Saturday night short shorts

I got a set of 3 Meike extension tubes (NT$2100) today. Fried tofu, up close.

Don't forget, tonight is the Perseid Meteor shower. It seems here in the Chung we are under clouds all night. In all my years here this has been the crappiest summer ever: cold, wet, and cloudy. I guess Taipei is getting revenge on us for enjoying good weather all those years....

I stumbled across this interesting post on religion in Taiwan. It has some good discussion of the way religious believers are counted in Taiwan -- did you ever hear of BAROC? -- and then talks about institutions:

Although Catholicism [天主教] is a minority religion in Taiwan, it is massively institutionalized: in 2011, Taiwan was home to 9 Catholic Hospitals, 7 Catholic Clinics, 16 Catholic Middle Schools, and 142 Catholic Kindergardens and Nursery Schools (exceeding the number of Buddhist institutions in every category mentioned; see the charts for some other examples). This type of institutional depth probably produces paperwork documenting the membership of a larger proportion of their followers. Religions, also, will vary as to their requirements for people to "enroll" to receive various rites of passage (and, again, the litigious nature of baptism, marriage, etc., in the Catholic tradition is a point of contrast).

The raw data for the number of religious institutions (shown here as eight pie-charts) can be misleading in many ways: there is no correlation between the number of institutions and their number of beneficiaries. 10 small schools may have fewer students than 1 large one, and so on for the number of patients in hospitals, or the number of homeless people assisted by a shelter. There are nevertheless a few interesting facts that seem to leap off of the page here. The focus of Catholicism on early childhood education is an interesting contrast to the emphasis that Taiwanese Daoism (apparently) places on retirement homes for the elderly, and "welfare foundations" (presumably for the poor?). The underwhelming performance of Buddhism in all categories is self-evident.

I got to wondering about the numbers. There are 6 Tzu Chi hospitals alone but I couldn't think of any other "Buddhist" hospitals in Taiwan. Then I got to thinking about how "religious hospital" is defined in a way that benefits Christianity here -- after all, many Chinese medicine clinics apply spiritual principles in their healing practices. So are we really looking at a performance of Buddhism that is underwhelming, or a performance of Buddhism that is so completely diffused that we can't see it?

Le Monde has a pretty good article on Taiwan's fading Chinese identity.... with a couple of nice quotes:

For Wu Chi-chung, professor in political science at the Soochow University in Taipei: "after every presidential election, the feeling of Taiwanese identity becomes stronger. It's as if the act of voting, even for a candidate of the Kuomintang (KMT; the party in power), pushes the Taiwanese people to feel even more Taiwanese." In the eyes of younger generations, Taiwanese democracy, which has been reinforced by five presidential elections, has contributed to creating a common identity.

The reality is that the "Chinese" identity that overlaid the identities of the locals was a faux creation of the KMT, just as fakey as its mock Ming architecture. It could never last because it was founded on nothing but political propaganda. But this quote above nicely illustrates how Taiwanese have incorporated democratic practices into their evolving local identity, how valuable democracy is. The real "Chinese" identity of Taiwanese -- languages, religious practice, arts, cooking -- these are alive and well and also evolving. Which is another reason the KMT "Chinese" identity faded -- determined by diktat, it contained neither potential nor provision for its own authentic evolution at the hands of the people.

The staidly Establishment TISR, the old social survey unit of Global Views, allegedly shut down after KMT pressure in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election when it reported that Tsai was leading Ma, reports that independence is the long-term goal of a majority, 55.4%. These numbers are probably too low....

FocusTaiwan has an article on a call from the European Chamber of Commerce for Taiwan to make itself more attractive to foreign investors. The ECCT had some good suggestions for the island to go low carbon...and then:

The ECCT also said that although Taiwan provides a standard of living, the availability of English and other foreign language channels on cable TV is very poor.

For example, James said the local cable TV company servicing Taipei's upscale Xinyi District, where he lives, produces a limited number of English language channels, compared with cities in Malaysia and Singapore, where he lived previously.

