Will you hold my cobra? I'll just be a minute.....

So there I was, writing away, when my neighbor calls. She's speaking rapidly and totally incoherent, but obviously wants me to come over. I quickly grabbed these historic pictures (note thumb in corner for authenticity) of the neighbor's pack of dogs keeping a wary distance.

Yes, my neighbor's neighbor had caught a cobra. The thing had crawled into her house and hissed at her, so she nailed it with some kind of grabbing tool. I think every home should have one. Or maybe three. But this amazon was getting tired and the fire department was a long time coming to pick up the snake. So my neighbor wanted me to hold the cobra while we waited.

So, here's the long arm of your trusty writer holding a cobra at bay while we all wait. I think I must have "sucker" printed on my forehead.

Fortunately some he-man sons showed up to take over for me. I had a bad moment when they decided to apply an additional tool to its head, which it objected to with much thrashing and hissing. I nearly redecorated my underwear at that point. But having manfully discharged my obligations, I retired to my house to write my memoirs and await the fire brigade.
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Somebody forgot the lessons of Darlie....

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Soccer/Football coaches needed

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Seemingly Unconnected Facts about a certain Chen Wei-ting

The Taipei Times had a great moment in its piece on a student charged with violating the Social Order Maintenance Act for reporting about a kidnapping attempt:

Chen, the administrator of the Facebook page “I live in Hsinchu City” (我住新竹市), posted a message on March 28 warning that a man had allegedly tried to kidnap a child in Hsinchu County, but the child’s family spotted him and he ran off.

“The next day, I got a phone call from the neighborhood’s management committee, asking me where I got the information. I said a Facebook user passed the information to the ‘I live in Hsinchu City’ page, and not long after, I got a phone call from the police about the same thing,” Chen told the Taipei Times.

Chen said he immediately contacted the user who forwarded the message to the Facebook page.

“We spent a week trying to find the original source of the message, without success. We were questioned by police on Tuesday and the next thing we know is that we are charged with violating the Social Order Maintenance Act,” he said.

In fact, the article reports, fliers have been posted to the area. There is an interesting coincidence: Chen Wei-ting, the TT observed in its article, is one of the conveners of the anti-media monopoly student protests, the anti-WantWant protests, and was the person who criticized Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling last year (this longish post, even longer post describing the incident).

Nah. Couldn't possibly be retaliation.

Cultural note: The police defended themselves by saying they had received a complaint and thus, had to take action. The police do not enforce the law, as my friend Jeff Martin pointed out to me years ago, they administrate it -- fundamentally, they often don't take action unless someone complains.
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Explosive Device Found on HSR?

Local puppies on the prowl. Locals sometimes warn us, owners of two black dogs, that black dogs have the sweetest flesh and thus, we should be careful lest they are kidnapped for a local dog meat restaurant.

CNN reported last night:

The Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. train stopped at Hsinchu City after someone found the explosives in two pieces of luggage shortly after 9 a.m., according to police.

Police said the luggage was emitting white smoke, and people nearby could smell gas. The setup included 5 liters of gasoline and an activated timer device to trigger them, police said.

Investigators believe the explosives would have detonated had authorities not intervened, according to police. They said they believe the blast would have taken out one carriage.

But the TT reported today:

Police found that the luggage contained an unidentified liquid in cans and alarm clocks, as well as white particulate matter. The items were later dismantled by the bomb squad and taken to the Criminal Investigation Bureau for further examination.

Ku Jung-tseng (古榮增), deputy director of the High Speed Rail Police Division, said no detonator was found.

This is probably someone out to kill someone for insurance or similar, or a revenge attack on the HSR for some real or imagined slight. Probably not terrorism of any kind.
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The Staggering Costs of Taiwan's Psuedoscience Stupidity

Bamboo farm outside Taichung.

My man Greg McCann, who works on tiger and forest preservation in SE Asia, alerted me to this piece on Mongabay about this study on trade in Tokay geckos, accounting for millions of deaths:

The study found that a spike in tokay gecko demand due to rumors that it could cure HIV/AIDS was relatively short-lived, lasting from 2009 and early 2011. Nonetheless geckos are still traded in large numbers, with over-collection impacting wild populations across much of the reptile's range, especially in Thailand and Java.

