Call for Papers, 2013 European Assoc of Taiwan Studies Conference

Sure wish I could go! Call for Papers for the 2013 European Association of Taiwan Studies Conference. It will be held in Lyon May 2-4, 2013. Website for details: EATS
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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.

Weekend Riding in Kaohsiung and Pingtung

The Eighteen Arhats on Rte 27 just south of Liuguei. I've got a 7.7 mb panorama of these peaks shot from a little further south online here.

Saturday and Sunday I rode around Kaohsiung and Pingtung with my henchman Michael Cannon and some riders from Kaohsiung, including the very cool Mark Roche, whose ride is an awesome touring setup (pics later). Michael Cannon has the route maps for Saturday and Sunday as far as Sandimen, when his GPS died. We did nearly 100 kms on Saturday and just over 100 kms on Sunday. Good workout on two gorgeous days. Click on READ MORE below to enjoy the results.....

Hahaha Give Wealthy Chinese Investors Residency to Solve Demographic Problems

Yes, they really went there....(FocusTaiwan):

The time has become right to consider allowing Chinese immigrants into Taiwan through investment, to help tackle Taiwan's fast-aging population and lift its dwindling economy, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang said Thursday. "Taking Taiwan's long-term development into consideration, the worsening demographic issue must be handled carefully to maintain the country's momentum for sustainable economic growth,"

First, just the comic angle of importing Chinese investors as residents to handle the aging poplation and low birth rate.... just how old does the Minister think people able to make decimillion investments in Taiwan are going to be? In their twenties, each with ten kids? But when you think about this further, it becomes even more comic... because such wealthy investors will be living in Taiwan, presumably off their investments, which will likely be capital investments... and which will be (drum roll please) not taxed very much, because Taiwan has ultra low taxes on such individuals (see this post). So far from helping the economy, it will actually put an additional burden on the middle class individuals who actually pay the taxes that keep the government afloat.

The obvious issue is to make it easy for professionals to immigrate and work and set up businesses. All the developed nations suffer from the aging population issue to some extent, but it is severe in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, precisely because immigration to those nations is difficult because they define citizenship in terms of "blood". The "low birthrate" problem isn't a "low birthrate" problem. It's an immigration mentality problem. As long as the KMT defines citizenship in terms of Volk rather than birth to a citizen, and thinks of a citizen in a parochial rather than international way, Taiwan will struggle.

...and that brings up the other issue here. Lurking in this invitation to wealthy Chinese investors is the underlying primal instinct of Chinese nationalist expansionists to flood any targeted territory with Chinese -- witness the problems of Tibet and East Turkestan. For years the KMT has been trying to get Chinese labor over here, a suggestion that dates back to the 1990s and keeps being revived in various forms. But here is an entirely new approach....

...another idea lurking here, of course, is the China Cargo Cult: all that wealth in China, if we keep inviting it, if we keep suggesting ways to bring it here, if we keep announcing that we want, through magical thinking and official incantation, it will come over and save Taiwan from whatever it needs saving from at the moment -- demographic decline, poor economic growth, you name it, someday those planes loaded with Cargo will land. In the KMT view, China is the all-purpose solution to Taiwan's problems. Hey, how's that ECFA thing treating ya these days, Cargo Cultists?
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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.

Taiwanese entrepreneurs leaving US for China?

Forbes sounds a warning on Taiwanese entrepreneurs, the one article you should be reading today...

Chang is representative of the growing number of immigrant entrepreneurs who have begun to seek market opportunities outside the U.S. in the phenomenon called the reverse brain drain. I met him in the course of conducting research for a Kauffman Foundation report on immigrant entrepreneurship, which found that the proportion of immigrant founded-companies in Silicon Valley had dropped from 52.4% to 43.9% since 2005. Significantly, the reverse brain drain has hit Taiwanese entrepreneurship the hardest.

According to our findings, Taiwan has dropped from the fourth top immigrant-founder-sending country to twenty-second since 2005. This translates to a decrease in the proportion of Taiwanese-founded startups from 5.8% to 1.1%. By contrast, the rankings for other top sending countries have remained fairly stable over the decade. The cause for concern for the decline in Taiwanese entrepreneurship in particular is because Taiwanese immigrants historically played such an integral role in the development of the U.S. tech industry, apart from Chinese and Indians.

The pigeons are coming home to roost: elite mismanagement of the US economy, the burgeoning security state, the petty harassment and visa issues by immigration, high costs and indifferent returns, and the higher education bubble. The Obama Administration needs to stop bombing weddings and barbecues in the Middle East, leave Afghanistan to the Chinese, the only beneficiaries of our stupid, criminal war there, and turn the cash to investment in the nation's infrastructure and other urgent needs.

It should also be added that Taipei is now a pretty good place to live, with direct connections to China and cheap flights to other growing Asian economies. Low levels of street crime, universal health insurance, and very low taxes on wealth. Lots of wealthy Taiwanese in the US must be considering a return.....
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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.

