsai Ing-wen's declaration of Taiwaneseness with a forthright one of his own, as a Taipei Times editorial noted today:

The Ma camp accused Tsai of manipulating populist politics with the aim of stirring up ethnic division. However, it appears that calling oneself Taiwanese is acceptable if Ma is the one doing the talking.

“I am a descendant of the Yellow Emperor in blood and I identify with Taiwan in terms of my identity. I fight for Taiwan and I am Taiwanese,” Ma wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday. “In nationality, I am a Republic of China [ROC] citizen and I am the president of the ROC.”

......

In case Ma didn’t know, the public has noticed that whenever he starts venting hot air about being Taiwanese, it means campaign season has arrived.

My friend Thomas has already blogged on some of the pan-Blue political infighting going on over Taiwaneseness. This "being Taiwanese" declaration of Ma's is fascinating for what it reveals.

Ma is a descendent of the Yellow Emperor "in blood." In 2008 Ma was not nearly so open about his identification with China, but here he says it out loud, dragging in the racialist code for Chinese identity that is essentially a declaration of Han chauvinism. His declaration thus pits "blood" against the mere "identity" of being Taiwanese. Ma's particular program has been to treat "Taiwaneseness" as a subclass of Chineseness -- to subsume it into the Greater Han identity even while paying lip service to its uniqueness. For example, in an interview a while back:

President Ma: The idea behind the Taiwan Academies is to showcase some of Taiwan's cultural achievements over the past 60 years. I have often said that Taiwan culture is a kind of Chinese culture with Taiwanese characteristics. Its roots may have come from mainland China, but it has merged with other cultures here in Taiwan and has developed new features. This is what we wish to convey in the Taiwan Academies.

Ma sees himself as a defender of Chinese culture which is a great treasure to be handed down to subsequent generations, and Taiwan as a great bastion of Chinese culture as opposed to China, where Communism has permanently polluted it -- rhetoric out of the 1950s -- 1970s.

The Richburg interview shows this tendency toward Ma to subsume Taiwan into China again further down:

Q17. Washington Post: I understand promoting Taiwanese culture separate of mainland China is important for you, Mr. President.

President Ma: In fact, Chinese culture is consistent, including Confucianism as I have just mentioned, but actual practice is the important thing. Over the past decade or so, Confucianism has received great attention on the mainland. This is surprising, but also comforting for us to see. Many people, from students to entrepreneurs, are hiring private teachers to instruct them in Confucian philosophy. In Taiwan, however, Confucian philosophy has been taught in schools for the past six decades, and every student has studied it. If mainland China can move in this direction, I believe it will be the right direction and can promote closer cross-strait relations.

Note how Richburg invites Ma to emphasize the uniqueness of Taiwanese culture and Ma declines and responds by emphasizing that Chinese culture is consistent. He then offers -- clearly to illustrate the idea of "Chinese" culture -- a movement toward Confucianism in China while links to Confucian studies in Taiwan, which as I understand are widely detested by local students.

Thus, Ma's declaration of "Taiwaneseness" fronted with the reference to blood ties to the Yellow Emperor is just another display of his consistent downgrading of Taiwan culture. He is probably signaling to his allies in Beijing as well.

Finally, it should be noted that Ma's racialist conception of identity-via-descent is directly contradicted by the DPP view that being Taiwanese is an identity open to anyone who loves the island and that citizenship is not based on blood but on participation as a citizen in the democratic community of Taiwan. Hopefully the DPP will emphasize the themes of openness, democracy, citizenship, and Taiwan identity as one in response to Ma's 19th century Volkish view of his own identity.
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Daily Links:

• SPECIAL: Japan repays Taiwan's generosity after quake/tsunami by denying Taiwanese students relief funds other foreign students in Japan are receiving. No diplomatic relations is the excuse.
• How should a romantic honeymoon in Taiwan be planned? Help her out.
• 2011 Yingge ceramics festival kicks off
• Unifying the "Two Chinas" across the Strait. Argh. 
• ERA poll on the 2012 election, the Lee Teng-hui indictment, and legislative vote by party.
• Cruise ship visits Taiwan, Chinese passengers get free transportation.
• The idiotic beef stand-off between the US and Taiwan continues.
• Taiwan to set up red-light districts under regional governments. I believe the entire city of Taichung already qualifies for this special status....
• A friend's new blog on regional affairs opens strong with a post on Taiwaneseness and Chineseness.
• Washington Post letter on weapons sales to Taiwan. It's amazing that there are people who think 66 F-16s for a democracy are provocations, but remain silent on 1600 missiles wielded by an authoritarian, expansionist state. The whole pro-Beijing tone of the letter is awful, I hope it generates some more informed and pro-US, pro-Taiwan, and pro-democracy responses.

