The Tainan District Court on Wednesday found former deputy minister of the National Science Council Shieh Ching-jyh (謝清志) innocent of corruption charges.

Ten defendants, including Shieh and Hsu Hung-chang (許鴻章), owner of Sheus Technologies Corp —also known as Hung Hua Engineering — were indicted in 2006, accused of corruption by a rival bidder after Sheus won an NT$8.05 billion (US$262 million) construction tender to reduce the vibrations caused by the high speed rail as it passes through the Southern Taiwan Science Park.

I’ve blogged on this one before, in 2006 at Taiwan Matters! The human cost of this mess should be obvious from this 2006 discussion on the Hyphen Blog (don’t miss the comments).

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How were you drawn into studying minority people in southwest China?

After the Mosher affair , it was impossible for foreigners to do field research in Han areas. My student Dru Gladney had done research with Hui in various areas, and encouraged me to give minorities a try.

For readers who know little about Chinese minorities, what are three essential kernels of information?

1. There are as many minority people in China as there are people in Japan, and way more than there are in any one European country.
2. Not all Chinese minorities have active independence movements. In fact, only two of them do: Tibetans and Uighurs.
3. Minority people participate actively in incorporating themselves into the Chinese state, even when they have resentments against the state and against the Han.

What do the 2008 Games mean for China - Chinese people, Chinese government, Chinese minorities, and Chinese academics?

More than anything else, the Games are a chance to show the world that China is a grownup country. That’s really about all.

I’ve long followed the issue of casinos here in Taiwan, partly because I suspect they will be involved in my PhD thesis. Taiwan Journal has a piece out on the Penghu’s desire to get gambling:

Penghu has good reason to look for a financial boost from casinos as the gambling industry is expanding rapidly in Asia. According to a survey released by the American Gaming Association in June, gambling revenues in the region could surpass those generated in the United States by 2012.

Booming gambling meccas in Macau as well as new casinos in Singapore were expected to drive this growth, the AGA predicted. The association reported that U.S. casinos raked in US$34.1 billion in 2007, while Asia’s casino gambling market was estimated to have made between US$15 billion and US$20 billion during the same period.

The industry’s potential has reignited the debate on whether casinos should be legalized in Taiwan. With neighboring countries such as Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore either preparing to or having already lifted gambling bans, there is a growing sense that Taiwan should jump on the bandwagon before it is too late.

In order for that to happen, the Legislature would have to pass the so-called “casino article” in the Offshore Islands Development Act. Legislators have already rejected the article twice: in January 2002 by a 51-vote margin and in December last year, by 27 votes.

An aide to Lin Pin-kuan, a fourth-term independent legislator from Penghu County, suggested it might be a case of third time lucky. While the previous Democratic Progressive Party government was firmly opposed to gambling, the aide said the ruling Kuomintang’s position on this issue had softened in recent years.

“Lawmakers have long blocked the article because many Taiwanese people consider gambling immoral, but the enormous successes of the casino industry in other Asian countries made for a powerful argument,” said Lin’s aide. “Taiwan has legalized lotteries. People should be able to discuss casinos more reasonably now,” he added.

The water issue is a severe one, but a friend pointed out that casinos might actually be a benefit on that front, since the government might at last put in pipes to bring H2O over from Taiwan instead of straining the delicate local ecosystem.

Lastly, the arms freeze. To complement the Senators who wrote to King George on the arms freeze, 25 members of the House Taiwan caucus have also sent a letter to the President asking about it. Below:

The Honorable George W. Bush July 31, 2008
President
The White House Washington , DC 20500

Dear President Bush:

For decades, the United States and Taiwan have maintained a mutually beneficial economic and political relationship. Taiwan is one of our strongest allies in the Asia Pacific region and we believe it is essential that there be a peaceful environment in the Taiwan Strait . The U.S. has a long history of making available to Taiwan defense articles and services that are essential in the goal of enabling Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.

In 2006, Taiwan ranked 5th among worldwide recipients of U.S. foreign military sales, receiving $970 million in defense articles and services. In December 2007, Taiwan approved their 2008 Defense budget which included a significant package of weapons to further its military modernization efforts. Among those requests were 12 P3-C planes and 3 PAC-II missile upgrades which you approved in April, 2001. Other requests that are still pending include 8 diesel submarines, 30 Apache helicopters, E-2 aircraft upgrades, sea-launched Harpoon 20 missiles, precision attack missiles and 66 F-16 fighter aircraft.

We welcome Taiwan ’s request of support for its security and growth of its defense capabilities. Upon reception of Congressional Notifications, we look forward to the opportunity to work with the Administration in completing these sales as soon as possible. Recently, we have been aware of a possible freeze on all foreign military sales to Taiwan . We believe that a freeze on foreign military sales to Taiwan violates the spirit of the Taiwan Relations Act. We request a briefing on the status of these sales from all appropriate agencies, and urge the Administration to expeditiously execute consideration of these requests.

In March 2007, China announced that their 2007 defense budget would total $46 billion, although Secretary of Defense Gates estimated that China ’s total defense spending for 2007 could be as high as $139 billion. The military and strategic imperatives for Taiwan are real and urgent, and if we fail to show the necessary resolve it would mean missing a significant opportunity to improve cross-strait peace and security - a vital U.S. interest.

We would like to echo your statement on March 22 regarding Taiwan ’s recent election, stating that you are “confident that the election and the democratic process it represents will advance Taiwan as a prosperous, secure and well-governed society.” We understand our administration’ s “One China” policy and all agree that a strong, defendable Taiwan is in our nation’s best interests.

In our view, a secure and prosperous Taiwan requires the means to provide for its own self defense and the ability to engage its neighbors without fear of military intimidation. Taiwan ’s ability to maintain its defense rests heavily upon its ability to acquire defense articles that are capable of deterring aggressive neighbors. As your statement also points out, Taiwan has a right to be “secure,” and that can only be guaranteed by an unambiguous and non-negotiable commitment from the United States to provide Taiwan with weapons systems consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act.

Sincerely,

SHELLEY BERKLEY D-NV STEVE CHABOT R-OH GENE GREEN D-TX VIRGINIA FOXX R-NC ELLIOT ENGEL D-NY 05 THADDEUS MCCOTTER R-MI MICHAEL MCNULTY D-NY TOM TANCREDO R-CO MAURICE HINCHEY D-NY DAN BURTON R-IN ROBERT ANDREWS D-NJ MARK SOUDER R-IN SHEILA JACKSON-LEE D-TX ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN R-FL BARNEY FRANK D-MA 15 DOUG LAMBORN R-CO STEVE ROTHMAN D-NJ JOHN CULBERSON R-TX G.K. BUTTERFIELD D-NC JOE BARTON R-TX 20 DONNA CHRISTENSEN D-VI SCOTT GARRETT R-NJ DAVID WU D-OR
GUS BILIRAKIS R-FL DENNIS CARDOZA D-CA 25

The Taipei Times had several pieces on the arms issue today. Dennis Wilder of the US NSC says there’s no arms freeze. Legislators say there is no realistic possibility of arms sales this year. J Michael Cole says that US arms freeze is example of US hegemony at work.

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One minute of the Self-Strengthening Train speeding across the southern Taiwan landscape on a gorgeous post-typhoon day. Meanwhile, what’s speeding across the Taiwan blogscape?

J-hole at Ni Howdy blogs on strange things found in the China Post.

Sponge bear goes for a hike and finds lush pics and a great piece on Japanese nationalism.

Cross Strait Economics on Taiwan’s plan to move 12 inch fabs to China. I’d like to move my 12 inch abs to China too….

A-gu notes that the DPP finds it absurd that the KMT is attending the Beijing Olympics while its allies’ leaders are not allowed to.

The excellent My Several Worlds muses on typhoon day, while the Taiwan Chronicles lists what she did.

Save the Humpback Dolphin has a piece on river dust. Apparently is an important component of local haze.

Fast Eastern Sweet Potato blogs on Muslim terrorism in China.

Taiwan Photographers features Todd Alperovitz.

Peace Festival video on the Real Taiwan.

Chinese Whispers interview by Steven Crook.