The study notes that Taiwan has declared imports of at least 15 million geckos since 2004. Major consuming nations also include mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Viet Nam.

People who buy dead dried geckos believe they can help with asthma, diabetes, and skin disorders, according to the photo caption there. The death toll is enormous wherever believers in Chinese medicine exist -- one shipment bound for Hong Kong in 2011 was busted with 1.2 million dried geckos on board. The traffic even heads for the US to service the traditional medicine insanity there -- 8.5 tons of dried geckos from 1998-2004. The report observes:

According to Customs import information provided to TRAFFIC by the Taiwanese government, Taiwan has imported over 450 tonnes of dried Tokay Geckos for use in TM since 2004, which represents a value of nearly USD 2 000 000 (Table 3). This equates to ~15 000 000 individual Tokay Geckos (See box 1, above). During this period over 57 tonnes of Tokay Geckos (~1 900 000 ind.) were imported into Taiwan on average every year with nearly 104 tonnes (~3 466 666 ind.) imported in 2008. Thailand is the largest origin state for Tokay Geckos imported into Taiwan accounting for 71% of imports (322.7 tonnes/ ~10 757 000 ind.) followed by Indonesia which accounted for 28% (125.6 tonnes/ ~4 187 000 ind.) of imports. Imports from mainland China were comparatively small and accounted for 1% of the total.

Thailand has exported 40 tonnes (~1 467 000 ind.) on average annually to Taiwan compared to an average ~16 tonnes (~533 000 ind.) exported from Indonesia. However, in 2008 Indonesia exported nearly 66 tonnes (~2 200 000 ind.) of dried Tokay Geckos to Taiwan.

Exports from Thailand are more or less legal, but it is illegal to send them out of Indonesia. There is some farming of geckos but production can't keep up with demand, meaning that wild populations are deteriorating over time despite high reproductive rates and ability to co-exist with humans. All for a completely unscientific, unnecessary, and useless medicinal belief.

A sharp commenter on the Mongabay site observed that the loss of geckos, who eat mosquitoes, probably mean a rise in malaria (in other words, people are being killed by servicing the gecko demand). The report notes that because the gecko trade is so valuable, breeders and shippers face the constant threat of robbery. All needless, to go with the demand for ivory, and rhino horn, and pangolins, and other such stupidity.....
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Daily Links:

• Russell Hsiao with great work on the Folly of the Cross-Strait Dream
• Far Eastern Sweet Potato on the fishing rights pact between Japan and Taiwan
• Hear in Taiwan on visiting a farm just outside of Taipei
• CPI continues upward trend

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Japan-Taiwan Senkakus Fishing Agreement Makes a Splash

A spider grabs a bee for lunch in Taichung.

The Ma Administration finally did something right. News swept the region and the world this week that Japan and Taiwan have entered into a fishing agreement for the waters around the Senkaku islands...will there be peace? (Japan Times):

Japan and Taiwan concluded a long-awaited fisheries agreement Wednesday in Taipei after officials from both sides formally resumed negotiations for the first time in four years.

The deal will allow Taiwanese trawlers to operate in part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone near the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, sources close to the talks said.

Under the deal, Japan and Taiwan will designate an area in Japan’s EEZ as jointly managed waters where fishing by both Japanese and Taiwanese boats will be allowed.

The jointly controlled zone excludes waters within a 12-nautical-mile (19-km) radius of the Japan-held Senkakus.

Since things remain to be negotiated, the two sides agreed to set up a joint fisheries committee to carry on with the work. The Asahi Shimbun pointed out that the lack of agreement meant that Japanese Coast Guard vessels had seized many Taiwanese boats; this should now stop. Michal Thim at Taiwan Perspective gives the details of the agreement. Thim notes:

From Taiwan’s perspective, reaching a deal on fishing rights is the optimal result. Taiwan does not have physical control over the islands and has limited means and thus basically no reason to try and acquire physical control. Domestic public opinion does not allow for a strong anti-Japanese stance and Taiwanese are little interested in territorial nationalism. Thus, fishing rights are the only issue that the public really cares about and this is well reflected by politicians, both from ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who face major elections every two years.