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

Report Says Biden to Tell Beijing it has veto over US foreign policy

The Taipei Times passes along a report that the Obama Administration has given Beijing a veto over US foreign policy:

US Vice President Joe Biden, who is expected to embark on a state visit to China in the middle of next month, will provide assurances to Beijing that the US has no plans to sell Taiwan the F-16C/D aircraft it is seeking, reports said yesterday.

During his visit, Biden will explain why the US President Barack Obama’s administration, facing pressure from US Congress and required to meet its obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act, would agree to upgrade Taiwan’s fleet of 144 F-16A/B aircraft, the Chinese-language news service DW News (多維新聞) reported, citing an unnamed “senior US official.”

However, Biden will reportedly tell his Chinese hosts that Washington has no plans to sell to Taiwan the 66 more advanced F-16C/D it has been seeking since 2006, the report said.

An official announcement on Washington’s decision not to release the F-16C/Ds and to proceed on the upgrade plan will be made in September, it said.

You can hope that this report is false, but knowledgeable individuals have said all along that no F-16s were coming to Taiwan. Whether or not it will send Biden to Beijing to kowtow to the Chinese, the Obama Administration has apparently decided to forego the sale of F-16s to Taiwan, following the Bush Administration in this regard. Yay for foreign policy continuity!

One  has to wonder what this means for the Administration's relations with a DPP government in Taipei. If Beijing decides to demonize Tsai as it demonized Chen Shui-bian, will the Obama Administration, which has simply followed Bush in so many areas, foreign and domestic, serve Beijing as the Bush Administration did? Scary.

On a complementary aspect of Taiwan's defense, David Axe in The Diplomat argues that Taiwan needs submarines -- it is actually a long argument against acquiring the fighter aircraft, and ends:

The best weapons for delaying a Chinese attack are ones that can’t be targeted by ballistic missiles – and that could confront a Chinese invasion fleet far from Taiwan's shores. That means submarines.


Today, the Taiwanese navy operates just two combat-ready submarines, bought from the Dutch during a rare period when European nations were willing to risk angering Beijing by selling weapons to Taipei. In 2001, Washington approved the sale of eight new diesel-powered subs to Taiwan, but no US shipyards currently build such boats. Ten years later, the deal is still pending.

Submarines are nifty -- if one has a long naval tradition of operating submarines and bases that are immune to Chinese attack. Taiwan has neither. Not only will subs not arrive for many years, but their bases will still be as vulnerable to assault as the F-16 fields.

The attack helicopters that Taiwan is acquiring have air-to-land missiles that can inflict serious harm on an invasion force but it remains to be seen whether Taiwan has the command and communications ability to construct mobile bases and coordinate a defense, especially since they won't have air cover since the US would rather serve Beijing than defend Taiwan. Disgusting.

Clock ticking now on next request Washington will have to fulfill that will make Beijing happy..... because Washington is going to find out that feeding the monster only makes it bigger.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Daily Links, July 11, 2011

A cluster of beetles gets out of the rain among the leaves of my neighbor's gourd plants.

Lotsa good stuff out there today.

SPECIAL: Don't miss Charles Snyder's excellent piece on the KMT's dark history.

BLOGS:

• Great summary of why Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is such an asshole, from China Hearsay.
• Japanese colonialism and its effect on the modern map of Taiwan
• That's Impossible! locates yet another Ma confession to his ultimate goal: annexation.
• Ozsoapbox makes fun of the banana glut. 
• Battle of Fisherman's Wharf with another slice of Dutch history in Taiwan
• Doubts are raised about alleged sub launched missile.
• Lief with lovely pics of the Tainan moonscape.
• The Guns of Wulu
• Echo with very long, very detailed look at the case of the blogger sued over a restaurant review.

MEDIA:

• A Philippines perspective on the Spratly/Paracel case. China to commence drilling soon....
• Peter Lee with another one of his uniformly good pieces, this one on the F-16 pavane in which Ma pretends he wants F-16s and the Obama Administration pretends to think about his request.
• Steven Walt citing a paper on Great Power Retrenchment:
  

  Faced with diminishing resources, great powers moderate their foreign policy ambitions and offer concessions in areas of lesser strategic value. Contrary to the pessimistic conclusions of critics, retrenchment neither requires aggression nor invites predation. Great powers are able to rebalance their commitments through compromise, rather than conflict. In these ways, states respond to penury the same way they do to plenty: they seek to adopt policies that maximize security given available means. Far from being a hazardous policy, retrenchment can be successful. States that retrench often regain their position in the hierarchy of great powers. Of the fifteen great powers that adopted retrenchment in response to acute relative decline, 40 percent managed to recover their ordinal rank. In contrast, none of the declining powers that failed to retrench recovered their relative position.

  It is not too late for the US to reimagine a future that is oriented on 21st century East Asia and future technology rather than on the 20th century Middle East and fossil fuels. Our leaders appear to lack that kind of imagination, however.
  