Over the past 12 months, James said he has lost Star World, Universal and Diva Universal TV, which carry many popular English language TV shows, such as "American Idol" and "Law and Order."

Heartbreaking, eh? We haven't had cable TV since the 1990s. In those days it was illegal and service was excellent and the number of channels offered was enormous. Anyway, try the internet, it has a much better selection than your cable company....
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Daily Links:

• Formosa Plastics restarts its world-leading Naptha cracker in Taiwan
• A-gu thought that the new China Affairs Office of the DPP would actually amount to something
• President Lee in court today on charges of embezzling special funds. Sound familiar? Move along folks, there's nothing political about these charges, or the other charges against DPP politicians. Don't expect the foreign media to comment on it either. Sad. 

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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.

English Services in Taiwan Video Contest! First prize = $50,000!

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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.

Olympic flag success

Some good progress on international issues made these Olympic games by Taiwanese the world over. First, the stream of complaints led the London Olympic games committee to reverse its decision on representations of the ROC flag....

Hsu Mien-sheng (徐勉生), the director-general of the ministry’s Department of European Affairs, described the move as a “gesture of goodwill” extended to Taiwan after an ROC flag was removed from an array of 206 national colors, representing the nations competing in the Olympic Games, in a London street. The display was organized by the Regent Street Association.

The Taipei Representative Office in the UK had reached an understanding with the LOCOG that Olympic-venue security staff would allow spectators to dress in the colors of the ROC flag, paint the ROC flag on their faces, or bring small ROC flags with them to the venues, Hsu said.

.....

The association was “overloaded” with telephone complaints and e-mails from UK politicians, ordinary British citizens and people from other countries about the replacement of the ROC flag in the display, Hsu said.

Some members of the UK parliament also sent letters to the association to express their disapproval and demand a remedy, Hsu added.

Can't wait until some low-level Chinese athlete stages an over-the-top protest. Another change widespread this time around is that the sports media is using the ROC flag to represent "Chinese Taipei" and often using "Taiwan" as well when they list medal counts. Good work, folks.
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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.

Piles

Piles of stuff. Part of our lives, found everywhere in Taiwan, like this pile of TVs on its way to the recycling center.

I moved this post below READ MORE....

Continuing to be Breaking News: the Flag

CNA reports that Olympic venue personnel warned Taiwanese students that they will be kicked out if they wave the ROC flag.

奧運跆拳道擂臺旁，中華民國國旗陣陣飄揚。倫敦時間今天上午比賽結束後，現場工作人員已向台灣的留學生下通牒：「如果再把國旗拿出來，很抱歉，我必須把你們趕出去。(If you take that flag out again, I'm sorry, but I will have to kick you out).」

Silence on this issue isn't helping Ma, who as maddog pointed out on Facebook, once took out an ad to thank everyone who ever waved the flag. Meanwhile we watch as the flag is appropriated by locals, especially the young, and taken to symbolize Taiwan, not the ROC.
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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: Snapshots of Democracy in Action

German reporter Klaus Bardenhagen writes:

Having been an eye witness to some political key developments, I have just published an English/Chinese book called 'Taiwan: Snapshots of Democracy in Action' (我鏡頭下的民主時刻).

Living in Taiwan, during the last few years I have been intrigued by all the demonstrations and social movements trying to raise awareness for their causes and to change Taiwan's society.

I realized that many Taiwanese (and definitely most people abroad) are not really aware of all that has been going on. So I decided to compile this book with 80+ photos to highlight some key moments 2008-2012.

For example, who still knows what CKS Hall looked like when there was an exhibition on Taiwan's democracy movement, which was taken down in 2008?

The place to preview and order the printed book as well as the eBook (iPad) is http://www.taiwanreporter.com/book

Taiwan: Snapshots of Democracy in Action

我鏡頭下的民主時刻

自2008年以來，我持續從台灣提供報導給德國的平面、廣播以及電視等媒體。我試著去理解發生在我周遭的事情，希冀透過我的報導，最終能使世界對台灣及其民主多一點認識。

Since 2008, I have been reporting from Taiwan for German media, including print, radio and television. Trying to make sense of what is happening around me, I hope to eventually raise some awareness for Taiwan and its democracy.