KMT Internal Troubles Episode #11578

Lining up at a famous traditional tofu pudding place in Tianzhong.

A few months have passed, so it's once more time for another episode of KMT Internal Struggles. This week's installment was chronicled in the Taipei Times.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesman Yin Wei (殷瑋) yesterday downplayed controversial remarks by Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), saying that while they may be well-intentioned, some could be misinterpreted.

Yin was referring to comments by Sean Lien on Saturday that the majority of Taiwanese, except for those who are politically oriented, could not care less about who will run for Taipei mayor in the seven-in-one elections in 2014 and that whoever is elected in the midst of a sluggish domestic economy “could be, at the very most, the master of a beggar clan.”

Sean Lien, who doubles as the deputy director of the Taipei City Government’s Economic Development Commission, also called on the government to prioritize propping up the lackluster domestic economy.

The internal bickering is over the Taipei mayoral position. Despite Lien's sneering comments, the position of mayor of Taipei is immensely powerful and is generally seen as a stepping-stone to the Presidency. The Taipei Times editorialized that 'the sneers spelled trouble'...

At the meetings of the party’s Central Committee and Central Advisory Committee, all statements and propositions seemed to be directed at public policy issues such as the capital gains tax on securities transactions and the retirement pensions issue. However, these are some of the policies of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, so when Central Committee members and members of the Central Advisory Committee discussed these policies, they were in fact ambushing Ma.

One of the speakers, William Hsu (徐弘庭), the Central Committee member suggesting the implementation of the capital gains tax be delayed, is special assistant to Sean Lien (連勝文), the son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰). The implications are self-evident. Neither of the two Liens attended the Central Committee meeting, but while attending an Aboriginal activity, Sean Lien said that if the economy does not improve, we will all be beggars regardless of who is elected. This was clearly not appreciated by party leadership.

Furthermore, senior advisor to the president Chao Shou-po (趙守博), who reviewed the pension system, has long been an important associate of Lien Chan, and before the meeting, Chen Keng-chin (陳庚金), another old Lien associate, criticized Ma’s use of people. It is clear that the Lien family are finding it impossible to hide their dissatisfaction with how Ma is running things.

Another former party leader, Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄), said that observers were criticizing Ma for picking his appointments from too narrow a group of people and that this had caused some people supporting the KMT to leave the party. Although he avoided criticizing Ma directly, everyone got the hint: Wu’s faction within the KMT is also dissatisfied with Ma’s performance.

What it boils down to is simple: the criticism from the Lien family and its hangers-on, and former Chairman Wu Po-hsiung, simply reflects old fault lines in the Party. Ma's strongest support isn't from Party mainlander elites and other core members, from the rank and file who originally saw him as new blood that would reinvigorate the Party. When Ma first ran for Chair many years ago, Party elites supported his onetime rival Wang Jyn-ping, currently Legislative Speaker. It was the rank and file who got Ma into power. There's nothing new going on; sometimes when the Party is under stress, these structural fault-lines are revealed. Perhaps the complaints about Ma's appointments merely indicate anger that Ma has not appointed enough people from among those factions.

The editorial claimed that "the opposition between Ma and senior leaders is now out in the open." Actually, it's been this way the whole of Ma's service as President. Accusations of being out of touch, and appointing only from a narrow spectrum of people, are nothing new. Nor is criticism from other party heavyweights. There's nothing permanent here, no change or evolution indicated, and the KMT, with all that cash, isn't at risk of falling apart or splitting.
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Daily Links:

• Consumer prices are now so high that the government is handing out tax relief.
• Under the Radar News from Project 2049
• Takao Seaplane Base, 1944
• Ten Drum Cultural Village, Tainan

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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, Monday, November 5th, 2012

Ershuei and Tianzhong are speckled with Japanese-era buildings. This one is in Tianzhong.

The week yields....

BLOGS:

• Taiwan's booze hounds embrace the e-bike.
• Another outstanding pic from Craig F, who has been an inspiration to me in many ways.
• Famous for being famous. Kim Kardashian, eat your heart out.
• Police called after Taiwanese husband refuses sex. Love the headline, it implies the police were called to provide the sex that the husband wouldn't.
• Half of all Taiwanese share just ten surnames.
• Far Eastern Sweet Potato: Taiwan's China spy problem
• Climbing Wuling on folding bikes. Ouch.

