Senkaku Irritation Level Rises

Good lord. I leave for a few days and all hell breaks loose in the Senkaku Islands.

The story of this mess is quickly told. A group of right-wing Chinese actually managed to land on the Senkakus despite Japanese obstruction and plant PRC and ROC flags there. Officials of the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou -- you remember him, the pragmatic one (O what romantic tales were told in the golden naivete of our youth) -- spoke approvingly of the appearance of the ROC flag on the Senkakus. Japanese rightists, not to be outdone, immediately riposted with their own flag....

About a dozen members of the right-wing group Gambare Nippon (“Hang In There, Japan”) swam ashore, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist witnessed, from a 20-boat flotilla carrying activists and lawmakers.

The landing comes just days after Tokyo deported pro-Beijing protesters who had landed on the island, part of a chain administered by Japan, but claimed by China, which had warned against acts “harming” its territorial sovereignty.

Next -- I'm not making this up -- the Taiwan government summoned the Japan ambassador to protest this incident of Japanese landing on a Japanese island. The ROC claims it owns the Senkakus, a manufactured claim coined in the early 1970s, like the PRCs, after Japanese scientists announced the potential for oil in the seabed below. Prior to that time, as anyone can find out for themselves, neither Chinese government had considered the Senkakus to be Chinese. Since 1895, when Japan first grabbed them.

Aside: hopefully this Senkakus-are-ours nonsense behavior will forever put a stake in the zombie idea that the KMT and Ma Ying-jeou are "pragmatic." I've got a great idea! Let's call in the Japanese ambassador and upbraid him! Because that's just so fewking pragmatic! But you and I both know that reporters and commentators nattering about KMT pragmatism will continue to write as if the Senkakus were an island group located on one of Jupiter's moons that demonstrated nothing about KMT behavior.

Back to the story. Anti-Japanese protests broke out in China (WSJ's excellent piece). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recycled bogus arguments to claim Japan "stole" the Senkakus and said Japan was "furtively occupying" them.

Furtively occupying! Laugh if you may, but this represents a rise in the level of rhetoric....

I know by now your head is spinning and you are groping for whatever painkillers and alcohol are near at hand. So let's point out a few things....

The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs spoke approvingly of Chinese right-wingers putting the ROC flag on the Senkakus. TT reports:

“We thought that the appearance of the ROC national flag on the islands was in accordance with our sovereignty claims over the Diaoyutai Islands,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tung Kuo-yu (董國猷) said.

As the Taipei Times pointed out, this skirts close to cooperation with China on the Senkaku claim, something the ROC government has said it would not do. This kind of behavior, especially coupled with the government's upgrading of its defenses on the islands it occupies in the South China Sea (a move one expert argues means that it will no longer put up with being ignored by the other claimants) also gives lie to Ma's 2008 promise -- O what romantic tales were told in the golden naivete of our youth -- that Taiwan would be a peacemaker not a troublemaker. You can look for that one in the memory hole too, next to the entry for pragmatism. It's a solid bet that no one in the international media will raise a peep about that.

Probably the least provocative thing the government has done is suggest an essay competition on the issue....

I'm not the only one who has noticed the government's apparent strategy here. I didn't have a chance to comment on it but Apple Daily ran a piece last week arguing that the government is using the Senkaku issue to irritate Taiwan-Japan relations. Yep. Recall that with the beef issue DOA, the Ma government was temporarily out of irritants to perturb its relations with the US. Making trouble in the Senkakus hits both nations at once....

• US and Japan have a security treaty. If war breaks out over the Senkakus, the US is pledged to defend Japan and has placed the Senkakus under the umbrella of that treaty. Making trouble in the Senkakus dangles that possibility before US eyes. Remote, but there it is.
• Flogging the Senkaku issue also dangles another appalling possibility before US eyes: that of Taiwan-China cooperation on political and military issues, especially related to Chinese territorial expansion. Of course there is no public support for such actions in Taiwan and the chance of such cooperation is remote, but whether Washington will understand that in an election year when attention spans are narrowing drastically as the election looms is another question
• It is obvious that kvetching at Japan over the Senkakus irritates Taiwan-Japan relations. Wasn't it especially pettily delightful to summon the Japanese Ambassador? How they must have enjoyed that, like small children furtively knocking over someone else's sand castle on the beach.

In the short term it is likely that this will blow over, as it did a couple of years ago when a Chinese "fishing boat" skipper rammed a Japanese ship in the area. However, with China expanding its military and Japan determined to defend its sovereignty over the Senkakus, the long-term prognosis doesn't look good.

MEDIA NOTE: The international media is studiously avoiding commenting on the history of the dispute. This creates a false balance between Tokyo and Beijing that, by omitting the spuriousness of China's territorial claim, actually serves Beijing by giving its claim the same weight as Japan's....

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Daily Links:

• Export orders deteriorate more than expected. It's a good thing ECFA has saved our economy, otherwise exports would be declining, orders would be falling, prices rising, wages stagnating, and we'd have no FTAs with major trading partners....Oh, wait a second....
• Sadly, female smoking in Taiwan on the rise.
• Taiwan parties gearing up for 2014 elections
• The obligatory paragraph. Man, that is one naive reporter.