As a number of analyses have pointed out, the fishing agreement makes Ma look good at home. On the Japanese side, the agreement enables Tokyo to split Ma from Beijing by offering him a deal. Democracy at work, Ma is following the same policies the DPP did for the same reasons, because they are popular at home. One of the ways Taiwan's democracy protects Taiwan is that it helps enforce such outcomes regardless of which party is in power. The public cares about fishing rights, but does not care about ROC territorial claims, since it identifies with the ROC only to the extent that the ROC is identified with Taiwan. Although, I suspect Washington was quietly working in the backrooms, pushing for Taipei to mend fences with Tokyo and to stop irritating relations with Japan. Corey Wallace, writing on the Japanese media:

While the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Suge has already argued publicly that the agreement was to restore order over the East China Sea fishing issue and not to “split” China and Taiwan over perceived cooperation surrounding the Senkaku sovereignty dispute, no one, including the Japanese media, believes him. Both Jiji (日) and Yomiuri (日) report that an additional reason for the agreement is indeed to silence repeated Chinese calls for PRC-ROC cooperation over the territorial dispute. Jiji notes that domestically Ma has been forced to become somewhat less of a “hardliner” on the territorial dispute, and Japan’s willingness to make significant concessions played a part in pushing Ma towards relaxing his stance (Richard Katz, of The Oriental Economist, notes in a NBR post that many in Taiwan wanted to prioritize the fishing issue over the territorial issue, as also noted by Michal).

Wallace also described that PM Abe comes out of a line of politicians who are pro-Taiwan and who were more willing to make concessions. His and Thim's writings are excellent and should be read in their entirety.

BBC reported that Beijing was whining, as usual. On the surface it looks like Ma's coordination of "activism" in the Senkakus with Beijing will now be curtailed, to Beijing's detriment. I wonder seriously about this and about whether this will backfire on Tokyo and Washington....

For one thing, the agreement is to set aside "sovereignty" differences -- an actual application of mutual non-denial -- but does anyone really not believe that come September, the traditional month of traducing Tokyo, that "activists" campaigning "with no official backing" (the last time they were apparently funded by WantWant owner Robert Tsai) will nonetheless appear off the Senkakus, guarded by Taiwan's mighty water-firing coast guard cannon and fomenting incidents with Japan? After all, two more ships were just commissioned expressly for the purpose of safeguarding sovereignty in contested waters and fishing rights, said Ma hisownself. Taipei can always claim they were freelancers and there is nothing it can do.... the fact that this option exists and of course Tokyo must be aware of it suggests that there is either a secret protocol or an informal agreement that activist stupidity must cease. Otherwise Tokyo is going to look pretty inept when the Ma government shrugs with feigned helplessness and allows "activists" to perturb its relations with Tokyo over some rocks which only Beijing and the KMT argue are Chinese.

But let's say that all is well and the KMT Administration really does restrain its tiny menagerie of pro-Bejing loon-activists. Well hello! What will Beijing have to do to make up for the absence of Taipei as its proxy prick against the goads of Tokyo? Step up the pressure, that's what! Ironically, this agreement to make tuna, not war, might actually result in greater trouble in the Senkakus by removing the Taiwanese proxy and replacing it with real Chinese warships facing Japanese ships. The CS Monitor's staid approval notwithstanding, we'll have to wait for the annual fall antics of Beijing and "activists" in Hong Kong and Taiwan before we really have a handle on what this means.
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Daily Links:

• Way cool not Taiwan: NASA video: Watery environment on Mars
  

  "What the Curiosity team has found is incredibly exciting. When we combine what we've learned from our remote sensing and contact science instruments, with the data that's coming in from CheMin and SAM, we et get a picture of an ancient, watery environment, which would have been habitable had life been present in it."

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Let the Panic Begin!

Wood chips, drying in Hengchun.

New cases suspected.... it's spreading!!!!!