MEDIA:

• Tsai asks supporters to give more space to Taiwan = ROC, ROC = Taiwan formula of the DPP. In my view, the DPP has little choice but to embrace a formula like this, hollowing out the ROC from within because (1) they don't have much room for anything else and (2) the public is already going down this road with their reworking of KMT symbols and slogans, like the ROC flag, and the way the use of da4 lu4 which was intended to create links between Taiwan and China but now signifies a place full of weirdos not at all like Taiwanese.
• China Times: US wealth gap is a warning for the ROC. 
• How can Beijing cozy up to India while claiming its territory? An interesting tactical problem.
• China's illicit money is a river to the world, worth 10% of GDP.
• PRC official travels all over Taiwan, playing game of being local, effectively.
• Another excellent Commonwealth piece on how the Chinese tourist money -- surprise, surprise -- is only benefitting a few.
• China Times: Join forces with China on the Senkakus
• AirAsia to launch new Taiwan-Philippines route.
• Taiwan to purchase two Perry-class frigates from US
• US, Japan begin new war games. China whines, yowls. An Indian review of the situation

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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 Short Shorts: E and S China Sea, DPP attacks Ma

Wonderful day today, 160 kms from Taichung to Jhunan and back along the coast. Even with headwind coming back, avg 22 kph, excellent time for my slow self. Very happy.

M. Trevor Fravel has another good piece in The Diplomat this week. China has altered the status quo in the Senkakus. Ominous:

....Most of the time, these [Chinese] boats remained beyond Japan’s 12 nautical mile territorial waters around the Senkakus or crossed this line only briefly. China in practical terms continued to accept Japanese de facto control of the islands and their associated territorial waters (over which a state enjoys sovereignty rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea).

After the purchase of the islands last month, however, China has abandoned this approach. China first issued baselines to claim its own territorial waters around the islands and then began to conduct almost daily patrols within its newly-claimed waters – directly challenging the Japanese control that it had largely accepted before. The purpose of the patrols is two-fold: to demonstrate that the purchase of the islands will not affect China’s sovereignty claims and to challenge Japan’s position that there is no dispute over the sovereignty of the islands.

Although China does not control the waters around the Senkakus (unlike the situation at Scarborough), it no longer accepts de facto Japanese control. On October 31, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman asserted that a new status quo had been created. After describing China’s new patrols as “routine,” Hong Lai stated that “the Japanese side should face squarely the reality that a fundamental change has already occurred in the Diaoyu Islands.”

China has altered the status quo and will continue to put pressure on Japan. You can see where this is heading...at some point Japan will have to make a decision to contest this space, or China will alter the status quo again in its favor. But Fravel makes another excellent point that shouldn't be lost. Remember the standoff with Manila over the Scarborough Shoal?

In early June, the Philippines announced that an agreement had been reached with China for a mutual withdrawal of ships. Although China never publicly confirmed the existence of such an agreement, ships from both sides left in mid June as a typhoon approached the area. Later, however, Chinese ships returned and appear have maintained a permanent presence in the waters around the shoal since then. In mid July 2012, for example, an intrepid news crew from Al Jazeera videotaped an attempt to visit the shoal, only to be turned away by a combination of CMS and fisheries administration vessels. China has also roped off the sole entrance to the lagoon inside the shoal to control access to it.

China did not confirm the agreement, and Manila's bombast is hard to decipher. But it seems unlikely that Manila would not have made such a claim unless some agreement had been hammered out. What this suggests is that Beijing is simply going to ignore any agreements regarding the territories it covets if it can get away with it. What does that tell you about the future?

The China Times argued that Taiwan should strengthen its voice on the Senkakus issue. Effectively, the Ma government is coordinating, if not cooperating, with Beijing on this. This suggests that at least one function of this idiotic campaign is that it aligns Taiwan with Beijing without actually conceding anything to Beijing on any sovereignty issue -- meaning that it allows the Ma government to play a double game of non-aligned aligning, looking like something is happening without anything actually happening. No doubt this pleases Beijing, yet does not actually threaten Taiwan's own sovereignty in any greatly meaningful way, so it fails to arouse the public which might punish the Ma Administration even more than it already has. Ok, that's one possible interpretation..... think President Ma will be on local campaign posters in 2013-4? LOL.

In one of my favorite fantasy series, Saberhagen's Empire of the East, the good guys have to find where the demon has hidden his life, his soul, perhaps in hair, or sea-foam, or similar. Once they get the demon's life, they can control or kill him. Similarly, the DPP is searching for the magic life of Ma Ying-jeou, hoping to kill him via accusations of corruption. The latest attempt to pin some kind of corruption scandal on Ma concerns his donations to charity....

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has donated more than NT$75 million (US$2.56 million) to charities over the years, exceeding the salary he has earned since he came to office in May 2008, Premier Sean Chen said yesterday.

DPP legislators, without the slightest shred of evidence, opined that the money had come from the State Affairs Fund. That's the fund that former DPP President Chen Shui-bian was alleged to have pillaged, and eventually found innocent of stealing from. This kind of ham-handed attempt at irony would have a certain low humor were it not so stupid. President Ma was found innocent of corruption despite the fact that he was caught downloading state funds to his own account. The public voted him in as Preznit, twice, despite this. The public obviously doesn't give a damn about corruption allegations about President Ma. This is not a fruitful route. Stop trying.