一個國家、多樣面貌

我對台灣的第一印象包含了許多叫囂、歡呼，還有旗幟揮舞，當時是選舉期間。這些情緒激昂的街頭集會完全迥異於我在德國所習慣的沉悶選舉活動。

生活在民主制度下的台灣民眾可以毫無恐懼地大聲表達自己的意見，他們在許多議題上意見相左，隨之賭上的代價也很高。而這些年來，我非常幸運地見證了這些關鍵時刻。

從2008年台灣總統選戰開始一直到2012年大選過後，我用我的鏡頭記錄了實際行動所體現出來的民主，並且收錄在這本書中呈現給您們。

One country, many faces

My first impressions of Taiwan included a lot of shouting, cheering and flag-waving. It was election time. The emotionally charged street rallies were very different from the somber campaigns I was used to from Germany.

Living in a democracy, Taiwanese needn't be afraid to make their voices heard. There is a lot they don't agree on, and the stakes are always high. Over the years, I have been lucky enough to witness some key moments.

From Taiwan's 2008 presidential campaign to the aftermath of the 2012 elections, these are my snapshots of democracy in action.

Preview and order the printed book or the eBook (iPad): http://www.taiwanreporter.com/book
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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.

Economy Continues to send negative signals

Amid the news about the domestic terrorist incident in Wisconsin, the Mars Rover landing, the Olympics, and sundry other incidents, Taiwan's economy continues to slow....WaPo says:

Taiwan’s exports fell 11.6 percent to $24.8 billion in July from a year earlier, contracting for a fifth consecutive month amid weak foreign demand for the island’s high-tech and other goods.

The Finance Ministry said Tuesday that imports declined 3.2 percent to $23.9 billion in July.

Exports to China fell 11 percent to $10 billion. Exports to the U.S. dropped 20 percent to $2.8 billion, following a sharp decline in smartphone sales by HTC Corp., Taiwan’s top handset maker.

RTT News had a nice graphic of Taiwan's exports... note the overall downward trend....

RTT reported that shipments of 3C stuff plummeted 34.5% YOY. Ugly. The RTT report observed:

Inflation surged to a near four-year high 0f 2.46 percent in July on higher food costs, limiting room for the central bank to ease monetary policy in response to flagging economic activity. Core inflation was 0.96 percent.

The recent surge in food prices is due to the typhoons and rain that have been battering us (FocusTaiwan says veggie prices rose nearly 33%, while fruit prices went up nearly 20%) , but with the massive drought in the US worldwide food prices are going to surge. This fall things are going to be tough...
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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 the Ideologue Peeks Out Again

Yesterday the Taipei Times reported on President Ma Ying-jeou's public reiteration of longstanding KMT catechism: the Treaty of Taipei gave Taiwan to the Republic of China:

The Sino-Japanese Treaty is a treaty verified by international law that clearly states that Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China (ROC), President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.

Ma made the remarks at an exhibition held by the Academia Historica and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs marking the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Taipei.

Ma said that according to the Cairo Declaration jointly issued by the ROC, the US and Britain on Dec. 1, 1943, Article 8 of the Potsdam Declaration, issued on July 26, 1945, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, all three stated clearly that after World War II, Japan agreed to return what was then known as Manchuria, including current-day Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, Taiwan (Formosa), and Penghu (the Pescadores) to the ROC.

Taiwandocuments.org, that fine repository of the pieces of paper that define Taiwan's status, has the Treaty of Taipei on file. You can read it yourself -- it is very clearly subordinate to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, under which Japan gave up Taiwan but no recipient is named. Ma also instances two ROC favorites, Cairo and Potsdam. The last time Ma did this, I explained why these claims about the Cairo Declaration are rank nonsense. Nothing has changed since then.....