• US, Japan, Australia conduct first joint exercise in South China Sea.
• Jens Kastner on the Free Independent Tourists from China, with quotes from John Copper about how horrible the FITs are going to be for the DPP. Dream on, John. 
• China's Fifth Generation leaders and their future Taiwan policy.
• TVBS poll has Ma ahead of Tsai 44-36. Good luck figuring out what that means.
• Taiwan divorce rates falling.
• Taiwan textile makers move up the value chain.
• Trade data show China economy is slowing.
• Lai of MAC: One China = ROC, 1992 consensus rulz.
• Malaysian students rally in Taiwan for democracy in their home country.
• Night market hero debuts in China.
• Job outlook for grads improving.
• Chinese gov't paper calls for deployment of aircraft carrier to Senkakus, stern posture on Chinese expansion into the islands.

EVENTS and ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• 2011 Taiwan Oolong Study Tour Oct 16-23.
• John and Fish, two of Taiwan's best bird photographers, are having a solo exhibition in Tainan this month to July 30, 2011. Ephemeral vs. Eternal John and Fish Digital Art Artyart Gallery 亞帝畫廊 No.99-8, Nan men RD, Tainan City, Taiwan 台南市南門路99-8號 Here's an example of their awesome, enjoyable work.
• Backseat seatbelt law takes effect next month. I remember when we bought our van rear seatbelts were extra and the salespeople laughed at us for buying them. 

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

Taichung's Hoppin' 一中街/Yi Zhong Street

Summertime: time to visit Taichung's hopping Yizhong Street, where young people go to see and be seen.

On Friday night in the early evening the crowds are just starting to appear.

Eateries and drink stands are packed.

Marketers take advantage of the constantly roiling crowds.

Yizhong Street is a favorite of young women shopping for something popular and affordable.

It's also great for snacking.

I stopped at a popular drink shop to grab some tea.

A couple inspects a restaurant menu.

The area on either side of Yizhong Street is lined with boutiques and shops.

...for girls of all ages.

As you can clearly see, I was the model for these mannikins.

As evening goes on, crowds pile in.

A vendor assembles a snack.

"We who are about to fry, salute you!"

Consumer items of every type and description.

On Yizhong Street, all the sales girls are beautiful.

Meanwhile, brigades of workers take care of traffic and garbage...hard work.

The city has helpfully set these out labeled for recycling and not.

Not everyone on Yizhong Street is a wannabehip youngster. Here a maid has brought her charge for a rest and a walk.

A worker takes a break.

Communication: the soul of relationships.

In an alley crammed with little clothing shops, two females debate the merits of a piece of clothing.

Getting ready for the rush.

Dunno what these were, but the presentation is excellent.

The bicycle: a hip consumer item.

With so many choices, no wonder shopping takes hours.

Navigating the pack.

There's a backpacker's place right on Yizhong for $350.

Discussing the evening's take.

Shoppers rest their feet.

Street vendors proffer bargains.

Traditional staples are available as well.

Placidly amid the noise and haste: it's still Taiwan where the old men play chess.

After everyone goes home: who is going to clean up the mess?
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Election Round-up =UPDATED=

The President and Veep candidate Premier Wu have been flogging the KMT brand in the south. With the North locked down and the center evenly split, the south may turn out to be crucial to KMT hopes.

King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), executive director of Ma’s campaign office, said that support in the south would be crucial for the KMT in the presidential election because political support bases in northern and central Taiwan were more consolidated.

The campaign office will arrange frequent trips to southern Taiwan for Ma and Wu, he said.

People often describe the South as "green" but it is more like a checkerboard, with different levels of greenness for different elections. Even though Ma is unlikely to do well in an area of the nation the KMT has ruthlessly exploited for 60 years, by campaigning he increases the chances of KMT legislators to get elected down south (remember, the legislature and President will be elected the same day this time).

Ma's campaign in Nantou emphasized the benefits of tourism from the PRC (which fell 30% last month); Sun Moon Lake in that county being a PRC tourist favorite. Ma's campaign could hardly emphasize anything else; Nantou remains relatively impoverished and undeveloped after many years of KMT rule. This has not stopped the locals from voting like automatons for the KMT. *sigh* It should also be a warning to the locals about what happens when a region relies heavily on tourism.....

Ma also requested that fewer Chinese officials show up during election season (apparently). They are a reminder of what Ma is really working toward....

Premier Wu appears to be the designated attack dog in the campaign to leverage the corruption indictment of former President Lee Teng-hui against DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen -- the classic mode in which the Great Man (Ma) utters paternalistic benevolences and regretful sighs while the vicious attacks that are actual policy are carried out by underlings. Wu said this week:

“Black gold politics ran wild during Lee Teng-hui's 13-year presidential stint. Who was encouraging all that?” Wu claimed during a TV interview, apparently blaming the former president for Taiwan's widespread corruption.