As recent public opinion polls show, the Ma Administration's inept handling of the economic crisis and various other matters has resulted in a massive plummet in public satisfaction with President Ma. This is what the DPP should be hammering Ma on, constantly. Frank Hsieh's China trip provided a nice distraction from the economic attack and niftly split the DPP.

Anyone notice how the idea of raising the assessed value of real estate, which hasn't changed since 1987, has simply vanished from the political discourse? Heh.
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Daily Links:

• Milo Thornberry, missionary here in the 1970s, on the White Terror (Video)
• Taiwan calendar aims to raise Taiwan consciousness.
• Converting that terminally stupid fourth nuke plant to natural gas power? Good idea?
• With the end of ghost month, locals resume house buying. New Taipei City purchases rise 30+%.

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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.

Gaoping Great Lakes Controversy

Map of Gaoping Great Lakes Project (source). Google satellite image of area.

Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert remains one of the great books on water policy, and one of the things he notes in it is how water projects develop a life of their own, with justifications and shapes shifting over time, but with the drive to build the dam thing no matter how bad a dog it is never dying. Are we seeing this in the Gaoping Great Lakes Project? The Taipei Times reports on a protest:

Environmentalists and farmers from Pingtung County and Greater Kaohsiung yesterday staged a protest against the Gaoping Great Lakes (高屏大湖) project, which they fear would divert water used for farming and damage local soybean production.

A project of the Water Resources Agency’s (WRA) Southern Region Water Resources Office, it would build five manmade lakes in a nearly 700-hectare area covering many farms at the border of Pingtung County’s Ligang Township (里港) and Greater Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃).

The project was originally part of the Jiyang artificial lake project, which passed an environmental impact assessment in 2002, for cross-border water channeling and to save water during dry seasons.

After severe flooding in the south caused by Typhoon Morakot in August 2009, the project was modified to become part of a southern Taiwan water stabilization project by the WRA. It was further modified into a three-phase project, with the first artificial lake — covering about 200 hectares — being constructed in the first stage.

.....

The project aims to channel excess water from the Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) and the Gaoping River Dam (高屏溪攔河堰), but the only time the two areas have excess water is in summer, Yang said.

Moreover, since the target areas do not suffer from a water shortage during summer, he questioned why the government should spend billions of dollars to construct manmade lakes that would have very limited benefits.

The lakes have a depth of just 12m. This website observes that not only are the soybean farmers and workers in the area protesting, but in Ligang the Thai Shrimp farming and vegetable farming will also suffer from water shortages if pond E is built. Because locals are so dead set against the project, the legislature has canceled the budget on several occasions, it reports.

Another view (source).

Another article states the government's position on the young soybean impact:

水利署進一步指出，農委會資料顯示，我國毛豆「複種面積」於100年度達7,338公頃，其中位於高屏大湖第一期工程（E湖區）範圍內之「種植面積」為188.86公頃，佔全國毛豆種植面積2.57%，亦僅佔高屏地區種植毛豆之土地面積2,497公頃的7.56%，故高屏大湖計畫並未排擠原有毛豆種植面積。

The irrigation authorities, citing the Council of Agriculture, say that the total area of the first and second soybean crop is 7,338 hectares, of which the initial development, E area, represents just 188.86 hectares, or 2.57% of the (re)planted area, or 7.56% of the Pingtung young soybean land area of 2,497 hectares.

The farmers respond that the first crop and the second crop are not identical -- the government is engaging in mathematical sleight of hand, lowballing the estimate by playing with the first crop vs the total area planted. According to the farmers, soybeans are planted in spring and fall in Taiwan. Thus, the effective area lost to the farmers is 367 hectares (twice the government's estimate) because two season's worth of production, first and second crop, is lost.

Of course, that estimate is only for the E area, phase 1. Once phase 2 and phase 3 are completed, the farmers point out, they will cover 500 hectares -- meaning that two crops of production totalling 500 hectares are lost, effectively 1000 hectares of production. Total soybean production in the area is only 2,497 hectares for all seasons.

That article says that some soybean farmers are arguing the project isn't about water at all, but about gravel. As the project plan makes clear (google "1.2 開發行為之內容" and see section 1.2), creation of the lakes, 12 meters deep, will necessitate the removal of millions of cubic of meters of gravel, a material in high demand in Taiwan, which whoever owns the land and sells the gravel can make an easy and quick profit off of. More need not be said....

ADDED: See good comment below arguing main issue is really tiny amount of water provided. I was really just curious to understand why such an obvious dog of a project was still being completed.
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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.

KMT Wants Stock Transaction Tax "postponed"

There is nothing so permanent as a temporary emergency -- Robert A. Heinlein

The KMT moves to protect one of its most important constituencies, the nation's wealthy non-taxpayers, by mooting a delay in the implementation of the stock transaction tax.