Teaescapade on distinguishing authentic Yixing Teapots from Taiwan.

PETA calls on Sanchung city officials to take better care of their strays. Hey PETA — send money, not emails.

The vivacious Michelle blogs on the opening of a famous old tunnel to bikers and hikers. Next time someone tells you Taiwan is getting worse, ask them how much stuff there was like this under the KMT.

Brian Dunn on why defending Taiwan is important.

MEDIA: DPA reports that Ma wants the Olympics to promote “peace” between Taiwan and China. I must have missed the war we were having. Nice formulation, though of the FORMULA: China considers Taiwan its breakaway province, but Taiwan, seat of the exiled Republic of China since 1949, regards itself as a sovereign state currently recognized by 23 countries. Better than a lot of the crap that’s out there. Pajama’s media carries Gordon C. Chang’s piece Defending Taiwan is Defending America. Costa Rican police raid housing minister over allegations he diverted Taiwanese funds intended for housing for the poor, after Costa Rica switched to the PRC. Taiwan’s airlines cut flights. Hsinchu mayor to review roads to facilitate biking. We’re No 1: Taichung, despite improvements, still leads in crime. No doubt because in Taichung, you can get fined for burning a piano, but the illegal trash burning around here goes on serenely unmolested by the police. Sex ring smashed, 13 prostitutes arrested: welcome to Taiwan, girls, where it is illegal to be a prostitute, but OK to hire one. Reuters correspondents do 48 hours in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Yes, the rumors are true, there really are other cities in Taiwan besides Taipei. Taiwan LCD maker cutbacks hit Corning’s LCD blank production here. Desperate cat hitchhikes in container from Taiwan to the UK, demands asylum because its master wants to have it spayed.

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The Beijing Olympics coincide with our party conventions heralding the countdown to November’s presidential election. With the world’s media spotlight on China and the United States, both presidential candidates will undoubtedly be tested by unforeseen developments.

Contenders Barack Obama and John McCain should avoid condemning China, and instead signal their intention to develop a personal relationship of trust with their Chinese counterpart soon after taking office. China’s human rights are best advanced through discrete encouragement, not negative sound bites.

In three election campaigns — in 1980, 1992 and 2000 — future U.S. presidents announced their intention to dramatically toughen national policy toward China. In each instance, the United States then endured months or years of costly fumbling. Bill Clinton, for instance, set conditions for approving Most Favored Nation status for China. But when China didn’t show sufficient improvements in human rights, the new president abandoned his policy after damaging U.S. credibility and Sino-American trust.

Since President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, all subsequent chief executives have ultimately stayed the course with the People’s Republic. The logic is simple: China has massive capacity to affect the world for better or worse. Cooperating with Beijing may challenge U.S. values, but the bond between nations improves global equanimity.

Presidential candidates should signal China’s leaders that they value a constructive and cooperative relationship with China. Personal relationships of trust are highly valued. The Chinese will react negatively if a new president throws difficult issues on the table before establishing such trust.

Yes, it is 2008 and there really are American policy thinkers still asking that we treat China “like a Ming vase.” Bush and Bader argue that when America gets tough with China, it results in policy failure, and instance the Clinton Administration failure on MFN. But the problem arises because China knows that because there are plenty of people working to undermine clear US policies on China, all it has to do is be patient and it can outlast any policy — there is a whole class of American officials and analysts dedicated to explaining that it isn’t China’s fault and we should just understand China better — just like this piece, whose position is that we should let Chinese reactions determine how we treat China — in other words, hand off our China policy to the Chinese. The reality is that China does whatever it wants no matter how it is treated, and the only way to negotiate with Beijing is with a Really Big Stick. “Trust” in the China case cannot lie in personal relationships between leaders, but must be instantiated in routines of interaction between the two states.

In a moment we’ll discuss why these two officials are so important, but I think once again it is time to bring out The Kitty Hawk Paragraph, to which I have added a few new events, and show how China treats its good friends and those who trust it:

Anyone who has observed China’s relations with the outside world for any length of time has seen this pattern again and again. In the midst of negotiations with the Vatican, it consecrates two bishops for the state Church. In the midst of negotiations over the Olympic Torch coming to Taiwan, it denies a visa to the representative of the city of Kaohsiung to discuss the games to be held there in 2009. Arriving in India for negotiations, its ambassador announces a whole Indian state is part of China. Last year the Chinese government shut down an expat magazine in China that was widely considered the most sympathetic and supportive expat rag in that nation. After attending the ASEAN meeting in November where it has positive interactions with ASEAN members, it immediately goes out and holds war games in waters disputed by those nations, without informing them. With ally Ma Ying-jeou newly elected President of Taiwan and needing 3,000 tourists a day, what do they send him? 1,000. After many years of France helping China, emphasizing its ’special relationship’ with China and demanding the Europe drop the post-Tiananmen ban on weapons sales to Beijing, who does China protest against during the Olympic Torch mess? France. And of course China gets the Olympics with promises to upgrade its rights situation, yet crackdowns on the internet and journalists intensify, while state security arrests double. Catch the pattern?

Particularly apropo is that last sentence, because China once again this week showed how effective the policy of “discreet encouragement” is: the IOC was Kitty Hawked by Beijing. The original agreement between the International Olympic Committee stipulated that Beijing must reporters in Beijing unrestricted internet access. And the IOC trusted Beijing….

The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could “report freely” during the Games, Olympic officials acknowledged Wednesday.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC’s Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide full Web access for foreign news media during the Games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the Games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open.

“For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet,” Mr. Rogge told Agence France-Presse just two weeks ago.[MT: Sucka!]

……

Jonathan Watts, president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China, said he was disappointed that Beijing had failed to honor its agreement to temporarily remove the firewall that prevented Chinese citizens from fully using the Internet.

“Obviously if reporters can’t access all the sites they want to see, they can’t do their jobs,” he said. “Unfortunately such restrictions are normal for reporters in China, but the Olympics were supposed to be different.”

As the NY Times report indicated, the fiasco was complete when US Senators, fresh from empowering the Bush Administration to spy on US citizens and curtail our liberties, introducing a resolution demanding that China not spy on its hotel guests even though those selfsame Senators have given the Bush Administration a green light on warrantless surveillance. There’s a point where interaction with the stupidity, hypocrisy, and spinelessness of the US Congress transcends the bounds of ordinary human cognitive abilities and becomes almost like an ecstatic religious experience….

And Bush and Bader say we should tread lightly with China and cultivate trust. Perhaps President Obama can include President Hu in his guanxi network and send him a red envelope now and then, but trust? By all means let us cultivate trust, but let us do it with a large Pacific navy and fat airbases brimming with late model fighter aircraft, and an alliance system that includes all the nations around China.

The worst aspect of this letter is not that its advice is bad. It is that the letter writers, longtime Dems, are advisors to the Obama campaign. I have not condemned the Dems for their Taiwan and China stances because I have heard good things privately — that new draft policy for the Dems calls for upgraded relations with Taiwan, and of course, as Randall Shriver said at his talk in Taipei earlier this month, both campaigns had asked the Bush Administration to unfreeze the arms sales to Taiwan. Those were hopeful signs. But an open and public call for policy like this is not a hopeful sign at all. It appears obvious, at least at this point, that US-China and US-Taiwan policy are going to be better off if McCain is elected. And that’s sad, because the world needs Obama, and not McCain.

A few years ago there was a controversy over facilitated communication, where the mother of the autistic child holds its hand as it types on a keyboard or writes. Subsequent studies went on to show that in fact the autistic child’s writing skills were the product of the facilitator, and not the child. For the center of the US political Establishment, US policy on China has become little more than a case of facilitated communication.

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Smack-dab in the South China Sea, the atoll of Pratas Islands, with its azure waters and white, sandy beaches, was until recently a front-line military garrison. Also until recently, China reportedly considered taking the islets by force as a practice run for an all-out offensive against Taiwan proper.

But recent moves to demilitarize the Pratas serve as one of the clearest signs yet that tensions in the strait have eased dramatically.