This campaign against Lee, who possesses the towering rep that Chen Shui-bian never had, stands a good chance of backfiring. It also absorbs time and energy that the KMT could put to better effect attacking Tsai directly. Raising the issue of black gold politics will not reflect well on the KMT.

The KMT has been bickering with its pan-Blue partner, the People's First Party (PFP), headed by James Soong. Soong has been making noises about running as a third candidate in the election, while several recent news stories have pointed to problems between the two pro-China parties. For example:

According to PFP sources, while the KMT said it wanted to cooperate with the PFP in the elections, it was telling potential PFP legislator hopefuls to “look at the big picture” and to back out from the elections.

For example, the sources said, Taipei City Councilor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) of the PFP, who was planning to run in the legislative elections in the Nangang (南港) Neihu (內湖) constituency, has been pressured by the KMT to back out of the campaign.

Sources from the PFP said the party would announce its list of nominees for legislators as early as next week, adding that as well as about 10 nominees for Taiwan proper, the PFP would also nominate candidates for Taiwan’s -outlying islands.

The move by the PFP, which split from the KMT in 2000 under the leadership of Soong — a former KMT secretary-general — was largely interpreted as a sign of disunity in the KMT-dominated pan-blue camp, signaling that Soong and his tiny party would go their own way in the elections.

In the last legislative election the KMT was able to recoup most of the votes it had lost to the PFP and to bring back many PFP legislators to the KMT. The PFP was badly wounded and remains a small party. Even worse, Soong himself ran for Taipei mayor and was a non-factor in the race. He is old and unlikely to draw votes, and the reservoir of goodwill he built up as "provincial governor" during the 1990s, where he acquired a rep for being a trains-run-on-time kind of politician, has pretty much dried up. It is more likely that the hints and noises by Soong are simply to acquire leverage for some other deal.

In 2008 former President Lee Teng-hui was a non-factor, withholding his endorsement of the pro-Taiwan candidate until the waning days of the election. This time around Lee is out front and center, saying that the nation has made no progress and the President needs to be changed....

〔記者林恕暉、王寓中／台北報導〕李登輝前總統昨天痛批馬政府執政，國家都沒進步，每件事都叫中國幫忙，以為中國世界最強，「應該換總統！」他並強調，執政當局一連串傾中賣台、淪喪主權、踐踏民主與人權，使台灣民主出現倒退危機，他呼籲大家「棄馬保台」，選出能堅持台灣主體性的國會議員與總統。     

Lee accused the Administration of relying on China to solve every problem, and called on voters to "Dump Ma, Save Taiwan". This is a bit of political wordplay ju-jitsu. Recall in the 1998 Taipei mayor election and a couple of other elections when the KMT was split, the slogan was "Dump [the candidate that can't win], Save [the candidate that has the best chance]." Now Lee is using that against the KMT.

Also, I've totally deleted a section of this post to rewrite it like this. Tsai's position -- and that of the DPP -- is that anyone who lives in Taiwan and identifies with Taiwan is a qualified Taiwanese. Her position on citizenship is one of civic nationality, not ethnic nationality. The KMT is going to distort this as "ethnic nationalism" in order to attack the DPP. Tsai needs to make this message really clear, and those of us who support her need to fight back against the smear that Tsai supports ethnic nationalism.
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Daily Links:

• Drew explores An analysis of Taiwan's cycling infrastructure
• Patrick on Letters from the 19th century in Taiwan. 
• China in the South China Sea. Again.

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

Exports fall, presaging slower second half

A beautiful bride-to-be being done up for the traditional wedding photographs.

The Taipei Times reported:

The nation’s exports fell 9.7 percent from a month earlier to US$27.88 billion last month because of weaker seasonal demand for Taiwanese electronics and the shutdown of several plants at the sixth naphtha cracker complex, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.

However, exports still grew 10.8 percent last month from a year earlier, with exports surging 16.9 percent year-on-year to US$154.14 billion in the first six months, the strongest level ever, the ministry’s data showed.

Exports fell from May to June this year, 9.7%. Compared to last June they are still up 10.8%. The report noted that imports also reached all-time highs, causing a fall in the trade surplus, but much of the rising tide of imports consisted of capital imports, implying that makers are purchasing machinery to make more stuff. Yay!

The Taipei Times article noted differing views -- the second half of the year could be good if Japanese reconstruction starts, China maintains, and the US grows. However, the US economy doesn't seem to be headed for spectacular growth, as its leaders would rather burn the Middle East than make America grow. The Financial Times column Beyond Brics put Taiwan's export decline in a global context:

Solid evidence in Taiwan’s latest export numbers of a worrying slow down in world trade.