Several legislators called on the government to postpone levying a capital gains tax on stock transactions because the stock market continues to remain sluggish. KMT legislator Sun Ta-chien (孫大千) proposed raising the stock transaction tax from the current 0.3% to 0.35% and postponing the effective date of the recently passed capital gains tax on stock transactions. Moreover, as the capital gains tax on stock transactions would take effect on January 1, 2013, a high- ranking KMT official stated that the Legislative Yuan and the Cabinet could jointly propose a "sunrise clause" to postpone its implementation.

As I've noted a few times since the election (and before), I suspect a key hidden factor in the election was the support of the class of non-taxpaying holders of capital wealth for Ma. Now they are getting their money's worth out of the KMT.

Another factor here is the role of the stock market as an indicator of the nation's economic performance. Obsessive interest in rankings are a key cultural trait of the Taiwanese; playing with the stock market is playing with a major component of the national psyche.
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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.

Spies again...and again...and again....

WSJ reports the sad tale:

A retired Taiwanese naval officer and two others were arrested on suspicion of spying for China, the latest in a string of cases that underline the mistrust between Beijing and Taipei despite warming economic ties.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said in a statement Monday that Lt. Col. Chang Chih-hsin was suspected of "spying for officials at the Communist Party in China" and "bribing other officers in the navy for illegal gains" during his tenure, which ended in May, at the Naval Meteorological & Oceanographic Office. The office provides mapping data for the military.

J Michael Cole has an excellent article in The Diplomat (which is always full of good articles) on this case and some of the issues. After reviewing a couple of terrible cases of Chinese espionage over the last two years, Cole notes:

All this occurred at a time when the Ma administration was striving to improve relations across the Taiwan Strait via a series of agreements and exchanges, in the hopes that such contact would encourage Beijing to become less antagonistic. Such expectations, it seems, were misguided. Or rather, while Beijing was happy to take the first steps toward the liberalization of relations between the two historical enemies — which has arguably benefitted Taiwan in some respects — it never abandoned the hard measures of the past. As a result, China’s soft approach has not replaced the belligerent strategy of the past; instead, it complements it as part of a united front strategy to wrest Taiwan from the grips of independence and bring it back into the Motherland’s embrace.

Reality as Cole notes: there was never any soft approach, except as an aspect of the hardline. The spy issue unfortunately isn't just an issue of getting closer to China since Ma took office. Cases like this go back years -- retired officers have been moving to China in droves since the Lee Administration. Chang was close to retirement when the case began, he was permitted to visit China and was heading back for a second visit when he was arrested. The other two officers were already retired. The problem of China and retired officers is severe -- hundreds are living and doing business there. The Taipei Times noted a DPP legislator's complaint that the procedures for preventing Chang's visit to China were in place but that they were not appropriately handled. Just another case of Taiwan having decent laws and regulations but lacking enforcement.....

Cole then points out that the spy issue creates distrust of Taiwan in Washington -- it is frequently cited in the media as a reason why the folks in DC don't want to sell advanced weapons to Taiwan, since their secrets might be leaked to Beijing.....

MEDIA FAILURE NOTE:
Aries Poon has been reporting here since the Qing Dynasty. He certainly couldn't make an error like this. How the heck could this have been produced? A new editor who didn't know anything?

Despite closer economic cooperation and conciliatory rhetoric between Taiwan and China in recent years, there is still mistrust between the two sides. Beijing has yet to renounce the option of military force as a way to reclaim Taiwan, which it considers part of China. Taiwan, under the Taiwan Relations Act signed with the U.S. in 1979, is still opting for purchase of more weapons for self-defense. The U.S. in September 2011 agreed to upgrade Taiwan's aging fleet of F-16 for $5 billion.

The Taiwan Relations Act wasn't "signed with the US." It is a US law passed by the US Congress. Taiwan had no part in it. D'oh!

And can we not use the term "reclaim" since the PRC never owned Taiwan? What's going on is annexation. At least use the term unification, if truth cannot be spoken.
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Daily Links:

• Drew blogs on the China Post cycling editorial
• Video: learn how to read and write Taiwanese
• Taiwan, Japan discussing having fishing talks.
• Ipad mini helping drive Taiwan 3C makers

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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, Monday, Oct 29th

What's wriggling around on the blogs this week? The misnomered Monday links....

BLOGS:

• AsiaEye's under-the-radar news for this week.
• Raw crab! No, thanks.
• Craig with pics from the LGBT parade.
• Travel in salt pans of Tainan. Good pics.
• Understanding Taiwanese scooter rage. And don't miss his Hsinchu man jailed for comparing a woman to Doraemon.
• The Dignified Rant rewrites history a bit. Ok, a lot:

  Of course, President Bush offered to sell F-16s to Taiwan, too, over a decade ago. By the time Taiwan wanted to buy them, President Obama wasn't selling.