Test results have cleared three suspected cases of H7N9 avian influenza infection, as 10 new suspected cases were reported, the Central Epidemic Disease Surveillance Command Center said yesterday.

Virus uncovered in poultry markets in Shanghai. Meanwhile, in Taiwan....

Six suspected cases of H7N9 virus found in Taiwan, but four cleared.....

CDC Deputy Director-General Chou Chih-hau (周志浩) said on Thursday that six people reported fever symptoms after arriving in Taiwan from China recently. Two of them were infected with the H1N1 influenza, two people had bacterial infections, while diagnoses for two people was yet be confirmed.

Changhua County to reinforce blood tests for poultry.

Taiwan's travel industry is taking its time to size up the bird flu threat.

Taiwan's travel industry is apprehensive about the uncertainty and public anxiety being caused by the H7N9 bird-flu virus and has shown a rare reluctance to gauge the potential impact of the outbreak of the disease in China. Usually quick to openly assess the effect of global incidents on the travel market -- including during the latest tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the 2011 earthquake in Japan -- industry insiders said they would need time to digest the situation in China.

DOH says vaccines can be produced in as little as two months:

The task force convened its first meeting yesterday. Lin said that two Taiwan experts currently in Shanghai were expected to obtain the H7N9 virus strain from the Mainland, which would be used to produce the rapid screening reagent. Lin also noted that a cross-Strait agreement on disease control cooperation had been signed in 2010, but this was not the only channel for the DOH to obtain the virus strain. He said that Taiwan had obtained virus strains from the World Health Organization (WHO) when an outbreak of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) occurred in Asia in 2002-3.

The DOH also said it would develop its own vaccine rather than work with Beijing. CDC staff on way to China to gather information, samples. In Taichung monitoring measures are being stepped up to handle the outbreak. Nantou has prepared 44 isolation rooms for patients if H7N9 appears in Taiwan. Health officials have been calling on hot pot restaurants telling them not to serve raw eggs.

Some reality from a commentary in the TT:

There have been no reports of birds infected with this virus strain in Taiwan, nor of any human-to-human transmission. We cannot keep people from the areas in which the outbreak has occurred from coming to Taiwan, but if they do, they will not cause an outbreak here.

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Daily Links:

• Next Media Animators --- vote for them to win a Webby!
• Here's a question from the Atlantic: why doesn't anyone in Taiwan read anymore?
• Orchid Island Nuke Waste Dump, nice piece on it and the local people
• China vs US: the state of the competition
• Tie Non visits Quemoy/Kinmen with zillions of pics.
• Water supplies sufficient to end of June.
• Taiwan to discuss relaxing citizenship rules for China spouses.
• Taiwan grapples with nuclear, renewables

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Riding: Taiwan east and south

Stephen Jack assembles his bike on the platform at the train station in Hualien.

The long weekend offered some great opportunities for cycling, though the weather sucked across the island. Friday my friend Stephen Jack and I took the crack'o'dawn express over to Hualien, had lunch with friends, then headed south. But before we get to the pix from the ride, I thought I'd set down some things I've discovered about taking a bike on the train in Taiwan....

If you want to take your bicycle on the train in Taiwan, here are a few tips.

1. Bagged bikes can go on all locals and jyu guang hau trains. They are not allowed on the Taroko specials. For the dz chiang trains, see the train listing in the schedule and check for the bicycle icon. They will accept a bike bagged on that train.

2. "Bagged" means in a bag, any bag, plastic bag, paper bag, whatever. Dedicated bike bag, of course. "Bagged" means that most of the bike must be in the bag. For road bikes like I ride, I just take the front wheels off. You don't need to take off the handlebars, rear wheels, etc. Again, just remove the front wheel and pop in bag. I know some riders who had big bags specially made, they just drop the bikes in whole and go. This means that....

3. ...for ease of handling, I always roll the bike around the station and carry it up and down stairs and then disassemble it on the platform. When I get off the train, I assemble it on the platform and roll it back out the station. This is because I feel it is easier to roll a bike than carry it unless you've got a really nice bike bag with straps, which I do not. This sometimes leads to arguments with train station staff, who appear to be deaf to the phrase "I have a bag".