Economists warned earlier that Taiwan’s strong export growth couldn’t continue forever, and that the second half of the year was likely to present a much tougher environment than the first.

And on Thursday they were proved right, with Taiwan’s June export numbers showing exports falling 10 per cent compared to May, and up just 10 per cent compared to June 2010.

Exports traditionally fall from May to June, but some economists were still caught off guard – The median growth rate forecasted by eight economists surveyed by Dow Jones was 19.6 per cent.

The slowdown is a repercussion of a global slowdown -- China's numbers are expected to show a slowing economy as well. FT pointed out that Taiwan's machinery exports fell 13.3%, implying that the tightening of credit in China is hitting purchases of production machinery from Taiwan.

How will this affect the election? I expect a second-half slow down will have very little effect, for two reasons. First, the pro-KMT media was able to create the feeling of economic slump among voters despite economic growth above 4.5% for the period 2006-2008 during the run-up to the election. Hence, I expect that the pro-Blue media will be able to blunt the effect of economic slowdown, unless it is truly awful. Don't forget that the foreign media is Taipei-centric and frequently recirculates KMT talking points as if they were serious analysis, validating the local media. Second, voters in the local election choose on purely local issues such as development projects and clan and patronage networks, while at the national level core voting groups are probably already set. Only the ten percent swing vote remains to be captured, and this educated group will not be much influenced by transient economic changes.
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Daily Links:

• The Economist's Jane Rickards writes on the LTH indictment, musing on the use of secret funds for diplomatic missions.
• Richard Bush's remarks on the existence of the ROC and the pain in the ass significant influence it is for cross-strait history and relations.
• Laowiseass on Chinese asking about your Mandarin language skills.
• Beach. Music. Smokin' hot babes. David Reid does a music festival at Fulong.
• Cycling Satin Sestina's excellent report with many pictures on the Alishan Race last weekend. 
• Lady Tung, Koxinga's wife.
• Pics from Lao Ren Cha of Shenkeng outside Taipei

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

Expropriating here with the left hand, leasing there with the right

Farmers protested this week that the government has been ruthlessly carrying out land expropriations....

“The past decade has seen tens of thousands of good farms taken over [for development projects], and farmlands continue to disappear,” alliance president Liu Ching-chang (劉慶昌) told a news conference in Taipei. “I wonder if our children and grandchildren would simply stop eating rice.”

Liu is a farmer from Erchongpu (二重埔) in Jhudong Township (竹東), Hsinchu County, whose farmland is also facing expropriation as the government moves to expand Hsinchu Science Park.

Liu said that government officials — including President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) —had promised farmers last year to revise the Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例), but “expropriation has continued everywhere.”

“If the government is sincere about its promise, it should halt all ongoing expropriations until the law is amended,” Liu said.

With a big harvest this year that was rapidly collected, grain prices plummeted, and government price supports appear to have benefited grain merchants rather than farmers, according to the farmers.

The irony of these land grabs is that even as Taiwan plows under good land for factories, it is mulling joining the new trend of leasing land in the developing world to secure its food supply. Expropriate land here in Taiwan while leasing it overseas! Taiwan is heavily dependent on food imports and food security is a key if underappreciated issue here. The potentially lucrative market for biofuels is also driving land acquisition by Taiwan investors overseas. Taiwan also has much land that lies fallow, even as it develops slopeland, due its complicated and contradictory policies. I noted in a post earlier this year:

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

It seems that Taiwan could really do itself a favor by implementing a well thought out and comprehensive land regime. But then big developers couldn't make money getting free land from farmers and the state for private exploitation......
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Taiwan, Statehood, International Organizations

Saw this heavily armed and brightly painted fellow on 130 in Miaoli yesterday.

I was going to respond to John Copper's latest outburst in the Taipei Times with its bizarre opening sentence: "Liberals don’t like Asians." but the more I read it, the more distressed I got. It was not so bad it was stupid; it was so bad it was painful. How could anyone intelligent publish a piece that stupid? But having done that very thing myself before, I ended up feeling sorry for him rather than angered.

Far different is this piece by Jacques deLisle on Taiwan, statehood, and participation in international organizations. Most of it is quite good. I just want to comment a bit on this part:

There is the strong assertion, prevalent among some Taiwan independence supporters, that China may never have held sovereignty over Taiwan. The exercise of the powers of rule, according to this view, was very thin through the late nineteenth century—perhaps so thin that China never established sovereignty or, at least, that its weak and perhaps merely inchoate claim could be relatively easily extinguished. Assuming Taiwan initially was under Chinese sovereignty, a common view is that it left, coming under the sovereignty of the Japanese Empire with the Treaty of Shimonoseki that ended the war between China and Japan near the close of the nineteenth century. Following the period of Japanese rule, Taiwan was only very briefly and controversially (in light of the repression of a nascent independence movement) ruled by a central Chinese government from 1945 (when the Japanese forces on the island surrendered) to 1949 (when the ROC government lost the Civil War on the Mainland and decamped to Taiwan). According to this line of analysis, there has been no need for Taiwan to secede or otherwise take action to separate from a larger China in the years since.