”As relations with China improve, this place has become more a national park than a military outpost,” says Liu Kuo-lie, the Coast Guard commander of the Pratas, referring to the establishment last year of the Dongsha Marine National Park on the atoll.

The interesting thing about this is that last year when the national park was set up, there was some suspicion that it was simply a way of Taiwan solidifying its claim over the islands. But AFP reports that those perfidious Chinese have staged an invasion of the national park anyway:

Chinese fishermen have been accused of poaching in Taiwan’s first marine national park, where authorities say their destructive methods are endangering the area’s ecology. “Chinese fishing boats have been posing the gravest threat to the fragile ecological system here,” said Shaw I-pung (蕭一鵬) of the Marine National Park headquarters, speaking of the tiny coral atoll called Dongsha Island.

“They have been using illegal methods like poisons, dynamite and electricity to exploit marine resources in the region,” he said.

The scourge of boats scouring the seabed for food destined for Hong Kong restaurants is combining with global warming as a major cause of coral reef bleaching, he said.

It is a good thing “tensions” are reduced and normal activities like fishing can go on…. Taiwan has been trying to develop the island for tourism, but a friend of mine who was out there a while back says facilities are decidedly lacking. For those interested, there’s some background on the Pratas and other islands in the Taiwan Review from 2001.

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The context was different, but the central political question as the Rome Olympics neared was the same as it is now: how should the world deal with China? The issue was debated that year by Vice President Richard Nixon and Sen. John F. Kennedy during the presidential campaign, and Brundage and the IOC became embroiled in it as well. The United States did not recognize Mao’s mainland government, Mao did not recognize Chiang’s island government and the IOC had nothing but trouble with both. Not long after the People’s Republic withdrew from the Olympics, the IOC ruled that Taiwan could no longer call itself the Republic of China at the Olympics because it did not represent the geographical entity of China. It could march in the opening ceremony only as Taiwan or the other name for the island, Formosa.

Suddenly Brundage went from being called a tool of American foreign policy to being labeled a communist sympathizer. Right-wing groups in the United States mounted an intense letter-writing campaign denouncing him. The State Department, while claiming to be free from political involvement in the Olympics, began a lobbying effort to persuade the IOC to overturn the decision. The Taiwanese, in diplomatic cables with Washington, went so far as to suggest that perhaps they should introduce Brundage, a known philanderer, to some of the “fleshpots of Rome” to help the cause. When all else failed, the United States urged Taiwan to boycott the Olympics rather than accede to the change in nomenclature, which was taken as a symbolic victory for the Reds in the cold war.

Taiwan might have boycotted, the writer says, but it had a great decathalete named CK Yang who had a pretty good shot at a medal. Eventually he took silver, outdone by his close friend Rafer Johnson.

It seems a simpler time, the Cold War, when everything was so black and white, compared to today, when we just had to worry about global flash heating by nukes, instead of global warming by Hummers. But today’s China Olympics offer all kinds of new wrinkles, as the Taiwan News notes in another of its hard-hitting editorials this week, pointing up the problem that the resolution of the China Taipei vs. Chinese Taipei mess implies for Taiwan’s sovereignty:

First, the flap was “settled” through secret negotiations conducted by KMT Spokesman Lee Chien-jung, a close associate of former KMT chairman Lien Chan, through the KMT-CCP “party-to-party dialogue” platform, evidently behind the backs of both National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Chairwoman Tai Hsia-ling and Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan.

Unless authorized in advance by the MAC, Lee’s actions reflect the creeping domination of the functions of Taiwan’s democratically elected government, including the management of external affairs, by the KMT itself.

“Conflicts of interest”

Even if Lee did receive secret authorization, the fact that the KMT and not the authorized Strait Exchange Foundation played the key role in the resolution of this flap reflects a dangerous and anti-democratic concession by the elected government and casts open the door to major “conflicts of interest” given the lack of political transparency and legislative regulation or oversight over KMT-CCP interactions.

Second, the prominence of the KMT-CCP platform, as shown by the agreements reached by PRC State Chairman and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao and KMT Chairman Wo Po-hsiung in late May and Lee’s resolution of the Olympic moniker flap, confirms that the party to party platform is now the genuine “Track One” in the cross-strait relationship.

The KMT-CCP dialogue served as a “track two” mechanism when the KMT was in opposition, but since Ma and the KMT took power May 20 and agreed to accept the “Consensus of 1992,” which Beijing has declared is equivalent to its “one China principle,” there have been no political hindrances between the two governments.

Therefore, the legally authorized and regulated channel between of Taipei’s Straits Exchange Foundation and Beijing’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait should be the sole platform for bilateral talks on all issues.

However, Beijing’s provision of “results” to the Hu-Wu talks and Lee’s mission aim to show that the KMT-CCP party-to-party platform is the genuine “Track One” in cross-strait relations.

In line with the current practice of the PRC and the past of the KMT party-state, the two parties will make the important policy decisions and the two governments, through the SEF and ARATS, will executive the details.

The result will be the denigration of Taiwan’s democratically elected government to a subordinate position under both the KMT and CCP parties.

The negotiations are party-to-party, not state to state. Not authorized body to authorized body. As I observe when former TSU legislator Lai Shin-yuan was appointed to the MAC post, it did not mean that she would be able to safeguard Taiwan’s sovereignty or that Lee Teng-hui would have finger in this pie, as he does in some many others. It meant, in the final analysis, that the MAC would not be a major player in cross-strait policy formulation and negotiations. This has come true. Lai has been reduced simply to giving her opinion on events.

In the Party-State politics of the KMT, the Party is the state, and the government is just one more apparatus in the Party’s system of rule. In a real democracy political parties do not conduct negotiations on behalf of the nation, especially secret negotiations. Especially with counterpart Party-State systems, authoritarian in nature, and inimical to the future of democracy and independence on the island.

Sovereignty. Enjoy it while it lasts, folks.

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Initially, I had difficulties in interviewing the female relatives of fishers in these conservative and patriarchal fishing communities. However, with help from locals, I gradually earned their trust and successively built up a small social network. Even so, because I am an unmarried male and girls and women are considered the property of their husbands and fathers it was impossible for me to interview the female relatives of fishers alone. There was always at least one male member of the family present. Consequently, the questions I was able to ask the women were always influenced by the presence of these male relatives. Sometimes, however, the information I collected was incidental to the original purpose of the interview with one or other female relative interrupting and having her say to a question I had asked the male relative.

Also, I need to make something clear here so as not to be accused of insensitivity. In Taiwan it is culturally prohibited for a young man to ask an old woman’s name, especially before her husband. Hence, the names of the old fishers’ wives remain unknown and throughout the paper I can, unfortunately, refer to them only as ‘the wife of A’ or ‘the female relative of B’.

I had no idea that it was culturally prohibited in Taiwan for a younger man to ask an older woman’s name.

The article contains a detailed discussion of what women did in this period, including the usual manual labor:

In the early years, fishing nets and lines produced by factories were too expensive for many fishing families. To save on the expenditures of offshore fishing activities some women in the Cijin fishing communities traditionally made fishing nets or longlines for neighbouring villagers. The fishing nets they produced were small and could be used only for the coastal and offshore fisheries.[5] Traditionally, fishing nets and longlines were made from bark thread; some were also woven from cotton yarn.[6] People in the fishing villages had to buy bark at the local shop, and then manufacture nets or longlines on vacant lots in their village. My informant, the wife of Chen Shuteng, explained that making bark thread required two steps: first, the bark had to be soaked in water. After it turned soft it was torn into strips. Second, the strips needed to be exposed to the sun until they dried, after which the strips were twisted into strings. The whole process of making the thread and weaving a net was complicated and time-consuming, because the strings broke all the time.[7] Normally, women in the fishing communities took charge of this task, because it was not too physically demanding but it required patience, which, according to a female relative of Cai Bian, not many men possessed.[8]

In the 1950s, fishing nets and longlines made from bark thread gradually were replaced by factory-made cotton fishing nets and longlines. Cotton-made nets and longlines were sold in fishing tackle shops at reasonable prices which every fishing family could afford. Hence, women in Taiwanese fishing communities were eventually liberated from the burden of making bark thread and nets.[9]