4. On all trains but the dz chiang expresses, the bikes can go anywhere they fit -- you can put the bike behind the seats on a jyu guang or in the empty area at the front of some older cars. On the dz chiang designated bike trains, the bikes ALWAYS go in Car 12. Car 12 will be a hermaphrodite, half seats, half baggage. Sometimes they use an old dining car. On those trains, before you buy the tix, tell the cashier you have a bike. They are supposed to put you in car 12, though the system is set up wrongly so seats in car 12 are sometimes hard to come by (but there is always room for a bike). Once you set the bikes down in car 12, you can go to your seats in whatever car. PROTIP: seats 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Car 12 are almost never sold. Thus, they are always empty. You can sit in them and most of the time you will never be kicked out. I haven't been yet. Also, you can usually sit in the baggage car even though you are not supposed to. Just go in and sit down on the floor, the Taiwanese do it all the time. As have I. On the morning trains that car will fill with commuters.

5. HSR: You can take a bike in a bike bag on the HSR. There is usually room on the seats at the end of the car or by the luggage rack, but you can ensure that you get that space by being the first one in line to get aboard. If you tell them you have a bagged bike, they will try and give you the seat next to the luggage. In fact the best seat is at the end of the car, ask for that -- the space behind the last seat is almost always big enough for a bike.

On to the pictures! Click on READ MORE.

The Shadow Taiwan = Hong Kong

Eastern Taiwan, always lovely.

Want to know what Beijing's plans for the Taiwan S.A.R. will be? Look at Hong Kong trying to get universal suffrage for the 2017 election (Straits Times)....

TENSION between China and Hong Kong over the arrangements for the election of the city's Chief Executive in 2017 has heightened to the point where Beijing did the unprecedented - it conducted two military exercises within a week to show who is boss.

....

From Hong Kong's standpoint, the crux of the election issue is whether the SAR will have genuine universal suffrage - the Chief Executive is elected by a 1,200-member committee now - a promise Beijing made three decades ago.

From Beijing's point of view, this is not just about formulating an electoral system but also about defending China's sovereignty and security. It contends that the election of a democrat as Chief Executive - a possibility that cannot be ruled out in unfettered universal suffrage - would endanger the country's sovereignty and security. This is because it sees Hong Kong's democrats as pawns of foreign powers hostile to China.

Three decades ago Beijing promised that the Chief executive would be universally elected. In 2007 it moved that promise back a decade. Now it is struggling to avoid having to fulfill it. Viewing this sequence of events, does anyone out there imagine Beijing can be trusted with Taiwan's democracy? Although surely the problem of suppressing Taiwan's democracy must vex Beijing....
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Apr 21: Taiwan Bookfest

Three days of riding on the east coast and in Kenting this week. Post up later today.... 

Taiwanease.com has the skinny on the Bookfest. Go thou and read.....
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Friday lite Nights

Lovely day riding on the east coast today.

Happy news. Just so you know, the students who protested against the WantWant media monster are still marching, this time in front of the Legislative Yuan telling it to adopt media reforms to prevent this kind of attempt to dominate the media.

Manny Ramirez, now playing for a Taiwan team, hit a home run this week. Apparently the earth's orbit was affected or something, judging by the attention in the media.

The Economist reviews the attempt by WantWant to dominate Taiwan's media. After a solid basic review, Hilarity Ensues....

Surprisingly few are satisfied by this apparent triumph for press freedom. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party says the proposed laws are still not strict enough. Mr Tsai denies he is Beijing’s stooge but Want Want’s future coverage of Mr Ma is likely to be critical. And with 14% approval ratings and a lonely position as a centrist in a fierce debate about the nation’s identity, Mr Ma may be wondering where, if anywhere, he can find friends in the press.

You'd have to be almost completely clueless about Taiwan politics to call a man who consistently argues that Taiwan is part of China, identifies Taiwanese as Chinese, and talks about how the ROC owns the Senkakus, a centrist in relation to the identity debate. Ma is a right-wing ideologue on that issue. The "centrist" position in Taiwan politics is independence, a position embraced in some form by the vast majority of the population. Ma's China embrace is one reason he is so unpopular, after all...