  It was the Bush Administration that started the US refusal to sell F-16s to Taiwan. The formal request from Chen Shui-bian arrived in 2006; the US State Department pretended for years that no formal letter had been sent, or else begged Taiwan not to send one, or their dog ate the letter, or whatever. President Bush refused to sell F-16s to Taiwan; President Obama continued this policy. Let's not let ideology bend reality, eh Brian?  The current policy is a pavane -- whenever Taipei talks about actually buying them, the US will say that it won't sell; whenever the US hints it might sell, suddenly Taipei will have budget trouble. Neither the Ma Administration nor the US foreign policy establishment, irrespective of who is warming the White House throne, wants Taiwan to have 66 shiny new F-16s. Simple as that. UPDATE: Brian responded:
  

  I'd like to say that this was simply a post to remind the Taiwanese to buy when the offer is out there and not to wait until Chinese pressure can get the offer cancelled. Yes, Bush did turn down a Taiwanese request for new F-16s near the end of his presidency. But the reason given for turning down the request was that previous years of Taiwanese political arguments over defense purchases led President Bush to be wary of accepting a request absent indications that Taiwan's government would appropriate the money to buy them.
  
  While President Obama certainly "continued" the failure to sell new F-16s from the Bush era, the excuse of Taiwan not being serious about spending the money didn't seem like the issue. Indeed, the Obama administration was reassured by the Taiwanese that they were serious about wanting to buy new planes. In the end, the Taiwanese considered upgrades to the old F-16s a mere consolation prize.

Since he doesn't allow comments, I am forced to respond here. The Ma government was never serious about buying new planes; when Chairman of the KMT during the Chen Administration the KMT blocked the F-16 sale from reaching the legislature's floor many times. The Chen administration was serious about obtaining F-16s. Contrary to Brian's claim, the money was appropriated to begin the sale in 2006 and again in 2007. The money was there and Taiwan was ready, but individuals on both sides were playing a game, taking turns throwing up obstacles, the KMT-led legislature freezing the funds ostensibly because the US wasn't providing data on costs. Haha. Had the Bush Administration wanted, there were many ways to arrange a transfer of aircraft. Ultimately, the Bush Administration was serving Beijing on this issue, because it had its own priorities, including North Korea. Thus, three times between 2006 and 2008 the Bush Administration refused to accept a Letter of Request (LOR) from Taipei. It was not "reluctant" or "wary" or whatever. It was pro-actively establishing a policy of not selling F-16s because it was "sensitive" to China. When the Obama Administration decided not to sell F-16s, it was  following established policy, equally pro-actively and for the same reasons. There wasn't any difference between the attitude of the two Administrations.

MEDIA:

• The hard lessons of the Asia pivot. But there was never any cuddly soft power, that was just the western media talking. It was always the iron fist....
• Taiwan short-sighted on pensions.
• What? Another military officer arrested for spying for China? 
• Taiwanese universities attempting to recruit Americans
• King of Swaziland is visiting Taiwan
• Academics urge more research into wartime Taiwan. I'd love to write a book about this period.
• Marxist analysis of the Senkaku mess.
• Legislative Yuan econ committee passes resolution calling for conversion of the insane fourth nuclear plant to natural gas.
• US trade chief to visit The Beautiful Island

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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.

Great China Post Editorial on Cycling

Bike path outside Ershuei, Changhua. Note the high quality surface.

My man Drew's Taiwan in Cycles gets a mention in the China Post in an editorial on (f*ck yeah!) how cycling in Taiwan is done all wrong. Great work, Drew! The CP says:

Let's face the biggest problem straight off the bat — the central and local governments like cycling because of cash and self-promotion. It comes as no surprise that this year's Tour de Taiwan route — like those before it — was taken to task by cyclists for being dull. The Taiwan in Cycles blog actually summed it up quite well as “a bunch of boring crap.” Instead of showing what they were made of by pushing up the alpine hills of Hehuanshan or following the turquoise seas of the East Coast, entrants battled mainly boredom and muggy air. Keeping the event profitable, both monetarily and politically, means keeping its route bound to densely populated areas instead of using the event's considerable exposure to help make the country be taken seriously by the international racing community.

I blogged on why the Tour was so awful here, with maps and all (in the comments there is an explanation of why the Tour de Taiwan routes are so awful). Drew's original post is here. Great work, China Post, in using Drew's trenchant blog and in pushing cycling, for which the island is so totally suited. Great work, Drew, in being relevant (Drew's own post).

The excellent editorial itself hits many of the problems:

Making this jump [to bike commuting] would be far from difficult. Cycling is already popular, folding bicycles are common, Taipei is generally flat and there is already an extensive public transport system that allows bicycles to be carried onboard, making mixed-mode commuting easy. The biggest obstacle is getting bike paths constructed to make commuting safe. Dedicated bicycle lanes are not and will never be sufficient, given the local driving habits and amount of traffic. Taipei's YouBike system is admirable but is not built for commuting and the capital needs a systematic overhaul of its roadways and road rules. Unfortunately other attempts at cycling paths are not encouraging, like ones in which motorists unflinchingly dive in and out of the lane and others with uncomfortable, tiled surfaces.