Neither locally made nor factory-made fishing nets and longlines could be used for a long period of time. They easily rotted or tore in the salt water. To lengthen the use-by date of nets made from either bark or cotton, people in fishing communities had to spend a lot of time on the maintenance of these fishing nets and longlines. Some women were hired to do this arduous but important work; however, the money they earned was very little and never enough to help cover the overall family expenses.[10]

Apart from darning fishing nets every day, women also had to clean and add a protective coating on the fishing nets and longlines at least once a week. The protection of the fibre in fishing nets and longlines was an extremely laborious job that required the cooperation of both sexes in the fishing communities. Women took charge of extracting the starch from red potatoes. They grated red potatoes on a wooden board embedded with nails, then they mixed the potato paste with some water, before immersing the fishing nets and longlines into the extracted starch mixture. The fishing nets and longlines were then hung out on racks and exposed to the sun until the starch was totally dry. During this period, the people in the fishing village also had to collect pigs’ blood from the pig farms, dry it, and then grind it into a blood red powder. The women would mix the blood powder with some water and immerse the fishing nets and longlines once again—to provide yet another layer of protection from the sea water.[11]

…and something everyone will recognize: handling the money:

Women in the fishing communities were in charge of the money matters for their families, although their social status was comparatively lower to that of men. In Gushan District, a large number of vessel owners’ wives, daughters and even daughters-in-law worked as accountants in their fishing companies. There were two advantages in this practice: firstly, it was believed in this Taiwanese culture that women were very good at managing money matters, and secondly, vessel owners did not need to spend extra money hiring an accountant from outside. A well-known murder happened in the early 1960s, when the mistress of Lin M.Y., who served as the Head of Kaohsiung Fishermen’s Association, was killed by a fisher after a violent quarrel in the company office simply because she took charge of the financial affairs of Lin’s fishing company and the fisherman thought she was cheating him.[25] This practice of women taking charge of the financial affairs of fishing companies still widely exists nowadays. When I conducted my fieldwork in Kaohsiung in 2002, most accountants who worked in the fishing companies were vessel owners’ wives, daughters or daughters-in-law.

A fascinating look at a different time, the author is also well versed in the literature on other fishing communities, which shows up in the informative footnotes — well worth perusing:

Gushan was the cradle of Taiwan’s distant water fishing industry. Cijin was a less developed area. Its major fishing activities were aquaculture, coastal and offshore fisheries. The Fishing Ports of Kaohsiung City, Taipei, Fisheries Agency, 2003, p. 9. The Cianjhen fishing port was completed in 1967, which encouraged numerous distant water fishing companies to shift their offices and fleets from Gushan to Cianjhen by the late 1960s. However, Cianjhen fishing port looks like an industrial area; it would be incorrect to regard Cianjhen as a bona fide fishing community.

In addition to the useful text, the article also contains photographs and maps. A good read in a long tradition of work on women and their communities in Taiwan anthropology.

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UPDATE: at 9:18 the storm seems to have gone on to China. Believe it or not, I caught the peak moments. Definitely not a very powerful storm.

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Yesterday the email lists were abuzz with the claim of Rupert Hammond-Chambers, the president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, that the freeze could be lifted in August and that the bureaucratic wheels could spin in time to have everything wrapped up before December. The Taipei Times reported:

Echoing comments over the past week by the incoming Taiwanese representative to Washington, Jason Yuan (袁健生), as well as council chairman and former US deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, Hammond-Chambers told the Taipei Times that his “optimistic expectation” was that the sales could start to move within weeks.

With a key shortcut in the process and speedy work by the administration and Congress, the Letter of Offer and Acceptance could be signed by the end of December, capturing the budget allocations approved by the Legislative Yuan in December last year.

Hammond-Chambers said that his prognostication was not based on personal assurances by the State Department, which has held back the deals, or congressional aides, but was his “speculation.”

Hammond-Chambers pointed out that the comments from the US government are the same: the process is still under interagency review. Joseph Wu, the talented former “ambassador” to the US, observed:

“That statement seems to be quite uniform,” Wu said. “That means if it’s in the process, the process is going to go through eventually.”

Hopefully the freeze will end soon. If not, rebudgeting all those weapons systems and rewriting all the contracts will be a mess….

This morning the Taipei Times reported on the ominous developments — long prefigured on this blog, thank you — in cross strait relations. What DPP Chairman labeled “a crisis” in Taiwan’s sovereignty is revealed in Beijing’s plans for using the KMT to control our weak willed President:

The Chinese government plans to team up with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to force President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to push Taiwan closer to unification with China, a top Chinese official has said.

In this month’s edition of the Chinese-language Hong Kong publication Xinbao Caijing Monthly, Ye Guohua (葉國華), honorary chairman of the board of the foreign affairs think tank China Foundation for International Studies and Academic Exchanges, said China wants to force Ma to adhere to the five point statement issued by former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in 2005. This would then set the framework for unification talks.

Ye said Beijing looks at the talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) merely as “holding hands” and does not think the “small three links” represent true direct transportation.

Ye said China will not enter into a compromise that easily and that “China will force Ma into implementing the KMT line,” adding that if this cannot be done, China may not be as lenient toward Ma.

He said that to accomplish its goal, China will strengthen the KMT’s position and increase party to party talks to help the KMT control Ma and make him adhere to the Lien-Hu statement. Whether or not the ARATS chairman meets with Ma during his visit to Taiwan later this year would be a good indicator of China’s view of the situation.

Lots of people write “Ma this” and “Ma that” as if Ma were in charge of the process. Nope. He is merely one player, and his position is outflanked by KMT elites who want annexation. The key is the party to party talks, which are headed toward annexation as this article makes clear. How long before the spineless and apparently incompetent Ma gets painted as a “radical” by the rhetoric out of Beijing? Will the US wake up before then? Stay tuned — Film at 11.

The Taipei Times pointed out all this in an editorial today. Discussing plans for a Hong Kong-like economic agreement between Taipei and Beijing, the Taipei Times observed:

Placing the original common market into a new framework palatable to Beijing does not bode well for the nation’s sovereignty and is indeed just another ruse to force Taiwan into a “one country, two systems” framework. Chiang’s notion that negotiating an FTA with China will somehow magically make political problems disappear demonstrates the same hubris Siew exhibited in thinking that a common market could be negotiated with Beijing.

This policy shift demonstrates a growing problem confronting President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration in its negotiations with China: The number of campaign promises Ma made are forcing his administration into a corner and as a result, in negotiations it is giving up Taiwan’s sovereignty.

The fact is, as I have pointed out many times here, and as the Taipei Times again points out in the above editorial, Ma’s extensive promises to the electorate mean that Beijing holds all the cards in the cross-strait negotiations. A commentary yesterday in the Taipei Times pointed out the consequences:

When the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait resumed negotiations last month on administrative and functional matters, the Chinese representatives simply removed the issue of chartered cargo flights —which is unfavorable to China — from the agenda, as they knew the Taiwanese government had to carry out President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign promises of weekend chartered flights and opening up the nation to Chinese tourism by July 4.

There is no boundary or limit on what Ma will concede and there is no need for him to act in the interests of Taiwan, unlike the DPP, which drew the line at sovereignty and which had a clear idea of where the island’s interests lay. Even if he sincerely does not intend to sell out the island, he is not running the show, and the structure of the situation is such that each negotiation with Beijing threatens the island’s sovereignty.

The pan-green paper Liberty Times editorialized on Ma’s weaknesses:

Taiwan is an independent and sovereign nation and Ma was elected as president on this basis. During the campaign, Ma said he was competing for the presidency of a sovereign country. Once he was elected, however, especially since taking office, he has viewed Taiwan merely as a part of China. He believes the best name to use when Taiwan applies for membership in international organizations is “Chinese Taipei” (中華台北.) In order to please Beijing, Taiwan calls itself “Taiwan Region” on visas for Chinese tourists. Ma has also been content to be referred to as “Mr” instead of “President.”

Again, Lai should say whether Taiwan’s name change to “Chinese Taipei” and “Taiwan Region” as well as the use of “Mr” to refer to the president represent an unprecedented crisis in terms of sovereignty.