Lots of TIers hold the view that "China" never had sovereignty over Taiwan, not merely because Qing sovereignty over Taiwan was weak but because the Qing were Manchus who were non-Chinese, foreign rulers who incorporated Taiwan into an empire which included China. Thus, arguing that Taiwan should be part of China because it was partly owned by the Qing is like arguing that Kenya is part of India because both were part of the British empire. No Han emperor ever owned Taiwan, and for all of Chinese history down to the late 1930s, Taiwan was considered to lie outside China.

deLisle's position also risks legitimating Chinese control over Qing holdings, something which should be fiercely resisted since it is a direct source of legitimacy for the current phase of Chinese expansionism. Beijing no more owns Qing colonies than Ankara should control Jordan and Bulgaria because they were part of the Ottoman Empire.

Another argument I've often heard and read: the Qing never controlled the whole island. Until the 1870s the Manchus denied that they had control of the "savage" mountain areas and resistance to Qing rule in those areas, as well as the constant flow of revolts among the local "Han" population, meant that they never owned it.

The piece gets stronger as it explores the consequences for international participation for Taiwan:

The second aspect of the question of what “type” of international organization concerns the entity’s substantive focus. Subject matter matters. It matters in at least three ways. First, is Taiwan an important player in the regulated field such that it can claim that it serves the global interest to allow the ROC to participate in the regime in question? The answer clearly is yes for the WTO, given Taiwan’s stature in international trade. The answer would seem to be a strong yes for the WHA and WHO, especially after SARS and amid recurring fears of pandemics starting in the Chinese mainland and spreading via Taiwan. And affirmative answers would seem at least defensible for international organs that regulate financial institutions and other economic behavior, shipping, fishing, civil aviation, nuclear energy, potential dual-use technology—all areas in which Taiwan is a significant actor whose actions have substantial international consequences.

Second, is the regulated field particularly important to Taiwan? This is a fairness argument: Where Taiwan is being hurt by being excluded for no reason beyond Beijing’s political opposition, this can be attacked as fundamentally unjust. The rest of the world may be hurt as well, but, from this perspective, what matters is the unwarranted harm or risk to Taiwan in an area that really matters for Taiwan. SARS / public health, international trade and international regimes for cooperation on criminal law matters are areas where the answer to this second question is yes and where Taiwan authorities have so argued.

Third, has China wrong-footed it in seeking to exclude Taiwan, given the nature of the substantive issue and the character of China’s response? In other words, has China misplayed this situation in a way that has created sympathy for Taiwan and Taiwan’s position? This is, as events played out, very much the story with SARS and Taiwan’s pursuit of engagement with the WHA / WHO. It may turn out to be part of the story with human rights and Taiwan’s Beijing-enforced exclusion from participation in the relevant U.N. organs—especially if we juxtapose Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Prize and Beijing's reaction with Taiwan's strong human rights record and recent ratification of the long-ago-signed U.N. human rights covenants.

These developments concerning human rights also illustrate one further strategy available to Taiwan to pursue greater engagement with international organizations, including especially those of the difficult-to-reach U.N. system. Taiwan can, and sometimes does, pursue not membership, and not participation, but what I call “as-if participation.” Taiwan commits unilaterally but publicly and solemnly to acting as if it is (or as if it were) a member of an international organization or regime, pledging to live up to all relevant standards.

A high level of functional performance of the obligations that go with membership can strengthen Taiwan’s case for greater access to institutions and regimes from which it has been excluded. But much of the point of “as if” participation is about the question of Taiwan’s international status—the issue with which this discussion began: the more Taiwan can walk and talk and act like a member of a regime that is open primarily or exclusively to states, the more hope it has of securing the benefits of state (or nearly state-like) status in the international system.

Several things to take away here -- our democracy is a crucial selling point of the island's participation in international organizations, as is our importance as a trading state. Taiwan's foreign policy is right here in this sentence:

the more Taiwan can walk and talk and act like a member of a regime that is open primarily or exclusively to states, the more hope it has of securing the benefits of state (or nearly state-like) status in the international system.

The next president of Taiwan needs to be working on that, not on circumscribing our independent foreign policy like the current president.
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Daily Links:

• Massive corruption scandal in customs exposed. This kind of thing has been going on for years.....
• Blumenthal and Mazza argue for larger US defense budget for Asia. Actually we could reduce the defense budget but increase resources to Asia merely by stopping our stupid wars in the Middle East and focusing on what's really important: Asia. Fighting for oil is making the same error that the UK did when it traded the sugar islands for North America in the 18th century. 
• The Diplomat with an excellent piece on China's local government debt. 
• Hahahaha. KMT election ad numbers among the Ma Administration's accomplishments the Voucher program. Hahahaha.
• Excellent Taipei Times piece on the way the KMT killed and imprisoned among its own people. This little holocaust has largely gone unnoticed as a vast impenetrable silence encysts it. Hopefully more people will speak out on this sad chapter in Taiwan's history.