These are all things that Drew and I and other cyclists have complained about for years. Just yesterday I rode around the bike paths outside Ershuei. The landscape was enjoyable, but the surface of the "bike path" was appalling. As you can see in the above pic, a steady flow of powered vehicles has ripped huge holes in the path surface. We were passed several times by blue trucks carrying farm equipment. The routine use of bike paths by vehicles for driving and parking is a problem all over the nation, in both rural and urban areas. So is the insane use of bricks, tile, and cobble for biking surfaces. If I were cynical I'd be arguing that someone was making a bundle using leftover bricks and cobbles for bike lane surfaces, but of course I am never like that. But the lack of law enforcement, and the poor choice of surface materials, reinforces the view that the government's bike lanes are simply Potemkin villages not meant for a serious change in the island's lifestyle.

The CP editorial correctly points out that the metro could permit bikes, but in fact it permits only at some stations and then only on weekends. The first step would be to permit bikes on the metro all day long at every station except for Taipei Station during off-peak hours.

Not only is Taipei flat, it is also not very large. Lead the nation, folks!

Another issue that would have to be addressed is Taiwan Railway's often bizarre bike rules. At major tourist cycling stops such as Fangliao (for Kenting) and Fulong (NE coast) you can ship a bike by train as a parcel, but you can't ship one out -- you have to ride the train with the bike back to another station like Songshan or Keelung to ship it as baggage. The act of putting a bike in a bag -- any bag, even a plastic garbage bag -- means that shipping is free on so-called "bike trains" as luggage, whereas on the same train shipping the bike unbagged means that you pay the express parcel shipping fee. The last time I trained to Hualien there was a group of cyclists who had special bags so large they didn't have to disassemble their bikes; they just popped the bike whole into the bag, zipped it up, and schlepped it onto the train. The "designated bike local train" simply means that you can only put your bikes on certain trains, which have no special infrastructure or rules for bikes -- and they frequently occur during rush hour. Because so many people enter the Taipei basin by early morning train rides, the TRA situation will have be addressed by a rational policy. Just take the 7:37 express out of Taoyuan -- it is absolutely packed with commuters, yet it is a designated bike train -- the commuters all sit in the "bike car" which is either a dining car or a baggage car with no special adaptations for the needs of bikes.  All locals should be bike trains, and designated bike trains should have special hangers and whatnot for bikes. Fortunately, local station managers are frequently relaxed about the rules, especially on the east coast line, mitigating much of the obtuseness.

But above all, the government has to take the view that the bicycle is more than just a trendy recreational vehicle. It needs to truly support bicycle commuting, and build a bicycle culture here.

EVENT: The next big bike ride is over Alishan Nov 24-25, leaving from Taichung. Overnighting in Caoling. Leaving early, climbing up to Fenchihu via the 169, picking up the magnificent 159A in Shijhuo to finish the ride to Chiayi city. Train home from Chiayi.

ADDED: Speaking of communications and traffic, how about this ferry for the Suao-Hualien run? 80 mins back and forth!
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Daily Links:

• Taiwan's future?: Hong Kongers fed up with Chinese, lack of control over their own fate, identifying more strongly as Hong Kongers than ever before. Still look down on Taiwanese, though. Unfortunately the snobbishness of HKKers prevents them from forming solidarity with the pro-Taiwan side. But I suspect in a couple more years we may see some serious movement in that direction. 
• Fengtou Peak Ridge. Great pics.
• The Donggang Boat Burning Festival
• Hilariously, yet not so hilariously, US political attack ad uses PRC flag with Ma Ying-jeou to represent 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.

New train cars, way cool...oops!

In case you ever wanted to visit that Formosan Macaque Education Center outside Ershuei in Changhua, don't bother. Note the errors here, and also how title and content are totally unrelated. There weren't any monkeys, and the exhibition center is tiny. If I were the cynical type, I might speculate as to how somebody is made a bundle laying that thing out, but as you know, I am never like that.

Taiwan took delivery of tilting train cars for east coast operation. Yay! There's a pic there, they look very sweet:

TRA director general Fan Tzu-ku said his company has purchased a total of 136 Puyuma tilting train cars from Japan at a total cost of NT$10.6 billion, with the remaining 120 cars to be delivered in two batches in May and August, respectively.

Fan told reporters that the Taiwan version of the train is splashed red in front, and shows a distinct TRA logo. The trains, which use light aluminum alloy frames, won't have to slow down when passing through bending railway sections.

Inside the train cars, there are baby nursing rooms, multifunction circular arc toilets, and small desks on which passengers will be able to use their smartphones and tablets, said Fan.