It's not very interesting to have yet another iteration of the same nonsense from a ranking KMT member assault the ears, but all good propagandists know that propaganda must be repeated if it is to have any effect. More interesting is, once again, what it reveals about Ma, the pro-China ideologue (here, for example)  -- as well as the impotence of this discourse, its essentially pro forma nature...

Remember when Ma was the cool, pragmatic leader in the fawning media reports? Yeah, that discourse has gone down the memory hole.....

UPDATE: A friend reminded me of J Tkacik's letter in the TT from 2009:

ROC foreign minister Yeh explained this provision in Legislative Yuan interpellations, noting that the Taipei treaty made “no provision ... for the return [of Taiwan and the Penghus] to China.” He asserted, instead, that the ROC had “de facto” control of the islands, and therefore, “Inasmuch as these territories were originally owned by us and as they are now under our control … they are, therefore, in fact restored to us.” Still, he had to admit that “no provision has been made either in the San Francisco Treaty of Peace as to the future of Taiwan and Penghu.”

This raised anxieties among the legislators during the Legislative Yuan interpellations on the Taipei Treaty who bluntly demanded to know: “What is the status of Formosa and the Pescadores?” He replied: “The delicate international situation makes it that they do not belong to us. Under present circumstances, Japan has no right to transfer Formosa and the Pescadores to us; nor can we accept such a transfer from Japan even if she so wishes.”

COOL STUFF: Taiwan-based professional photographer Craig Ferguson has opened a Facebook page for Taiwan professional photographers.

JUST FOR FUN: Raunchy graffitti from the ruins of Pompeii, faithfully and lovingly translated.

EVENTS: Don't miss the annual Perseid meteor shower, which will peak on Aug. 11-12.
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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.

Yeah, some bugs

Actually had some free time today, so I went out to try my hand at some bug pics. Enjoy. Click on read more to see more....

GOOD NEWS: Scientist Shieh found not guilty.

Corn knocked down by Soala.

Longtime readers will remember this case. First a bit of background from one of the Taipei Times pieces today:

Ten defendants, including Shieh and Hsu Hung-chang (許鴻章), owner of Sheus Technologies Corp — also known as Hung Hua Engineering — were indicted in December 2006 on corruption charges after Sheus won an NT$8.05 billion (US$262 million) construction tender to reduce the vibrations caused by the high-speed rail as it passes through the Southern Taiwan Science Park.

High-tech companies with operations in the park, such as chip manufacturers, are affected by vibrations above 48 decibels.

The Tainan District Court found Shieh not guilty in August 2008, and after Tainan prosecutors appealed the ruling with the High Court’s Tainan branch, the branch again acquitted Shieh in June of 2010.

Prosecutors then appealed the case with the Supreme Court, and the top judicial authority ordered the High Court’s Tainan branch to retry the case. On July 11, the Tainan branch found Shieh not guilty for a second time. This time, prosecutors said they would not appeal the case, therefore the verdict finding Shieh innocent is final.

Shieh's remarks from an interview in the Liberty Times summarized in the Taipei Times:

Shieh said he was thankful to all the family members and friends that had cared for and encouraged him while he had been imprisoned, adding that “in comparison to the people jailed for decades over the Kaohsiung Incident or former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who is still behind bars, I’m pretty lucky.”

Born in Cigu District (七股), Greater Tainan, the 70 year-old Shieh received his PhD in aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan and had worked at the Rockwell Automation as a guidance and control analyst prior to his return to Taiwan.

After his return, Shieh became the nation’s main promoter of aerospace technology, presiding over the launch division when the Formosat-I satellite — formerly known as ROCSAT-1 — was launched in 1999 by Lockheed-Martin at Cape Canaveral Air Base, and was also on the planning committee for Formosat-3.

This appears to be most contemptible cases brought in the wave of prosecution cases against DPPers for "corruption." Not only was Shieh an important figure in Taiwan's technology world, he was blacklisted for many years and could not return to Taiwan (old post). To really get the flavor of how appalling the case was, this old post at Taiwan Matters should be consulted.
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Daily Links

• Words fail me
• Ian Storey, perspicacious commentator: China pushes on ASEAN, ASEAN unity collapses
• China, Latin America, and the United States
• Premier to permit foreign worker numbers to rise, a rare move

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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.