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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.

Gorge-ous Riding on the East Coast: Hualien 64

This weekend my friends Kenji and Jeff, trailed by my slow but steady self, did a wonderful little loop out of Hualien. Leaving Hualien on Saturday morning, we rode down to the fishing port of Shiti and had lunch. After lunch we spun around the little headland to the Great Red Bridge and just before the bridge, got on Hualien 64, the Ruigang Rd. We took that to Rueisuei, and overnighted. On Sunday morning, with glorious weather, we sped back to Hualien and picked up the 1:03 express home to points north and west. Click on READ MORE for the rest of this gorgeous journey....

Investment Pact Protects Who?

AP writes on the investment pact signed Thursday...

The pact, which took two years to negotiate, offers investors from the two sides formal channels for dispute arbitration, while falling short of a Taiwanese demand that arbitration take place under international oversight. It is the 17th economic agreement between the sides since China-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taipei in May 2008.

......

....But with this year's growth rate predicted to come in at less than 2 percent, broader tariff cutting and other trade promotion measures appear to have fallen short of Ma's promise that closer China ties would energize the Taiwan economy. The trade-reliant island is suffering from sagging demand for its trademark high-tech exports.

Chinese investment in Taiwan amounts to only about $300 million, far short of the more than $120 billion Taiwanese have invested in the mainland over the past 30 years. While the new pact could spur more Chinese investment in Taiwan, some restrictions aimed at preventing China's economic domination of the island remain in place.

Taiwan's opposition claims the new pact, like many of its predecessors, is helping to clear the way for increased Chinese economic influence on Taiwan, and setting the stage for an eventual Chinese political takeover of the island. That has been the ultimate goal of Beijing's Taiwan policy since the two sides split amid civil war in 1949.

........

But opponents point to Taiwan's continuing poor economic performance — its predicted 2012 GDP growth rate would make it one of Asia's most conspicuous economic laggards — as proof that Ma's highly vaunted China connection has failed to deliver the goods, and say the island needs greater balance in its trade ties.

No kidding.... not just the 2012 growth rate, but the economy hasn't gotten much help at all from China, certainly not like the golden days of CSB's latter years. With his usual mediocre luck, Ma seems to have both missed the best years of the China boom while getting hit by the Euro-American slump. Thus Taiwan's trade with China, Europe, and the US is all falling year on year, while with ASEAN Taiwan runs a trade surplus and trade volume is rising. Remember when Ma claimed we had to have ECFA in order to save our economy? We have ECFA, and growth is running 3-5% below what it was in the latter years of the CSB administration. This investment pact is years too late.

Another issue the paper raises is investment from China to Taiwan. It's easy to look at that only in the context of China-Taiwan relations and blame, as the AP report does, investment restrictions. But I pointed out a couple of years ago when ECFA was still being "debated" that restricting FDI in its trade partners is a longterm policy of Beijing's:

The trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) figures are not encouraging either. Since 2004, tariffs between the two sides have been coming down, and Asean's trade deficit with China has widened. From 2000 to 2008, China-Asean trade grew sixfold to US$198 billion (S$280 billion). But Asean's trade deficit also widened five times to US$21.6 billion. Asean's cumulative FDI in China was US$52 billion in 2008. By comparison, China's FDI in Asean was just US$2.8 billion.

Total Chinese FDI in ASEAN is now over $10 billion. The FDI situation is complex because "Chinese" FDI can be many things:

China’s share may be higher than official home and host country data show as the example of Vietnam illustrates. As large amounts of Vietnamese FDI inflows originate from Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands, Frost (2005) suspects significant further amounts of Chinese capital to be routed to Vietnam via these and other offshore financial centres. On the other hand, there are also reasons to assume that China’s share is overestimated in some host countries. During the field research in Cambodia and Vietnam we found that a number of companies that were identified and registered as mainland Chinese were in fact owned by a parent company from Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan. In some cases, these parent companies were established in mainland China and later moved to Hong Kong for reasons like taxes, logistics, or proximity to clients. In other cases, however, companies originated from Hong Kong or Taiwan and were incorrectly registered as mainland Chinese.

Recall also that in the glory days of the early 2000s when massive foreign investment in China was being touted, much of that "foreign" investment was Chinese money recycled through global offshore financial centers and reinvested as "foreign" investment in order take advantage of FDI investment benefits.

What about Korea? Well...(Asiaone):

South Korean statistics showed China's investment in its neighbor was US$3 billion last year, and was mainly in the tourism and entertainment industries. South Korean investment in China reached US$36 billion (S$45 billion) in 2011.

China has invested a lot more in South Korea, yet the same lopsided investment pattern shows up -- S Korea invests twelve times more in China than China does in South Korea. (Actually, if anything could motivate Taiwan to sell itself to China via FDI, it's the knowledge that China sends more FDI to Korea....ZOIKS! The Koreans are kicking our ass!)

So, looking at the overall Chinese investment situation in Taiwan and China's investments in other nearby small economies, it is hardly surprising investment in Taiwan is so low. After all, it's not like we have a booming economy here, with growth probably going to come in under 1% this year and inflation on the march, and it's not like China sends large allotments of funds overseas to nearby economies.