Jens Kastner on the proposed Free Trade Zones:

According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development 2012 World Investment Report, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into Taiwan amounted to US$1.96 billion in 2011, putting Taiwan in the second-lowest place worldwide, ranking above only Angola.

In 2010, Taipei and Beijing signed the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), on which high hopes were placed, but as Taiwan's domestic political climate forbade meaningful opening to Chinese capital, it did not bring in much of an increase in FDI nor did it help Taiwanese exporters as anticipated.

What makes matters worse is that Korea's FTAs with US and EU have been implemented, the Korean won has depreciated faster than the New Taiwan dollar, and Taiwan's China-imposed isolation hinders the island from signing its own FTAs. Meanwhile, powerful domestic lobbies become extremely agitated whenever the Kuomintang (KMT) government of President Ma Ying-jeou merely hints at allowing in competing foreign goods or services, as seen last year when Ma allowed the import of US beef containing the food additive ractopamine.

The reason that Taiwan hasn't attracted investment from Chinese is because it is not a good place to invest at the moment, not because of the domestic political environment. You can tell it is not a good place to invest at the moment because the amount of foreign direct investment it gets is quite low (the first paragraph explains the second paragraph). If Taiwan was booming foreign investment would be flooding in and there'd be Chinese investing here easily through Caribbean holding companies, Hong Kong, and similar. We also don't have Chinese investment here because China doesn't invest much in neighboring countries, as I noted in this post last year and this one.

Of course, the idea of a Free Trade Zones is right out of the 1960s. As Kastner's article points out, they won't have much effect. The time for this kind of policy has passed.

I'm tired of reading articles that blame Taiwan for its lack of military spending, like this one from World Politics Review. Taiwan of course has a heaping share of the blame, but if outsiders want Taiwan to spend more, perhaps they should make weapons available, stop supporting leaders who want to put the island into China's orbit, start purchasing weapons from us to support our industries, and start enhancing mil-mil contacts. Taiwan's defense issues are a collective problem. He doesn't understand the opinion polls either. *sigh*.

Taiwan in Cycles points out how silly an article in the Vancouver Sun on cycling here is. Many of its claims are flat out wrong:

You can ride to the market, school, library, between towns, to the beach, all on smooth paved recreational paths than don't allow motorized vehicles or pedestrians.

All bike paths allow pedestrians, in fact they are a normal sight on bike paths throughout the nation and not only pedestrians, but also pets and of course, foreign maids out pushing older people in wheelchairs, joggers, etc. Motorized vehicles are ostensibly not allowed but in fact they are quite common on some paths, like the Tanzi to Shengang path on which everything from gigantic farm equipment to blue trucks appear, and motorcycles are regular users (ever see police nail someone on a bike path?). Finally, if a bike path goes past a library, school, or market, it is mere serendipity, and not planning. You know the drill... Once again, with so many knowledgeable people in the media and with blogs who bike, why do we have an article in a foreign publication from someone who....

...and another problem with articles like this is that foreign articles validate in Taiwan, and in this case, they validate the government's bike policies. Which are not good.
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Thim on Defense

Over at the superb China Policy Institute blog, Michel Thim has a piece on Defense Policy under President Ma... after reviewing the continuity between the Chen and Ma Administrations in some areas of defense policy, including the Hard ROC policy, Thim observes:

Defence-planning notwithstanding, there are several challenges, some temporary, some embedded in the specific conditions in Taiwan, all of which the Ma administration ought to address sooner rather than later. One of the most urgent matters is the imminent fighter jet gap. A significant component of the current jet fleet (F-5s, Mirage 2000s) is going to retire, or is scheduled for upgrade (F-16A/Bs), by the end of the decade, which means that some of them won’t be available at any given time between 2017 and 2027. This relates to the problem with arms procurement. At the moment, the US is, realistically, the only source of advanced weaponry besides domestic production, which would not be possible without US assistance. After 2008 record procurements were made in terms of money spent, but the most important element, the 66 F-16C/D fighter jet, has yet to be secured.