Have the Strawberries Found Their Voice?

Taipei Times editorializes on the Strawberry Generation:

For those who have long complained about the seemingly apathetic Taiwanese youth on matters of politics, the past two weeks must have had elements of both surprise and relief, with two large student mobilizations taking place in two cities on two different continents: London and Taipei.

The catalyst in both instances was injustice — the removal, following official complaints by China, of the Republic of China (ROC) national flag at a non-Olympic venue in London, and the creation of a pro-China media monster through the acquisition by the Want Want China Times Group of China Network Systems’ (CNS) cable TV services, and the subsequent threat of lawsuits by a Want Want employee against a student.

Hundreds gathered on Regent Street in London, proudly showing the ROC flag, while about 700 protested in front of the CtiTV building in Taipei, calling for freedom of speech to be respected. In stark contrast to the protests organized by the pan-green camp, where the majority of participants are usually above the age of 50, those two events involved students and young professionals who were educated, connected and angry. They were, in essence, the same type of people who took to the streets earlier this year when two houses were flattened in a suburb of Taipei to make way for an urban renewal project; or those who turned up in large numbers to confront police and contractors when farmland was seized to accommodate large-scale industrial projects.

Issues of justice, rather than abstracts of ethnicity or nationality, are what lights the fire in the belly of Taiwanese youth today. For them, the past is in the past and the issue of who they are has already been settled; what they look to is the future and the uncertainties created by injustice. That is why one can hardly find anyone below the age of 30 at protests against, say, the so-called “1992 consensus,” but thousands will roll up their sleeves when someone’s property is threatened by state rapacity.

All of this occurs at a time when policymaking within the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration appears to have been taken over by an old, conservative wing of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), while moderates in the pan-blue camp have grown largely silent.

When I went down south after the Morakot disaster I was struck by the large numbers of young people -- organized by local governments -- who had poured out to help the victims. The Strawberries are not soft, but their causes are not the same as those of their parents.

The TT's claim that Strawberries "know who they are" is entirely correct; the problem is that their identity is incomplete -- as I've noted before, it's a not- identity: "we are not Chinese, we are Taiwanese." But it should be noted that the Strawberry generation maintains harmony amongst its members by avoiding discussion of the Blue-Green divide and papering over those tribal identities with silence. The reason social injustice motivates them is probably fall-out from that general generational decision: social injustice is something everyone across the Blue-Green divide can agree on.

The Losheng Leper Sanatorium was probably the first issue for the new generation. Another key moment was the Wild Strawberry movement, which fought for public assembly rights. Although it worked hard to be non-partisan, the government and its servants struck heavily at it by painting it as a pan-Green tool. Assembly rights are overtly political rights.... what's interesting in the WantWant case is that the side supporting a free and open media environment has successfully avoided the charge of being a pan-Green tool, even though WantWant and its CEO are rabidly pro-China. It seems to me that unlike in the Wild Strawberry case pan-Green politicians appear to have maintained a discreet distance. Moreover, the student who was threatened with a lawsuit for posting pictures on the internet is someone that every young person in Taiwan can identity with; they all use the internet as naturally as breathing and they all post pictures on social networks.....
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Daily Links:

• Good WSJ interview with DPP Chair Su Tseng-chang
• Prosecutors bring in sister of accused DPP Chiayi politician
• Video: Xindian River during typhoon Soala
• Global Voices: threat to media from WantWant
• Taiwan ships sent to wrong area during drill, making Japan go on alert.

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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.

WaPo Subtly Mispresents Pentagon War Planning and China War Controversies

The Washington Post hosts an article this week detailing Pentagon planning to fight China. It's a glimpse of the war planning process and from that perspective is informative. However, despite its veneer of balance it has a subtle but powerful bias.... here are two quotes from the article:

• Some critics doubt that China, which owns $1.6 trillion in U.S. debt and depends heavily on the American economy, would strike U.S. forces out of the blue.
  