Two other points need to made. First, FDI in Taiwan must satisfy Beijing's political goals. This places an additional constraint on such FDI. Second, FDI in Taiwan, which ostensibly helps Taiwan's economy, actually conflicts with Beijing's longterm goal of hollowing out the island's economy and stealing its technology. Given the current economic growth in China and the cross-strait political situation, why should China want to invest in Taiwan unless furthers its political and technological goals?

This discussion of Chinese investment also hits on another issue: the housing boom here. Everyone talks about China's ghost cities and massive real estate boom. We're having an under-the-radar boom here in Taiwan -- it doesn't get any play in the global media, but here in Taichung building after building, estate after estate, new hotels, all going up in the best cargo cult style. Yet something like 40% of residences in Taichung are unoccupied and will probably never find buyers/renters. Think Chinese money will step in to prop up this bubble? LOL.

Finally, ETRC points out the obvious: Eighteen agreements in four years, what's next? What's next is obvious: the (open) political talks.
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Daily Links:

• Chinese "activists" land on Senkakus, provoke Japan. China says it will send warships to protect future expansionist "activists." What's the next step in this minuet? Washington sending a quiet warning to Beijing that it still recognizes and will act on the US-Japan security treaty?
• Tsai cleared up Yu Chang allegations. Remember that smear, just in time for the election?
• Excellent observations on the Hong Kongization of Taiwan

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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.

What? No reduced F-16 request?

Riding on the bike path in Dongshih.

BREAKING: Just heard that President Ma wouldn't let the "activists" who were heading to the Senkakus with Hong Kongers aboard dock in Taiwan. News report on original plans. FocusTaiwan's report from earlier today saying the gov't had no information on any such boats, although the Coast Guard was going to accompany them. It also says Japanese lawmakers slated to visit the islands Sunday. Looking forward to the news reports tomorrow...

This was all over the news yesterday...Taiwan to request fewer F-16s

Local media reported Aug. 13 that Taiwan had renewed the call during the just-concluded “Monterey talks” in the U.S., the highest-level annual meeting between U.S. and Taiwanese military officers.

“But the number of desired F-16 C/Ds has fallen to 24, down from 66 when the Taiwanese delegates put forth the proposal,” the Taipei-based China Times quoted an “authoritative military source” as saying.

Suddenly the Defense Ministry is denying it discussed a smaller number of F-16s. Change the number, ask for different aircraft, it's all just yanking America's chain. Or perhaps the American side was planting stories, just to confuse the issue. Round and round we go. The KMT Administration doesn't want the F-16s, and the Americans don't want to sell them. For the moment....
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Daily Links:

• Eight Filipino seamen threaten Taiwanese engineer aboard ship, arrested.
• The Taiwan Adventure reviews Shu Flies
• Taiwan to be big player in Cloud Computing market
• Hilton Yip writes about his article in Taiwan Review on Chinese students being allowed in Taiwan.
• Comebuy, local tea chain, opens its first shop in the US
• Price of vegetables now has reached second highest level ever in Taiwan.

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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, Mon, Aug 13, 2012

Lovely sunset in Taichung yesterday.

Enjoy some links and stuff.

BLOGS:

• Lao Ren Cha rants about chocolate
• Taiwan AirPower on US POWs executed in Taiwan, part 3
• River tracing in Taiwan, from Neil Wade
• Are Taiwanese friendly? Some thoughts
• Some Taiwanese reporters won't serve the WantWant media monster
• David Reid on Blundell's new edited volume, Taiwan Since Martial Law
• Traveling Tamsui
• Drew's Tour of Changhua Preview
• Breastfeeding in Taiwan
• Taipei Photographers' website. Great pics.

MEDIA:

• DPP says give Chinese students in Taiwan NHI...
• ....even the spies. 
• Asia's cities: strained as they grow faster than their planners can handle
• ROC extends runway in the South China Sea
• Merrill Lynch  argues that Taiwan should dismantle  protections against Chinese investment. Hey Merrill Lynch, do us a favor and argue that China should cease threatening to kill Taiwanese in order to annex their island, thus complicating the trade relationship. We can't have normal trade relations until we have normal relations, period. Meanwhile WSJ correctly notes that you can sign pacts til the cows come home, but until the day China actually has something resembling rule of law, they won't count for much.
• AFP: Taiwan same sex wedding points to shift in Asia on gay rights.
• Canon opens new factory in Taiwan
• Post-PC, the computer industry struggles in Taiwan
• Taiwan receives two coastal minehunters, unglamorous but truly important vessels. You can never have enough ships like these.
• Southern reservoirs filled to overflowing thanks to incessant rain this summer, water shortage risk is low.
• More "activists" off to the Senkakus to cause trouble.
• Don't underestimate Taiwan's talent crisis, says China Times

SPECIAL: One author's moving plea for a gentler Chinese nation. Yglesias has a good perspective on Romney's pick of Ryan.

VIDEO: Bloggingheads on South China Sea, US-China war, etc

TYPHOON: On the way this week.
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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.

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.