During Ma’s campaign, he adopted the mainstream view that the “status quo” must be maintained. Since the election, however, his intentions for unification have become evident.

Judging from Ma’s inaugural speech and policy talks, we can conclude that he does not think Taiwan has any sovereignty at all and that Taiwan is just a geographical term in the “one China” context. In the past, the country on the other side of the Taiwan Strait was commonly referred to as China. Since Ma’s election, it has become “Mainland China” to emphasize that both China and Taiwan are parts of “one China.” These changes in terminology make one wonder if Ma’s statements that the 23 million people of Taiwan must decide its future may already be changing to “Taiwan’s future must be decided by the 1.3 billion people of China.”

Not only are the references to Taiwan on the visas absurd, but the scuttlebutt circulating around the island is that Ma’s desire to fly to the US on an ordinary commercial carrier is because he wants to show China that he is not really the President of an independent and sovereign nation. In both foreign policy and in economics, Ma appears to have reneged on all his promises. No shit, sherlock. How could anyone have expected things to be different?

Finally, the wild card, Ma’s domestic situation, is still a developing problem. Lin Cho-shui, the former DPP legislator, had a piece in today’s Taipei Times arguing that Ma faces serious domestic problems thanks to the silly promises the KMT made during the election:

Former President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) needed six years to drive his popularity ratings below 40 percent. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) managed the feat in just two months. Public confidence in the government is now close to collapsing.

Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) has said that Singaporean officials are envious because Taiwan’s inflation figures are much lower than theirs, and the second-best in Asia after Japan. Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄) says economic fundamentals are good and that foreign investors are optimistic. The government blames its problems on rising global raw material costs. Even if all these claims are correct, they will do nothing to improve public confidence.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) only has itself to blame for the public’s hopes being so high.

At some point the creeping annexation process currently being carried out by KMT elites over Ma’s head is going to become obvious even to the local public, and at that point the level of domestic support for Ma will become a crucial factor in the KMT’s ability to bring the process to fruition. Can the KMT buy off the pro-DPP working class with a flood of infrastructure money? Can it make the economy go? With economic growth set to fall more than a point this year, the KMT faces serious problems on the home front, even as Beijing advances.

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Before Chang, we were free to dream about becoming Boris Becker, that Teutonic badass who strutted around the baseline, blasting aces, or Edberg, the square-jawed Swede with a stylish attacking game and a hot blond girlfriend. Now we were stuck with the introverted, 5-foot-9 (on his best day) Chang, a devout Christian with a cream-puff serve who scrapped his way to the French Open title with borderline bush-league tricks (moonballing, crowding the service line on returns, the instantly legendary underhand serve). Worst of all, his dragon-lady mother once stuck her hand down his shorts after a practice to check if they were wet. At the Junior Davis Cup! In front of his friends! After Becker retired, he impregnated a woman in a restaurant’s cleaning closet; when Chang hung up his sticks, he studied theology at Biola University.

Chang didn’t defy Chinese stereotypes; he simply ushered them into the arena. He was hardworking, intelligent, humble, forever prepubescent. His parents, Joe and Betty, were research chemists. His older brother, Carl, went to Berkeley. When the boys were young, Joe, in what seems to me to be classic Chinese cheapskate fashion, scrimped by taking notes during Carl’s lessons so that he could replicate them for Michael afterward.

…….

When Chang stalled in the rankings, unable to get over the final hump, he attempted to transform himself from a grinder to a power player. To great fanfare, he had his racket company, Prince, design a stick that was one inch longer than the industry standard. It improved his serving angle but also reminded everyone that Chinese guys had to compensate for genetic shortcomings besides our height. Where did Prince add that inch of length? To the shaft, naturally.

Hilarious.

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Taiwan is aiming to open five sectors of its economy to mainland Chinese by the end of the year, as part of a campaign by a new China-friendly administration to boost growth, media reported on Saturday.

The five areas are the financial, economic, transport, human resources and land sectors, Taiwan’s two Chinese language business dailies reported, citing Premier Liu Chao-shiuan.

Not included was the real estate sector, the Economic Daily reported, although the two-month-old administration of President Ma Ying-jeou has said it would eventually like to open that sector to mainland investors as well.

Not as fast as some would like. Wonder what they will do when the big bounce doesn’t arrive — when Chinese investors show themselves to be as cagey as all others in dealing with Taiwan. Ma save us!

Several media outlets have been reporting on the visit by representatives of Canadian indigenous groups. Aborigines on both sides of the Pacific have long cultivated contacts, and Canadian papers are reporting that Taiwan wants Canadian aboriginal expertise in managing casinos.

The Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority has signed a deal to manage up to three Native casinos in Taiwan. SIGA will start with one casino for the Thao Tribe, one of Taiwan’s indigenous groups. SIGA will take up to 30 percent of revenues from the facility. “This is a global industry,” a consultant was quoted as saying. “This is expertise SIGA already possesses. We have all the trainers.” The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations recently led a trade mission to Taiwan.

The Thao tribe, of which less than 300 remain, live around Sun Moon Lake, near the village of De Hwa (the sign there says “Welcome to Ita Thao” without any explanation of what Ita Thao is.) Is this a sign that our first casinos are going in at Sun Moon Lake? Just another reason not to visit the island’s most boring tourist spot. Can’t even swim there…..

The Cabinet today announced major energy policy initiatives. If carried out, they might have an effect. Of course, we are still build the two coal-fired power plants.

Finally, from the folder of Honorary Darwin Awards comes this hilarious tale of an engineer who lost over US$400,000 in a paid sex scam:

Looking for paid sex on the Internet is common in Taiwan, though illegal. The practice, called either yuan jiao, which means compensated dating, or enjo kosai, which means an exchange of sex for cash or gifts, originated in Japan but is now popular among adolescents in Taiwan.

After Huang had transferred the money to Yuan Yuan’s bank account, he received a phone call from a man claiming that Huang had used the wrong procedure to wire the money and caused the bank’s computer system to break down. He demanded Huang transmit 2 million Taiwan dollars in damages or he would be killed, the radio report quoted police as saying.

After the transaction, the man called again, accusing Huang of another system collapse, demanding more damages and claiming the bank accounts of several lawmakers had been destroyed and that would delay upcoming elections.

So Huang took out a mortgage on his apartment and transferred more money, only to receive another call, saying he had to pay more damages because he caused another computer breakdown, leading to trouble on the stock markets in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Wall Street.

Within one month, Huang had wired 13.86 million Taiwan dollars before he reported the fraud to police in Hsinchu City in western Taiwan.

How did this fellow ever get an engineering degree?

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After a 45-minute meeting with the Dalai Lama, McCain said the Beijing Olympic Games in August provide an opportunity for China to demonstrate it recognises human rights.

He also said the Dalai Lama is merely seeking basic rights to preserve Tibetan culture, language and religion.

“That’s why I’m so disappointed by repeated statements by Chinese officials that ascribe to the Dalai Lama views and actions divorced from what he actually represents. Such rhetoric doesn’t serve a cause of peaceful change and reconciliation,” McCain said.

Perhaps McCain’s protests might carry more weight if we didn’t have our own system of holding innocents at Guantanamo, in prison ships, and in illegal prisons all over Europe. The US cannot call for moral change in others until it cleans up its own house, a point apparently lost on the Right. But as the recent experience of Obama in Berlin showed, there is a vast audience waiting for the US to lead, if we carry out the housecleaning the nation needs so desperately.

Meanwhile, in the Congo, it’s China playing the role of King Leopold all over again. Surprisingly this long piece is in Bloomberg:

In reality, Adon and his peers practice a chaotic form of capitalism, with little supervision from either the company or the state. The hand diggers aren’t employees; they’re freelancers who sell what they’ve dug and cleaned to brokers such as Patrick Nsumba.

The middleman pays Adon to wash the copper ore, which the man sells to a smelter in Lubumbashi, Katanga’s capital. The plant is run by a unit of Tongxiang, China-based Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co., which processes Katangan copper and cobalt. With wads of Congolese francs on hand, Zhejiang Huayou’s representatives buy ore from people like 29-year-old Nsumba.