  “It is absolutely fraudulent,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, a senior fellow at Brookings. “What is the imaginable context or scenario for this attack?”

and...

• “The old joke about the Office of Net Assessment is that it should be called the Office of Threat Inflation,” said Barry Posen, director of the MIT Security Studies Program. “They go well beyond exploring the worst cases. . . . They convince others to act as if the worst cases are inevitable.”

The article subtly creates a false reality in which the war planners (read: -mongers) are a military industrial complex (buttressed by the detailed accounting of the planning budget) inside the Pentagon, while the critics are (presumably) rational outsiders.  It further paints the planning itself as subtly illegitimate since it "provokes" China (Heaven forfend!), a viewpoint supported by the quotes about how peeved China was that the US was planning to do something about Chinese expansion. Once again we see how China deploys the policy of being provoked to shape US media reporting and thinking.

What's missing from the article? Read it carefully. See any quotes from civilians in support of Pentagon war planning directed at China, or warning of China's military build up or plans in Asia? Anyone who might consider the possibility of war with China as entirely rational (NBR's latest from Chris Hughes)? The article's balance is entirely faux.

If the possibility of war is "absolutely fraudulent" why are so many nations around China's borders bolstering their militaries?
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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.

US Senators introduce resolution calling for support for democracy and human rights in Taiwan

Soala-filled waterways

Formosan Association for Public Affairs
552 7th Street. SE. Washington, DC 20003, USA
Support Democracy, Support Taiwan
For Immediate Release
Washington D C - August 2nd 2012
Contact: (202) 547-3686

US Senators introduce resolution calling for support for democracy and human rights in Taiwan

WASHINGTON (August 2nd 2012) -- Today, Alaska Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mark Begich (D-AK) jointly introduced a resolution “Expressing the Sense of Senate that the United States Government should continue to support democracy and human rights in Taiwan following the January 2012 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan.”

The Resolution cites the summarized conclusions of a recently released report by the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) to the International Committee for Fair Elections in Taiwan (ICFET) that the national elections held in Taiwan on January 14, 2012, were “mostly free but only partly fair.”

The report by the IEOM, which was made up of 19 observers from 8 countries, identified several diverse elements, including vote buying, violations of administrative neutrality, and attempts by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to influence the elections as worrying factors which may have affected the election outcome. The report also stated that some actions and statements by the US government revealed a lack of neutrality on its part.

Further stating that “Taiwan’s free and open society plays a stabilizing role in the Asia Pacific region and is thus conducive to the interests of states in the region, including the United States, in furthering peace, prosperity and stability, “ the resolution outlines several recommendations in support of its stated goal of continuing U.S. support for democracy and human rights in Taiwan, including:

• encouraging the people and the Government of Taiwan to take steps to continue to strengthen protection of democratic values and human rights in their country, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press;
• encouraging the people and government of Taiwan to take into consideration the conclusions and recommendations of international election monitoring missions, including the final International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) report, as they seek to strengthen their democratic practices and human rights protections;
• affirming that the future of Taiwan should be resolved peacefully, in accordance with democratic principles, and with the assent of the people of Taiwan.

Former governor Frank Murkowski, who led the IEOM mission, states: “I am pleased to see the work of our mission culminating in the insertion of the report into the Congressional Record. It is a recognition of the hard work of the Taiwanese people achieving their democracy during the past two decades, but it is also a signal that much work still remains to be done in terms of fairness of the elections and establishing a level playing field.”

Professor Peng Ming-min, the chairman of the International Committee for Fair Elections in Taiwan (ICFET), who invited the mission to observe the elections, states: “We are grateful to governor Murkowski, Dr. Woodrow Clark (the lead author of the report), and the members of the observation mission for their work. It helps us in Taiwan in our fight to protect the values of democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech, assembly and the press. There has been an erosion of these values during the past four years. We want to ensure that Taiwan remains a free democracy.”

