Looking at the numbers above, note how much "foreign" direct investment is coming from Caribbean islands. I bet a lot of that is recycling Taiwanese or Chinese money, not foreign at all, taking advantage of tax breaks and other incentives. Ditto for Samoa which comes in at number 5.Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) approved 2,308 foreign direct investment projects (except from China) totaling US$3.596 billion in January-September 2013, respectively increasing 20.40% and decreasing 8.59% on year.......In January-September, MOEA approved 103 investment projects proposed by China-based firms with total value of US$331.28 million. There were 310 approved projects of direct investment in China proposed by Taiwan-based companies or individuals with a total amount of US$6.354 billion, decreasing 8.28% and 21.02% respectively on year.
Neither Taiwan's top economic planner, stung by a projection made in February that went badly wrong, or the chief of the country's statistics bureau were able to say on Monday if Taiwan's economy will grow by at least 2 percent this year.The Golden Cross comment was roasted in the Taipei Times this week as well:
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She said more time was needed to assess whether the economy will be able to grow 2 percent this year given the weakness in the country's exports in the third quarter, which totaled US$76.20 billion, short of the DGBAS's projection of US$78.04 billion.
The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER) on Oct.15 cut its forecast for Taiwan's economic growth this year to 2.01 percent, from the 2.28 percent it estimated in July, citing lower-than-expected economic momentum in the second half of the year.
At his hearing, Kuan was given a hard time for his confident projection in February that Taiwan would see a "golden cross," with growth exceeding 4 percent and the jobless rate falling below 4 percent.
During the January-to-last month period, the unemployment rate only went down 0.05 percentage points to 4.18 percent. That makes Taiwan’s job market the weakest among its Asian counterparts including Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea. Hong Kong’s jobless rate held pat in June and has stayed at 3.3 percent for four months, according to statistics provided by DGBAS. Japan and South Korea’s unemployment rates stood at 4.1 percent and 3.1 percent respectively in August, latest figures showed.Kuan said that the remarks were a goal and indeed, that is what he actually said. The opening forecast of the year pegged growth at 3.5%, a figure which has fallen steadily over time.
The Taipei Times gave this fellow front page headlines:President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) statement that cross-strait relations are “not international relations” during his Double Ten National Day speech has further weakened Taiwan’s sovereignty and was meant as a hint for the US and Japan not to interfere in cross-strait issues, a local academic said.Actually, no. The glory and the hell of the Taiwan Relations Act is that Taiwan has no role in the decision to defend Taiwan. China already defines Taiwan as an "internal matter". Any decision to not defend Taiwan will be entirely the result of a political calculus that occurs in Washington (and Tokyo). If Washington so desires, it will intervene no matter what Ma or anyone else says. It's bad enough that these irresponsible words are said in a public forum, but let's not add to the silliness by giving them front page status.
“If by including such words in the National Day address Ma intends to make the cross-strait issue an internal matter and not open to international interference, it would cause serious repercussions in the days to come,” said Wong Ming-hsien (翁明賢), director of Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies.
Pointing to the fact that Taiwan is not a part of the UN, and the Ma administration’s inclination to make the cross-strait issue an internal issue rather than international, Wong said that in the event of a military conflict over the Taiwan Strait, neither Japan nor the US would have grounds to intervene.
The Taipei Times printed the text:
The survey, conducted by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR), showed that 69.7 percent believe that Taiwan and China are “two countries with separate development,” 9.6 percent think that both sides belong to “a divided ROC” and 2.4 percent see the two as belonging to “a divided People’s Republic of China [PRC].” A further 18.2 percent had no opinion, the survey showed.This is the first poll I've come across that really hints at the way Taiwanese have taken "ROC" to stand for Taiwan. This is the opposite of the goal that the KMT had, which was to subsume Taiwan into the ROC. Instead, the Taiwanese have hollowed out the ROC -- they are happy to use that name but are cold to its outlandish territorial claims. They have also appropriated the ROC flag as their own, as a flag representing Taiwan (but not China). The public even appears to feel that there is no need to change the name of the country if China recognizes the ROC (a weird question, that).
Given a choice of how they would like the international media to refer to the country, “Taiwan” ranked first at 78.9 percent, followed by the ROC at 72.5 percent, “Chinese Taipei” at 25.8 percent and “Taiwan, China” at 6.5 percent; 3.7 percent had no answer.