“This is one of the worst forms of child labor,” says Joost Kooijmans, a legal officer at the Geneva-based International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. “If they’re buying ore processed by children, they’re involved in violating the rights of the children.”

The article correctly emphasizes that these practices that others condemn are in fact simply the first step in global supply chains that terminate with Western consumers. David Kilgour alludes to this in his recent talk at the Washington Rotary Club on engaging China more effectively.

The Olympic Games and human rights movements worldwide share the same goals: respect, unity, dignity and equality among the entire human family. When these are violated by a host government, the Olympic ideal is dishonoured.

As consumers, we might all begin to ask serious questions to the corporate sponsors of the Games, including Coca Cola, Manulife, Visa, Kodak, Samsung, Panasonic, Omega, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s, General Electric and John Hancock. Silence from them and the many other business sponsors and partners to the Games–63 in all—implies acquiescence with what is going on across China.

Kilgour’s speech is well worth reading. It was he who helped bring the story of organ harvesting of Falun Gongers to the world’s attention, and to make changes in organ tourism in China.

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There’s a call for papers currently out for a conference on altered states of consciousness going on at Duke university. I must say that I thought about submitting a paper, since altered states are what we have been enjoying lately as China Beijing continues to subvert signed agreements on the use of China Taipei vs Chinese Taipei. That’s Taiwan, the original altered state.

First, our mutant President, born without a spine, didn’t think anything was amiss with China violating its agreements:

Saying that Beijing had already made a concession in referring to Taiwan’s Olympic team as Zhonghua Taibei (中華台北, “Chinese Taipei”) within the arena of Olympic activities, the Presidential Office yesterday argued that it was not worth protesting or condemning Chinese state media for using an alternative title, Zhongguo Taibei (中國台北, “Taipei, China”).

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday that the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games would abide by the 1989 agreement signed in Hong Kong that Taiwan would be referred to as Zhonghua Taibei within the context of the Olympics, while the media would continue to call Taiwan Zhongguo Taibei.

It was not an attempt to denigrate Taiwan’s Olympic team, Beijing officials said, because it was a name commonly used by the media.

It is most certainly a way to denigrate Taiwan, and the agreement between Taiwan and China, signed in 1989, specifically forbids the media from using the term. Here’s the text from the post below:

“The participation in sports events, meetings, or activities by sports teams and sports organizations from the Taiwan area shall abide by the pertinent provisions of the International Olympic Committee. In all documents, manuals, letters sent, name tugs made, as well as broadcasts produced by the host (namely, the organizing entity), in so far as a sports team and sports organization from the Taiwan area is referred to in the Chinese language, it shall be “zhong hua tai bei (Chinese Taipei).”

In other words, the text agreement specifically names broadcasts. No weaseling out there! Ironically this agreement had to be inked because China would not abide by a previous agreement to use the proper phrase. China has now reneged on two agreements on this simple matter.

But don’t worry, the KMT can deal with China.

As of yesterday things were continuing in this vein, with CCTV offering Chinese Taipei in one story and China Taipei in another. Makes me glad for once that I live in Taiwan Taichung so I can make fun of ya’ll Chinese Taipeians — most of the time when I tell people in Taipei I live in Taichung they look at me as if I have a disfiguring skin disease that they are too polite to tell me about — or it’s “You came up from Taichung?” as if I had just flown in from Brazzaville or something, or there’s the inevitable ”Taichung? Yeah, I gotta get down there some time,” uttered in the same tone that says “Someday I’ll have to visit Machu Picchu.” But I have my revenge: you all live in China now.

Presidential Office Spokesman Wang was all over this one:

Wang said Beijing’s response to Taipei’s goodwill would depend on individual interpretations.

“We don’t think it is malice. Actually, we think it is a kind of goodwill,” Wang said. “I don’t think Beijing would feel good if we continue to gripe about this and complain about that, since they have changed their position from Zhongguo Taipei to Zhonghua Taipei within the context of the Olympics. I think that is an improvement.”

Wang said the Taiwan Affairs Office had explained on Wednesday that the name Zhongguo Taibei had “historic roots” and that the name was not being used just for the Beijing Olympics.

When asked whether the administration would lodge a protest or condemn the Chinese media’s use of Zhongguo Taibei, Wang said he did not see the necessity for such a response, adding that people had to understand the “historical background” of the title.

As Taiwan is a democracy, people are free to express different opinions, but whenever China makes any official announcement, it is carefully crafted and meaningful, Wang said.

Wang said he “felt the goodwill” extended by Beijing.

With the surname Wang comprising something like 10% of the Chinese population, yes, it’s true — there’s a Wang born every minute. Maybe they’ll put up another 1000 missiles and really, really, extend that goodwill.

Despite the goodwill flowing from Beijing like snake oil at a county fair, the government has considered pulling Taiwan’s team from the Olympics if the name game isn’t won by Taipei. Yeah, right. Meanwhile the DPP slammed the government:

Cheng said that the government’s response to the issue was illogical.

“Chinese Taipei has always been the bottom line for our name during international events. We are not happy about this, but we have to accept it. This is not something to be happy about,” Cheng said. “I do not understand why government officials are so delighted just because the Chinese government began calling us Chinese Taipei.”

Cheng said that instead of relying on the Chinese government’s “so-called” goodwill, the government should come up with a plan to avoid the nation being humiliated again during the Olympics.

“You cannot be careful enough about this,” Cheng said.

DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said that Beijing calling Taiwan “Chinese Taipei” had nothing to do with being friendly to Taiwan.

“They simply gave back what belonged to us. Why should we be happy about this?” Huang said.

I’ve got an idea: why don’t we call our team “Taiwan”? You know, a name that embraces the whole island……

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TAIWAN ARMS…we can confirm that the Administration is in deep consultation over whether to approve an $11-billion arms package for Taiwan, and if so, when.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, predicted in Taipei yesterday that President Bush is “close” to deciding to release what PACOM Adm. Tim Keating perhaps inadvertently last week seemed to indicate was a freeze, due to larger US-China relations and issues.

You can suspect that Wolfowitz was doing his job, and special pleading, and/or you can suspect that given his connections, he may know something the rest of us don’t.

Our guess is he was promoting, not reporting, and that while there are those who argue Bush will announce the deal, then hope to “make up for it” with his Beijing Olympics’ visit with China’s Hu Jintao…that strikes us as are being a little too clever, as per the observations of a directly concerned Loyal Reader who supports the package:

“I think Hu is so concerned about domestic unrest and possible demos that any sign from Bush of bending Taipei’s way would be more than Hu could handle.

Many, including me, think Hu is under pressure to show that his policy of ‘no unification now’ toward Taipei is a good policy. Ma’s mantra ‘no unification, no independence, no arms race’ doesn’t sit very well in Beijing. Even more so was Ma’s statement that he didn’t foresee unification ‘in his lifetime.

This has Beijing nervous about giving any leeway to Taiwan for fear that the DPP might return, and that the DPP would pocket all concessions from China, and ask for more.

I worry, by the way, in all this arms ‘delay’ and optimism over the dialogue that is underway between Taipei and Beijing, that any signs of a DPP resurrection would make Beijing very belligerent.

That would risk the US being caught in a trap somewhat of its own making, ‘ troublemaker DPP/peacemaker KMT’ - so you can’t have that DPP be re-elected to power.’

But, as noted at the top, anyone who says they know the outcome of the Administration debate is exaggerating, we suspect. As we await a decision (and not making any announcement may BE the decision) here are some useful considerations we hear from other concerned observers, about points raised in recent Nelson Reports:

“I agree that the Bush Administration is not breaching the TRA. We are in a set of circumstances that the authors of the TRA did not contemplate. If the authors had been in this situation, they probably would be doing the same thing that the Administration is doing now. It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course, but not as dire as some people are painting it.”[MT: this Loyal Reader is wrong. The situation that the "authors of the TRA did not contemplate" -- the KMT-CCP lovefest -- is not the cause of the arms freeze. The arms freeze predates the current situation. The Bush Administration is full of it on this one. Whether the Bush administration is breaching the Taiwan Relations Act is a matter of one's values, but I don't think it is. It may be in violation of the spirit of the TRA, but the letter of the TRA clearly gives the President the right to do what he wants. Stupid to hand the executive so much power.]