Dr. Mark Kao, president of the Washington-based Formosan Association for Public Affairs, also hails the introduction of the resolution, saying that “Each election in Taiwan’s young democracy represents a precious opportunity to improve its capacity for democratic practice.” Dr. Kao concludes: “Senator Murkowski’s resolution not only recognizes the value of hard-fought democratic freedoms in Taiwan, but will provide an enduring framework for the United States government to continue considering the lessons of the January 2012 election.”

Chinese language version below the READ MORE

Hello, Soala

Twenty seconds of Soala in my backyard:

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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.

Prosecutors Bring Case Against DPP Politicians in Chiayi =UPDATED=

Keelung Harbor by night

I'd use a modifier like "unbelievable" or "incredible" but really, it's more like "predictable" -- in the wake of bribery accusations against powerful KMT politician Lin Yi-shih (here and here) prosecutors in Chiayi suddenly open a case against DPP politicians Chen Ming-wen and Helen Chang:

The Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office said in a press statement that DPP Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠) and DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文), who is a former Chiayi county commissioner, as well as a number of county officials were summoned for questioning in the morning.

Former Council for Economic Planning and Development vice chairman Chang Ching-sen (張景森) and a contractor, Chun Lung Development Co (春龍開發公司) chairman Pan chung-hao (潘中豪), were also questioned.

The DPP observed:

Responding to the raids, DPP spokesperson Wang Min-sheng (王閔生) said that as the investigation into a corruption scandal involving former Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世), which has threatened to engulf the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), was ongoing, the sudden raid at the Chiayi County Government could be an attempt by prosecutors to shift attention away from the KMT administration.

Shocking, eh? According to reports, bail for Chang was set at $3 million, for Chen at $1 million, and for the businessman who allegedly bribed them, $150,000. The two politicians were released this morning. According to the China Post, prosecutors raided 51 locations....

Former Chiayi County Magistrate Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) and current Chiayi County Magistrate Helen Chang (張花冠) are among local officials suspected of accepting bribes of up to tens of millions in New Taiwan dollars between 2003 and 2006.

Pan Chung-hau (潘中豪) allegedly distributed the bribes in order to secure a bid on the Chiayi Vanilla and Herbal Medicine Biotechnology Park (香草藥草生物科技園區), which is now the Dapumei Precision Machinery Innovation Technology Park (大埔美精機園區).

Construction on the park began in 2006. The project was managed in the build-operate-transfer (BOT) system, which means that the private company has since received concessions from the government to build, run and maintain the park. The government's startup investment in the park was NT$1.5 billion.

So this case is now at least six years old; the old case against Chen actually referred to events that took place after this one. Note that in the previous case against Chen Ming-wen, prosecutors asked that he be detained incommunicado, a request denied by the judge. The prosecutors then appealed this and won.

Chen Ming-wen, who a few years ago was rated one of the best public officials on the island, has been targeted before.....Taiwan News said at the time:

In the case of DPP Chiayi County Commissioner Chen Ming-wen, who is rated as one of the best mayors in Taiwan, the Chiayi District Court decided Tuesday to reverse its previous decision and order Chen's detention incommunicado under suspicion of "seeking illegal gains" by divulging information on a public contract for a sewage system to a particular company in May 2007.

After a year and a half long investigation, prosecutors have been unable to provide an estimate of the alleged "illegal profits" that Chen was supposed to have gained or show how Chen could meaningfully "collude" with other defendants to alter county government documents.

The court's decision to accept these flawed arguments and give prosecutors up to four months to sweat a confession out of the DPP mayor is sufficient to lead observers to worry that judicial standards in Taiwan have gone back two decades or more in time.

What a crazy coincidence, opening up a new case against Chen Ming-wen even as powerful KMT politicians are in the midst of a bribery probe. Recall also that Chen is often seen as a rising politician of the second tier behind heavyweights like Su and Tsai Ing-wen. Is this a way to cut off the sapling before it grows into a tree?

UPDATE: I've just heard that special investigators are at NTU questioning professors who were involved in providing reports and evaluations for the bid process.
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