Huang and Yang, SID’s chief prosecutor, will be referred to the committee for supervisory negligence, while Cheng, the prosecutor overseeing the wiretap assignment, will be held accountable for administrative errors, according to the panel’s report.Actually, despite much skepticism around the intertubes about the SID's explanation, anyone with experience working in Taiwanese institutions can easily see how this could have occurred initially by mistake; administrative errors in Taiwan's institutions are common because in Taiwan it is the lower-level (so often female) people who actually do all the productive work, the credit for their work flowing upwards towards concentrations of patriarchal power. They are typically massively overworked. Moreover, for procedures that are implemented less frequently, often no one is really sure what the correct procedure actually is. Hence everything is kicked upstairs until at last it reaches someone who is compelled to make a decision. Far from the front, he signs off, praying that nothing was wrong with the list of things he just handed on.
The SID has said that it mistakenly assumed that the telephone number 0972-630-235 belonged to a legislative assistant and that nothing was recorded on the 21 compact discs it obtained from the Investigation Bureau from the wiretap.
The ministry’s ad hoc panel, established on Sept. 29, supported the SID’s stance, but said that the error could have been avoided.
Telephone records for that number in the six months before the SID began its wiretap showed that the number averaged about 364 calls a day during that time, which prosecutors should have realized meant that it might not be the number of an individual, Chen said.
According to the report, there had been 13 cases of three other telephone numbers, also used by the legislature as its switchboard lines, being tapped during 2007 and 2009, when prosecutors investigated into various suspected cases related to vote-buying and corruption.13 other cases?? Hahaha.
As of Thursday, the prosecutors’ office has received 86 motions against Huang, which have been assigned to 14 prosecutors. Reportedly, a common friendly greeting among prosecutors in the past weeks is: “Are you now handling a case on the prosecutor-general?”Affairs like this are carnivorous, apt to turn on their progenitors. After all, someone must be punished. It seems to me that since Wang is wearing mithril armor under his cloak, Prosecutor-General Huang is likely to be the sacrifice demanded. UPDATE: Yep.
"My fellow citizens: The people of both sides of the Taiwan Strait are all Chinese by ethnicity. Cross-strait relations are not international relations."This is the same language that Ma used in his 2008 inaugural address where he not only brought out the ethnic links but also said sovereignty was not important in cross-strait issues. As I noted:
...the English text says "our common Chinese heritage" but the Chinese is explicit -- the people on the two sides of the Strait both belong to the Chinese race" (兩岸人民同屬中華民族).The second translation issue is even more interesting. Entirely dropped from the English text is the very next sentence, which says 中華民族智慧之高 which translates "the great intelligence/wisdom" of the Chinese race."It seems impossible to me that there could be anyone following events here who sees Ma as other than the ideologue he truly is, but humanity's capacity for self-delusion does seem rather infinite.
In addition, the free economic pilot zones (FEPZs) have already entered the launch phase. The Executive Yuan has relaxed 12 regulations to dramatically streamline customs procedures applying to pilot zone firms when they outsource processing operations, so that new operating models based on smart logistics can be gradually established in these zones. The Shanghai Free Trade Zone officially opened recently, giving us yet another competitor. Therefore, we must step up efforts to open up our market. The Executive Yuan is actively deliberating on whether to allow other industrial activities in the FEPZs, such as the financial sector’s wealth and asset management services. This is the right direction. We should expand the scope of liberalization for both domestic and international financial and economic activities. This will help Taiwan to advance more quickly toward the goal of becoming a “free economic island.” We hope these liberalization measures, along with other industrial development plans, will generate at least NT$300 billion worth of private-sector investment and create more than 45,000 jobs in the next two years.The bolded sentence is worth considering. Ma is essentially arguing that the financial industry come under the same rules and regs regarding taxation and labor as manufacturing firms in these 1960s style labor intensive industrial zones. As I have noted innumerable times, Ma was put into office with the backing of the financial industry (anyone noticed the housing bubble? Verily, the purpose of housing bubbles is to skim off middle class wealth) and I'm feeling a payback moment here in the President's assertion that such firms should have special exemptions from regulations....