Finally, a security concern you almost never hear “in public”, from a directly involved Loyal Reader:

“It is curious that all the comments about accommodating China, Taiwanese politics, obligations under the TRA, etc. hardly mention one of the most important constraints on any arms transfers to Taiwan — compromise of advanced systems/technologies. Leakage to China from Taiwan of US defense data is already evident.

The KMT’s return brings us back to a long-standing assumption about Taiwan’s eventual fate — accommodation with China involving some trade-off of sovereignty for autonomy. If you acknowledge that (whether or not you like it), you must also recognize that US military systems transferred to Taiwan will in effect become transfers to China…something that would surely give pause to any US administrations considering arms sales to Taiwan.

This should not mean the end of US arms support for Taiwan, but it will certainly impact what gets transferred. Mature equipment like the F-16s and utility helicopters could and should be released. Speculation on Aegis systems should stop.

The submarine project — misconceived from the beginning and all but unimplementable in reality — should be shelved. Some systems, like PAC-3, will be challenging re. legitimate Taiwan defense needs vs. tech security.

These are the sort of issues on which policy makers and responsible Congressional attention must focus — an approach to Taiwan’s security that finds a sensible middle ground between the extreme swings that have characterized current administration actions.”[MT: Actually, we hear this security concern all the time, most recently in the Manthorpe piece a few posts below.]

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TAIWAN ARMS…”fallout” continues from PACOM Adm. Tim Keating’s speech to the Heritage Foundation last week, covered in recent Nelson Reports, in which Keating informally confessed that the White House has put a “freeze” (press language, not his) on a big arms package for Taiwan.

The consequence, observers report…”letters, resolutions, all kinds of things flying all over the place”, given what appears to finally be a formal request from Taipei, for the bulk of the arms first offered by President Bush back in 2001. [MT: The presentation here isn't clear that there are seven-eight systems in the pipeline, some already funded by Taiwan. I am still working on getting a list of what has been funded. The Nelson Report also takes the view that the freeze is recent but clearly it goes back a couple of years.]

Indications were clear, even before the controversial Keating speech, that Bush was reluctant to move on his offer at this time…given the current state of US-China relations, and the apparent thaw in China-Taiwan relations under a new KMT government.

As we have been reporting, while it is obvious common sense that the US take into account both the bilateral and Cross Strait situation at the time of any arms sales, the letter of the law, the Taiwan Relations Act, requires that the only consideration is supposed to be an objective analysis of Taiwan’s defense needs.

That, of course, can be and usually IS loosely defined to include a strategic and political assessment of all kinds of things, current major examples including US-China relations, such as cooperation at the UN on Iran, and the 6 Party talks with N. Korea…the problem being that while you DO it, you aren’t really supposed to SAY it.

Enter Adm. Keating…

Before reprinting the full text of a Republican staff letter seeking support for a Congressional Resolution by HFAC Ranking Member Ilena Ross-Lehtinen, it’s important to consider that for most of the Bush Administration, the normally very vocal, mainly Republican Taiwan lobby on Capitol Hill has been forced to keep as calm as possible, so as to not upset China, and the China-Taiwan policies of the Republican White House incumbent.

Not that support for Taiwan or arms sales ever disappeared, but events between China and Taiwan, and statements or actions by the White House, and senior State Department officials which, during the Clinton Administration, might have caused a furor on the Hill…didn’t.

You may remember, back in early 2002, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, at the peak of his powers, told an American Enterprise Institute audience that he planned to lead an attack on the “one China” policy which has underwritten US-China relations since the Nixon Administration.

We don’t know who made the call, but with Vice President Cheney’s office clearly on record as supporting a professional cooperative relationship with China, nothing further was heard from Mr. DeLay about “one China”.

Increasingly, mainly Republican, pro-Taiwan inclinations, especially on the House side, were forced by their own rising, if grudging anger at the then-KMT government of President Chen, to join with the White House, State and DOD officials in warning Chen that he was failing to take vital US interests into account, perhaps even at risk of undermining the fundamental US defense commitment to Taiwan.[MT: the "KMT government of Chen"? LOL. Here is the Beltway mentality hard at work -- Chen wanted the weapons, the KMT-controlled legislature blocked them. Naturally, the US blamed Chen, instead of the actual culprits. So much of the US anger at Chen was totally unnecessary and Washington's own fault. The Bush Administration blew an eight-year long opportunity.]

Republicans Warner, then-Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick, and then-Asia Subcommittee chair Jim Leach all, at various times, made statements which, even a few years before, would have been politically unthinkable.

Administration and Congressional frustration also was fed by domestic Taiwan political squabbles which made it impossible for Taipei to respond until this year, to the big arms sale package which WAS offered during the summer of 2001, following, not coincidentally, the Hainan Island PC-3 crisis with China. [MT: this is apparently all wrong. A number of weapons systems were approved in the regular budget and supplied to Taiwan during this period, $4.1 billion worth in 2002-5 alone. The big package was not a creation of the US but of Taiwan policymakers who put some of the offered weapons in the regular budget, and other systems in a special budget, creating an inevitable mess. Far from "impossible to respond until this year" Taiwan requested F-16s back in 2006. The italicized letter Nelson includes has a better understanding of the issue.]

We have argued for some time that the next president, whether McCain or Obama, is likely to encounter an increasingly active pro-Taiwan effort from Congress…for a variety of reasons.

First, McCain himself is clearly more skeptical of the embrace of China which Bush has fostered; second, Obama, as a Democrat, is going to naturally face a more combative Republican minority, and it’s not hard to predict that a revived effort on behalf of Taiwan will be an early and perhaps constant battleground.

For the sake of further discussion, please note we sincerely stipulate China’s escalation of “missile diplomacy” along the coast, and the openly stated plans and objectives of the PLA…armament and power projection which WILL take place, likely regardless of anything the US does or does not do.

Of course these events and policies will affect McCain or Obama decisions on Taiwan arms, as was intended by the TRA back in 1979. The question, as in life, marriage, and all important things, is balance.

Here’s the text of a “staff dear colleague” which lays out the issue as seen by Republican staff, following last week’s Heritage Foundation speech by Adm. Keating:

“A long rumored freeze on United States weapons sales to Taiwan, a policy which has apparently been in force for all of 2008, was confirmed on July 16 by Admiral Timothy Keating, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific. According to press accounts of his remarks at the Heritage Foundation, Keating observed that there have “been no significant arms sales from the United States to Taiwan in relatively recent times,” and that the absence of arms transfers reflected “administration policy.” Keating went on to suggest that he had in fact discussed the issue of Taiwan arms sales with leaders in Beijing, noting that “The Chinese have made clear to me their concern over any arms sales to Taiwan.”

According to press reports, the list of military hardware being held up includes eight diesel submarines, 66 F-16 Block 50/52 fighter aircraft, four Patriot PAC3 fire units (384 missiles), 30 Boeing-made AH-64D Apache attack helicopters and 60 UH-60 Blackhawk utility helicopters. These are all items that the Bush administration has approved in principle for export to Taiwan - and for which Taiwan’s legislature has appropriated the funds or put down payments. Indeed, on July 12, 2008, new Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou made a public appeal for renewed arms transfers, saying that the island still needs to secure defensive weapons from the United States, despite a warming of relations with mainland China.

As stated an editorial this week in Defense News, the freeze marks a complete reversal in the administration’s policy toward Taiwan, which started in 2001 with a promise to furnish Taipei with new submarines, patrol planes and Patriot missiles. It is also in apparent contradiction with longstanding U.S. law and policy, including section 3(a) of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (”the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability”) and the Six Assurances of July 14, 1982 (including assurances that Washington had not agreed to set a date for ending arms sales to Taiwan nor to consult with Beijing on arms sales to Taiwan).