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

L'Affaire Lee Teng-hui Round Up: KMT responds and Other Stuff

As everyone knows, former President, Vice President, Taipei Mayor, and award-winning ag econ scholar Lee Teng-hui, a tower of recent Taiwan history, was indicted last Thursday for abuse of special funds. This resulted in a stream of accusations from the pro-Taiwan side that the move was the result of the KMT's desire to interfere in the elections, tarnish the legacy of Lee Teng-hui, paint all Taiwanese politicians as corrupt, and attack DPP Presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen. The Prosecutor's office responded to the charges (KMT news network):

In response to the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU)’s accusation that he had followed instructions from Mainland authorities, Prosecutor General Huang Shih-ming refuted the TSU’s groundless accusation with a rare public response. Huang said that Chen Shui-bian admitted that it was he who had squelched the investigation into the case during his 8-year rule, and even provocatively accused the SIU of “daring to indict him, but not Lee.” Huang said that the SIU now merely allowing the case to “see the light” after it had been squelched by Chen, and argued that the SIU would be deaf and dumb to ignore Chen’s accusations that the SIU did not have the guts to deal with Lee’s case.

Huang Shih-ming stated that politicians should do some soul-searching as to whether or not they had done anything illegal, and should not insist on their innocence by accusing the justice system of political persecution after their indictment. He explained, “The period of election campaigns is not a protective umbrella for politicians. The investigation into the national security confidential fund case had been delayed for 8 years, or are we willing to wait for the statute of limitations in the case to expire, just like the case in which airman Chiang Kuo-ching had been wrongfully indicted and executed for the rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl in 1997?”

Huang Shih-ming said that the SIU was currently investigating other cases involving Lee Teng-hui, adding that the principle for the SIU’s investigation was that if there was no concrete criminal evidence, the SIU would clear Lee’s name as soon as possible, otherwise, he would be indicted accordingly.

Asked about the public’s suspicion that the timing was inappropriate, Huang asked that since Taiwan had an election each year, did that mean that the SIU could not indict any politicians at all?

Notes:

• The claim that Chen Shui-bian squashed the case against Lee Teng-hui is contradicted by the internal evidence of Huang in this passage, who also said that Chen accused the SIU of lacking the guts to pursue the case -- meaning that Huang is claiming that Chen accused the SIU of being too chicken to go after Lee when he himself was preventing them from going after Lee. Right.
• Huang says that the SIU is merely letting the case come to light after Chen had squelched it (the additional political hack on Chen should be obvious). Ma Ying-jeou was inaugurated in May of 2008. Three years have passed. Where has this case been? 
• Following the pattern in the Chen Shui-bian case, Huang alludes to more charges to come. In the Chen Shui-bian case, charges were piled on, apparently to enhance the appearance of corruption. 
• Lee is accused of embezzling state affairs funds, the same charge Chen was found innocent of. 
• Recall that Ma was found "innocent" of embezzling the analogical slush fund for his time as mayor. There was no dispute that Ma downloaded the funds into his private accounts, but this was found to be ok. The DPP and KMT recently agreed to retroactively legalize private use of the special funds that ranking bureaucrats receive, effectively eliminating this threat to all officials but the President, who was specifically exempted from the legislation so that Chen Shui-bian could still be attacked. Essentially Lee is being indicted for doing what Ma Ying-jeou was found innocent of and all other politicians of lower rank have been exempted from.
• The TSU's bizarre accusation that Huang is a puppet of Beijing may be inspired by the fact that he just got back from an official trip to China. 
• I have heard that Lee was going to speak at a TSU fundraiser on Friday and announce his support for Tsai. I haven't found any public confirmation of this.

Also indicted with Lee was Liu Tai-ying, who once controlled the KMT assets under Lee. Numerous other politicians are connected to the case -- Jason Hu, the current mayor of Taichung, was Minister of Foreign Affairs during that period, was questioned about it. Liu, eventually jailed on an unrelated charge, also implicated James Soong, originally. The charge was that Liu had used his control over the KMT's business affairs to direct loans and  investments to firms in trouble, and then accepted kickbacks for doing so. China Post has a Who's Who in the case list. And see also this. AP's report on the Lee indictment.

This Lee indictment will not sit well with most groups, but it will make the Deep Blue KMTers who hate Lee passionately quite happy.

