Typhoon Fung wong is closing in, and here in Taichung, a steady rain is falling as of eight this morning, Taichung time. No wind at all yet. Schools and offices across the island have shut down in anticipation of a major load of rain.
Yesterday the email lists were abuzz with the claim of Rupert Hammond-Chambers, [...]
Veteran Canadian journalist Jonathan Manthorpe has an in-depth look at what a Ma presidency means to Tokyo and Washington in the Vancouver Sun:
An unforeseen effect of the coming to power in Taiwan in May of president Ma Ying-jeou and the Kuomintang (KMT) party is an apparent loosening of relations with Japan and the United States, [...]
A Ma fan in a local office.
Ma Ying-jeou was on CNN’s Talk Asia the other day. PART 1, PART 2. The CNN text is a priceless mishmash of KMT talking points and erroneous information that is insulting to both Ma and its readers. Here is the header….
….which refers to “premier” Ma. In the text, [...]
Author and blogger J Michael Cole, a frequent commentator in the Taipei Times, and an attendee at Thursday’s presentation.
On Thursday the 17th I had the great good fortune to attend a talk given by Randall Shriver, a longtime Taiwan booster who has held a number of US government posts concerned with Taiwan and Asia policy. [...]
It’s funny — Ma was elected president even though there is a deep dissatisfaction with him within the KMT — really because there was no one else. The China Times (translation from KNN) editorialized today on God Ma and his many human failings:
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President Ma Ying-jeou probably never imagined in his entire life that his popularity [...]
I’ve been tracking the spread of Robert Scheer’s awful bit of writing Taiwan Declares Peace on China, which has spread, Spanish Flu-like, to The Nation (my response at DKOS). One of the things I noted in my reply is that far from using Taiwan as a Cold War stalking horse to advance to some putative [...]
Gerrit van der Wees discusses recent threats to Taiwan’s security and democracy in the Taipei Times. Because the Taipei Times edited their piece, I offer the unedited version here.
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Ma undermining Taiwan’s democracy and security
Two recent events show that the Ma Administration is quickly earning itself the label of being a trouble-maker and is letting the [...]
I think the next few months are going to fun as we watch the Blue media sort out how it is going to react to having a Blue legislature and a Blue Administration in power. For the last eight years the Blue media here have taken leave from ethics and restraint in unabashed bashing of [...]
First, from the Beijing side: their position on the alleged “1992 Consensus” as reported in the Washington Times….
China stands ready to discuss a broad range of sensitive military, economic and diplomatic issues with Taiwan if the island’s new government accepts Beijing’s terms on national sovereignty, China’s U.S. Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong said Thursday.
“We have made clear [...]
One of the most important DPP foreign policy successes was broadening and deepening Taiwan’s relationship with Japan. Jason Miks has a nifty article over at World Politics Review on Taiwan’s excellent relations with Japan:
Indeed, while the relationship between China and Taiwan has only very recently begun to warm up, relations between Japan and Taiwan have [...]
I’m trying to avoid several things with this blog — I don’t want it to become the “What has Ma Fucked Up Today?” blog. Nor do I want it to become the Taiwan Democracy Deathwatch, a four year wake. So please forgive me for being massively busy the last week or so and not blogging [...]
The old Japanese agricultural research station in Tainan, in use until recently.
There’s nothing like the yawning political abyss that the KMT is dropping Taiwan into accompanied by gray skies and the pitt-pitt-pitt of steadily falling rain every day. It’s more demoralizing than being called stupid by Sharon Stone.
The Taipei Times had an excellent editorial today [...]
Taiwan News has another hard hitting editorial, this time on how KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung has sold out the island and its vision of pluralistic democracy:
In the midst of the storm over Tuesday’s lightening hike in petroleum prices by the new Kuomintang government, virtually all of our citizens have failed to notice that the [...]
And now for something completely different: I got flipped a version of Michael Fahey’s commentary in the South China Morning Post, and a version of that now appears here. Compare this to the two pieces in the post below this one:
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Taiwan’s conservative new president Ma Ying-jeou began his term with burst of symbolic activity and [...]
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. – Gandhi
The international media came out with two views of Ma this week that make a startling contrast. One in Forbes refers to Ma’s past in the KMT party-state, rare for a piece in the international media. The other, from Tom Plate at AsiaMedia, discusses [...]
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