The cars are for operation on the Tz Chiang expresses on the east coast line. 16 of the new cars are going for trial operations over the next three months. Alas, the new trains became stuck in Keelung Station on their way out of town for testing. Still, teething troubles are to be expected. Looking forward to riding these in the next couple of months... but will they have bike spaces?
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Daily Links:

• Facebook: Garb from East Asian weddings, 1910-30
• 18th century: Taiwanese in Penang? Tamshui history blog
• Taiwan's FDI inflows lead developing Asian economies...at US$1.8 billion in the first six months of the year. Not much....
• Two minehunters from US commissioned into Taiwan navy. Not as sexy as F-16s, but maybe even more necessary.

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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.

Working Traditional Kiln Near Mingjian, Nantou

Tripped down to Ershuei today for a round trip of 123 kms, light riding on flat roads. Very nice time. Just north of Mingjian town I ran across this still working traditional wood fired snake kiln, making tiles.

These kilns are always very long. The fire is at the low end. In the middle there's a door.....

....for access.....

...to the center of the kiln....

This one actually had two snake kilns, side by side.

Must have seen better days, but it is obviously still a working kiln.
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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.

Stagnant Wages = Reviving Competitiveness

The twin volcanoes of Guishan Island, just offshore from the fourth nuclear plant. It took real genius to put a nuke plant there.

Ralph Jennings with a strong article in Forbes on how wage stagnation is actually making Taiwan more competitive: Taiwan quality at cut rate prices.

Since the 1990s manufacturing and other jobs have streamed out of Taiwan and into China. That’s depressed Taiwanese wages, leaving them unchanged in real terms for a decade. The stagnation has driven middle-class workers to live with their parents and spike plans to raise children. But now it’s spurring growth in both ambitious startups and established companies weary of the growing costs and headaches of doing business in China. In short, Taiwan is becoming more competitive.

Jennings details some of the fallout, including the squeeze felt by many families from rising mortgage costs, as well as Taiwan's ultra-low birthrate, in part because no one can afford children. One factor missing in the low-wage equation is the record number of foreign workers here, who also help keep wages down. In case you missed it, Commonwealth magazine had another one of its top-notch analytical pieces, this one on the Korea-Taiwan tussle (whole thing is excellent, do read). The rise of South Korea was driven by good government policy, according to the article:

Another key to South Korea's ascendance over the past 15 years has been the government's effective implementation of several policies, including the development of a "Korean cultural wave" in 2001, an FTA blueprint drafted in 2003, and support for the auto industry and the creative and cultural industries, all of which were competitive internationally. Taiwan's main economic initiatives over the same period, including the promotion of free trade ports and support for six emerging sectors, were not well executed and were not internationally competitive.

Taiwan's government has taken a different route:

South Korea harnessed the country's power to support big companies in creating value and developing brands. In Taiwan, on the other hand, emphasis was put on containing and lowering costs and subcontracting for international vendors.

Tsing Hua University professor Perng Ming-hwei observes that when Taiwan arrived at a crossroads, it faced the choice of either having its companies relocate overseas in pursuit of cheap labor or upgrading its industries. Most Taiwanese companies chose the former approach and headed across the strait to China in droves, taking advantage of China's cheap land, labor, utility and even environmental costs to support their continued growth.

Perng laments that these companies chose an "easy money" option that entailed buying foreign turnkey solutions and importing raw materials in the pursuit of higher production yields and lower manufacturing costs.

In contrast, South Korean companies decided to invest heavily in technology and R&D and in building global brands.

Over the past 10 years, South Korea's spending on R&D as a percentage of its GDP has consistently outpaced that of Taiwan, and it exceeded 3 percent in 2006 to overtake Japan's as the highest in Asia.

Taiwan's industry make up has changed substantially since the 1960s, but at heart its remains an economy driven by subcontracting and small firms, whereas South Korea is dominated by huge conglomerates that operate on a global scale. South Korea chose to build productivity, Taiwan chose to hold down costs, a hamster trying to spin the wheel ever faster and faster. The Ma government's "new" policy of permitting firms that return to Taiwan to hire more foreign labor, as I noted in earlier posts, is simply more of this same, well-trodden path of industrial districts and cheap labor, a policy right out of the late 1950s.

Of course, Korea has not sent its firms to China. I just want to take a moment to savor the silence: when was the last time you heard anyone argue that Taiwan would zoom like Korea if only it were more open to China (hilarious past moment). Hear that silence? Well, we've got our ECFA, which isn't helping much and only covers about 5% of exports anyway. Even the Ma Administration, with its policy of inviting Taiwan's makers home, is tacitly admitting that Taiwan has been made worse off by moving them all to China (why else would it be out there, hat in hand, begging them to come back)?

D'oh!
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Daily Links:

• Huawei and the threat to China from pirated software
• Tony Lin on the large number of structural crises facing Taiwan. Scary. Think the Ma government is up to handling them? 
• Ex-cabinet Secretary Lin Yi-shih indicted
• This looks interesting: "The Civic World of International Communism: Taiwanese communists and the Comintern (1921-1931)" A Belagoruva. Modern Asian Studies, Volume 46, Issue 06, November 2012, pp 1602 - 1632 (abstract)

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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.