A large part of recently materialized procurements were long-stalled orders held over from Chen’s presidency, which blocked by a KMT majority in the Legislative Yuan, in some cases for several years. That defence matters were subject to “petty” domestic disputes was not perceived well in the US and voices questioning Taiwan’s resolve to prepare for its own defence originates from that period. Thus, the persistent negative perception of political bickering between the KMT and DPP during the Chen era is a formidable spoiler of US-Taiwan relations. Although this does not tell the whole story about US-Taiwan military cooperation, as there is much happening under the table far from the spotlight, (mis)perceptions should be tackled better. The oft-mentioned problem with Taiwan’s low defence spending – approximately at the level of NATO countries facing no comparable threat – is a matter to be addressed too, and it is well noted in current edition of QDR. Yet allocation of resources for defence should not be considered as a final figure, given the option of approving a special budget outside of regular defence spending. If the US approves the F-16 deal in the short term, a special budget would be a way to tackle the issue financially on Taiwan’s side.

As I've noted on this blog, the US also must share the blame for the failure of the F-16 deal, as Thim alludes.

One thing I'd like to add... Thim notes that some good things have happened, weapons sales, etc, from the US, which don't get the publicity that the F-16 impasse received. Quite true, yet in this paramount US-Taiwan relationship, one thing I haven't heard of is the Ma Administration asking for increased US military visits and personnel cooperation and exchanges. Does anyone know if that has occurred? More intimate relations between the two sides' militaries would greatly ease the problems of cooperation during the upcoming war with China over (pick at least one: Senkakus, Taiwan, South China Sea, Arunachal Pradesh). From my (admittedly restricted) vantage the tussle over the F-16s has concealed a long-term malaise in other forms of important relations.... a common pattern with the Ma Administration is to use the political theatre offered by high profile issues to obscure a lack of progress in other crucial areas.....
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Daily Links:

• Fagan's Excellent Adventure with good pics: Following the Guantien River
• Is China the new Taiwan? Nope.
• Tibetan and Mongolian Affairs Council to be merged with the Mainland Affairs Council. Because Tibet and Mongolia are part of China....?
• Family feuds threaten some of Asia's major businesses
• President Ma's sister angered by link to growing Twin Towers scandal. Wonder if the media will attack Ma's family the way they went after Chen's if she proves to have been involved. Hahaha. What a silly question. 

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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!

...And Hilarity Ensued: The CKS Design Contest Pwned

The Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall website at about 6 pm today. The CKS Design Competition is on the right sidebar, in glorious pink.

The Ministry of Culture really did it this week with its announcement of a CKS Design Contest (event website). The purpose of the contest -- no I'm not kidding you, please finish chewing all the food in your mouth and don't drink anything for the next minute or so -- was to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Soong Mei-ling, celebrate the love that Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling had for one another, and of course, celebrate Chinese culture. This would benefit marital harmony and social education. Did I mention the $100,000 NT prize of taxpayer dollars? Yes, this is in 2013, not 1963. Hope you didn't just spew all over your keyboard.

I'm sure it is easy for you to imagine what came next as Taiwan's creative netizens swung into action to mock this incredibly silly and stupid idea. All sorts of designs alluding to Chiang's murderous ways and the dictatorship he ran, like this one above, for example, flooded the event's Facebook page, which has now been removed. The CKS Design website homepage has now been redesigned twice to eliminate items which had been spoofed by young people. Fortunately some of the originally designed website pages are here. Ben has collected some images here. I've posted another version of the original below:

The whole thing is disgusting beyond belief. Lung Ying-tai, the pro-KMT intellectual appointed to head up the Ministry of Culture, has been especially annoying as she struggled to distance herself. She said:

龍應台指出，不妥的原因是，歷史很複雜的事，如果要把那個時代非常複雜的歷史問題和責任問題，歸到說就是某一個人負責，可能太過簡單化。但那個時代的統治方法，也確實造成很多人妻離子散、家破人亡，如果沒有那樣的歷史縱深與情感在心裡，就會出問題。

...basically saying that the response to the contest was inappropriate because history is complex and to assign the blame for 2-28 to a single person is "simplistic." As Ben of Letters from Taiwan put it to me, Lung Ying-tai decided to nail her colors to the mast. The CKS design website finally announced today on the login page that the competition had been put on hold. Three days too late.