Note that the money had to pass through the National Security Bureau. The NSB's chief accountant, General Hsu Ping-chiang was charged in 2003 in connection with these funds and cleared for lack of evidence in 2004. Lee's lawyer claims the SIU prosecutor's office has no new evidence. Hsu was one of a gaggle of retired intelligence officers who visited China earlier this year.

The Taipei Times reported on claims by DPPer Ellen Huang that point out how the KMT is going to try to smear Tsai Ing-wen with this case:

Huang said that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) recently said the charge against Lee would point to Tsai’s involvement in an “816 project” under the secret diplomacy funds from which Lee allegedly embezzled. The 816 project was part of the Mingteh Project (明德專案) focusing on secret diplomacy with the US and Japan. Chiu alleged that Tsai received NT$2.62 million (US$91,147) from the 816 project and passed the money to Yang Chih-heng (楊志恆), who Chiu said was involved in the money-laundering charge against Lee.

Wonderful. The Taipei District Prosecutor's Office, you may recall, is where the prosecutors, including one involved in the Chen case, held that disgusting skit portraying Chen Shui-bian as an AIDS victim, Remember when 8 prosecutors stood and said they would pursue Chen to the bitter end? No bias in this office, no sirree.

Remember when the judge in the Chen case was switched when he ruled in Chen Shui-bian's favor? But there's no bias in the prosecutors, and the judiciary is independent.

I'll leave you with Jerome Cohen's thought on the Chen case, but I suspect it will soon become applicable in the Lee (Tsai-by-proxy) case:

Jerome Cohen, in one of his recent letters, noted that in Chinese jurisprudence the issue is not the legitimacy of the legal process but the guilt or innocence of the accused. The "trial by media" that Chen is undergoing is effective because it appeals to this cultural preference.

Whatever happens, this can only further polarize Taiwan's divided electorate. It presages an ugly, brutal campaign season.
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Daily Links

• Jobs sucked to China because Taiwan is not Singapore. Half right.
• Jetties -- little projections of the construction-industrial state -- are destroying Taiwan's coastlines.
• Craig Ferguson has started a weekly themed photo challenge, the Taiwan Photo Challenge. This week's theme is food. See Facebook
• KMT legislator complains party leadership is out of touch with central, south.
• A Taiwan artist on the Corel Blog.

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

Taiwan NEXT ad(s)

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

The Glorious Northern Cross

School's out. Time for a ride over the Northern Cross Island Highway (Map). I hadn't been on this route since 2009, and had been itching to ride it. The second day of this ride, from Baling to I-lan, is one of my favorite routes on the island.

Friday short shorts

Plenty of other news going on even as former President Lee is indicted. The China Media Bulletin of Freedom House says:

*Taiwan telecom renews Falun Gong–linked TV station contract


On June 27, Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), a partly government-owned telecommunications company, and New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV), whose staff are mostly Falun Gong practitioners, officially renewed their contract, allowing NTDTV to use CHT's new satellite after the existing contract expires in August. The agreement enables the station to continue broadcasting uncensored news, including reports of human rights abuses and citizen activism, to Taiwan as well as major cities in mainland China. CHT had initially announced in April that it would not renew the contract, citing technical obstacles, but critics speculated that the company was aiming to please Beijing, as it had joint ventures with Chinese state-owned companies. During its negotiations, NTDTV received international support from both Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. Congress, and from the Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders. The station's chief executive in Taiwan thanked the island's ruling and opposition parties for their assistance, while a Taipei Times editorial hailed the development as a victory for press freedom.


* Taipei Times 6/28/2011: A small victory for freedom
* NTDTV 6/29/2011: NTD AP and Chunghwa Renew Satellite Broadcast Contract

This week the DPP also released its list of At-Large candidates. The list represents a compromise between the party's internal factions, the need for gender balance, and other issues.

Party officials said that the three were strategically placed just outside the “safe” zone is an attempt to mobilize their supporters, who maintain bases of support in New Taipei City (新北市) and Greater Kaohsiung, where Hsieh was the former mayor.

“All three were willing to place themselves at the fringes of the safe list in order to boost our share of the vote. Everyone in the DPP has confidence that our share of the party list will exceed half [of the allocated seats],” DPP Secretary-General Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) said when announcing the roster. “It shows we have ambition.”

Among the 34 candidates on the legislator-at-large roster, half of the spots were allocated to women, who received odd numbers, while all men were even numbered.

The DPP’s nominations inside the “safe” zone are divided into two broad groups: seasoned politicians, such as DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), who has the No. 2 spot, and factional representatives; and community representatives, such as environmental and labor activists.

Taiwan also upgraded its locally made IDF fighter, upgrading computer systems and giving the aircraft greater fighting power. The new upgrades may give critics in Washington further ammunition to delay the delivery of new F-16s.

Also, David Reid, longtime blogger at David on Formosa, activist, friend and Taiwan supporter, is leaving our fair island to return to Australia later this summer. Good luck in all you do, David.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.