Well....

Sobering it is to contemplate how this could have happened, many people pointed out. Obviously there had to be meetings, committees, design people, and somehow... nobody pointed out how politically and historically insensitive it is to do something like this. Nobody alerted anyone to how people, especially the young, would respond. Amazing -- why do they think CKS statues vanished from public areas? Why do they think last year students at ChengChi U staged a mock funeral for Chiang Kai-shek?

As anyone who has ever worked on a government project here knows, such projects are aimed to please the people at the top, not so much to carry out their stated purpose, with everyone doing CYA all the way up, a situation innumerable department heads have complained about ("Why am I signing off on all this picayune stuff?"). But it means that people at the top must have signed off on it... and at the bottom, where there must be plenty of young people, there must have been a few subversives who gave this thing a push because they knew what would happen.

You'd think someone might have noticed, because the government similarly tried to run an essay contest a while back explaining why the ROC owned the Senkakus, which went over like a lead balloon and was widely derided (ChinaSmack).

This incident may signal how politically tone deaf and out of touch the Ma Administration is, but what this incident also shows is the long historical shadow of the cult of personality the KMT created around the dictator (my post on JE Taylor's paper) as well as the inability of the KMT to come to terms with and genuinely comprehend the enormity of its own recent past.

PS: My thanks to everyone who passed around links and images.
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Daily Links:

• Youtube link to video of my friend Cheryl Robbins and her work in Taiwan.
• Richard Matheson's interview with reality abroad, a travel website, part 2.
• Taoshan Waterfall from Steve Crook
• Jens Kastner on how the resumption of live firing exercises in Taiwan is a signal....
• China bank to buy stake in Taiwan bank
• Taipei Cycle show postmortem from Drew
• Rick Monday with The Scene, Episode 3 over at Taiwanease.com as he interviews Adam McMillan, Adrian Achermann, and Seán McCormack.
• China's historical amnesia -- this article made the rounds. It disturbs me, it suggests a kind of Othering in which They suffer from historical amnesia while We do not, given validation by the fact that it is written by a Chinese. 

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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!

Daily Links, Monday, April 1, 2013

Woodpecker nest near my house. Dunno what that thing is in the tree.

Some links for monday.

BLOGS:

• Drew with a rare northern adventure.
• Holi Festival in Taipei -- color pictures from Craig.
• Hsinchu Coastline bike trail
• Pretty shots from Josh with a B&W SLR film camera. Almost makes me want to fire up my AE-1 with the Kinon lens....
• The Foreigner rips a China Post commentary. And more.
• More excellent Osprey shots from Fagan
• LOL -- MKL spoofs the silly "Why I am Leaving China" letter genre. The reason there are no such letters here is that no one ever leaves Taiwan, they just exit temporarily until they return.

MEDIA:

• The flow of propaganda continues: Power Rationing inevitable if the 4th Nuke is not approved. US-Taiwan relations may be damaged if it is not approved (NSC says same)
• Two Towers bribery case damage spreads.
• Ralph J in Forbes thinks the anti-nuke cause isn't serious because some people swim near the outtake of the third nuke plant in Kenting. It's just the famous human compartmentalization at work. Lots of those people who swim next to nuke plant 3 don't like nuclear power -- but Taiwan is not overly supplied with good beaches.... and anyway, not swimming wouldn't change things... 
• Ma meets with anti-nuke activists
• taiwan, germany looking for gas hydrates.
• The much needed EU Pivot to Asia
• Ma invites activists to inspect the Fourth Nuclear Plant
• Taiwan-NZ trade talks going great
• The Matsu casino operation is going to be government-investor cooperation. You know, the kind where the taxpayers put up the cash and the investor pays nothing and rakes in all the profits. 

VIDEO:

• This was apparently made for some kind of competition though I had a lot of trouble wringing information out of its maker so I really can't tell you. Despite a couple of strongly ideological moments, it's a decent enough introduction to the sights of Kinmen.

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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!