The TRA also specifies a congressional role in decision-making on security assistance for Taiwan. Section 3(b) stipulates that both the President and the Congress shall determine the nature and quantity of such defense articles and services “based solely” upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan. Section 3(b) also says that “such determination of Taiwan’s defense needs shall include review by United States military authorities in connection with recommendations to the President and the Congress.” To date, however, the Administration has declined to brief the Congress on the legal justification and rationale for this stunning departure from a bipartisan, consensus approach toward Taiwan that has well-served every U.S. Administration for the last thirty years.

The judicious sale of defensive weapons system to Taiwan has been an essential element in United States support for a secure, stable and democratic Taiwan, as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. In that context, please consider cosponsoring the attached legislation which, consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, would require the Administration to consult with Congress in the development and execution of its arms transfer policy toward Taiwan. The Ranking Member hopes to introduce the resolution this week. If you would like to be an original cosponsor, please contact [her office...].”

Everyone in Washington is saying the same thing: that no matter who wins, Taiwan is likely to rise in importance. And the next president, whether McCain or Obama, will have a much-improved Taiwan policy over the current disastrous presidency.

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More construction funds to local areas means increased sales for betel nut stands.

The Taipei Times reported yesterday that DPP and KMT legislators had a falling out over a diversion of government funds for flood control projects.

The Executive Yuan yesterday insisted on diverting part of the funds to flood prevention despite DPP lawmakers’ reservations about the legality of the budget appropriation.

The legislature last week approved the Cabinet’s budget request of NT$130 billion (US$4.3 billion) tagged for spurring economic expansion, NT$58.35 billion of which would be allocated to 25 local governments for construction projects.

Following the recent flooding in central and southern Taiwan caused by Tropical Storm Kalmaegi, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) decided in a Cabinet meeting on Monday night that NT$41.364 billion, or 70 percent of the NT$58.349 billion, would be used for projects related to flood prevention.

The plan drew criticism from the DPP caucus, which said the Executive Yuan should either refer a motion to the legislature to reconsider the passed budget or seek a declaration of a state of emergency from President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) before appropriating the funds.

The legislature is looking pretty bad since flooding occurred in many areas that had not been flooded before, a new pattern of events over the last few years, I’ve noticed. For example, I got a call the other day from a close friend who lamented that his house flooded, the first time in the two decades he’s been living in it. The constant construction, legal and illegal, must make it difficult for water management authorities to handle the dynamics of local flood control.

The Executive Yuan later stated that the funding would come out of the massive flood prevention program passed in 2006:

Later yesterday, Shih tried to play down the controversy surrounding the issue, saying that money needed for flood prevention projects would first be drawn from the “eight-year, NT$116 billion flood prevention and water management plan.”

The legislature approved the NT$116 billion budget in 2006 for the government to launch an eight-year, three-stage program to help prevent flooding in high-risk areas that included 1,150km² in central and southern Taiwan.

The Water Resource Agency said the first stage of the plan would be 90 percent completed by the end of this year, the second stage — budgeted at NT$44.5 billion — was scheduled for completion between this year and 2010, and the third stage would take place between 2011 and 2013.

Several reports carried the DPP criticism that the flood control projects are nothing but pork (Taiwan News):

The move also proves the so-called domestic demand-boosting projects are nothing but pork barrel projects, he said.

Lin Shu-fen, another DPP legislator, said it is inconceivable that the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) is now blaming the former DPP administration for failing to improve the country’s flood prevention facilities, when it was the KMT that delayed an eight-year flood prevention package put forth by the DPP administration.

Because the budget for the package was only passed in 2006, after being proposed by the DPP administration in mid-2005, many flood prevention projects financed by the package were still in their initial stages as of June 2008, Lin said.

Recall that the KMT had delayed or failed to pass funding for infrastructure projects during the DPP years. Since the economy at the local level ran on funding for public construction sent down from the central government, this hurt incomes all over the island, lending credence to the KMT talking point that the economy was bad and only Ma and the KMT’s expertise could save it (Ma save us!). Philip Liu had a wonderful review of construction industry issues in AmCham’s Topics two years ago, observing in one of its many informative paragraphs:

According to PCC figures, spending on government-invested construction projects dropped to NT$450 billion (US$13.6 billion) for the central government last year and NT$150 billion (US$4.5 billion) for local governments; the former was only half the pre-1999 level. The scale is likely to further shrink considerably in the coming several years, following the recent completion of a number of major public projects. These include the NT$300 billion (US$9.1 billion) high-speed rail and the NT$90 billion (US$2.7 billion) Taipei-Ilan freeway, which included NT$20 billion (US$606 million) spent on the 12.9-kilometer Hsuehshan (Snow Mountain) tunnel, the fifth longest highway tunnel in the world.

Like so many public policy issues everywhere, public interest is stimulated only when things go wrong, and then, only temporarily. Last year, during the runup to the arrival of Sepat, there was similar wrangling:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Hsu Shao-ping (徐少萍) yesterday blamed the government for the serious flooding in the south, criticizing it for not making good use of the budget earmarked for a flood-control plan.

When inspecting the flooding in Kaohsiung County on Wednesday, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said the previous boycott of the NT$80 billion flood-control plan had prevented the government from dredging the Meinong River (美濃溪).

The river’s flooding in the wake of torrential rain caused severe damage.

Hsu dismissed Chang’s accusation, saying the budget for dredging the river had been included in the government’s annual budget instead of the eight-year flood-control plan.

In response, Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Wang Tuoh (王拓) said Hsu was trying to shirk the pan-blue camp’s responsibility for delaying the plan in the legislature.

“The plan was drawn up in May 2005, but its budget didn’t clear the legislature until June last year because of the pan-blue lawmakers boycott of the review,” Wang said.

It’s unreasonable to put all the blame on central government as it needs local governments’ cooperation to carry out flood-prevention plans such as land expropriation, he said.

….and next time around, we’ll see more of the same…

Many commentators have noted the obvious pork barrel aspects of the KMT government’s increased expenditures on infrastructure, typically the lifeblood of the party’s local networks. A by-product of increased local incomes will be the buying off of working class objections to Ma’s putting Taiwan into China’s arms. Observe too that the construction industry actually suffered a labor shortage even in these reduced times, according to the Liu article I cited above. The obvious conclusion of expanded public construction + tight labor markets is an increase in the need for foreign labor to hold down rising wages in the construction industry. And right there across the Strait are 100 million unemployed warm bodies….

[Taiwan]

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A couple of days ago I went up to Sun Moon Lake with some friends….what are my friends talking about on the blogs?

Frog in the Well with a great post on pre-2-28 Taiwan pamphlet on “What is democracy?” — in Japanese.

Sponge Bear goes to Ta-ken and finds lots of storm-damaged trails.

J Michael at the Far Eastern Sweet Potato has a detailed write up of Paul Wolfowitz’s talk in Taipei this week.

Taiwan matters! on the Ma intervew on CNN.

Erik on the arrival of Chinese web marketer Alibaba in Taiwan.

David On Formosa, soon leaving for Oz for a month, comments on the nutcase “patriot” who attacked Chen Shui-bian.

Fili blogs on a survey of international students at NCKU.

The big Ugly Brown Building in Tainan.

My Several Worlds goes to the Penghu.

Jerome on Taiwan’s Black Hole and Chinese cultural imperialism.

Rank with the continuing series in great Taiwan bike rides: the Northern Cross island highway.

Kitesurfing in Taiwan.

Sean Reilly finds some funny stuff over at The Gentle Rant.

My friend and fellow NCKU student Olga and her in-laws, went with me to the lake. Here she poses on Route 136 in Nantou. Despite her awesome good looks, it is almost impossible to get a good picture of her, but here I think I got close.

NEW BLOGS ON THE ROLL: Stocks and Politics, Hitech Taipei, Taiwanese Identity, Taipei Personality, Strait Talk, A Man in Tainan, Pangolin Scales, The Dutch Lady.

A landslide. Mud and trees had been hastily pushed off the road all along the road that winds around the lake.

MEDIA: Did we have a quake last night? I could have sworn….USGS says a small one, far away. Wolfowitz says Bush Administration will eventually OK arms deal. Taiwan’s aviation consortium, AIDC, urges that upgrades to Taiwan’s indigenous IDF fighter be carried out. Nursing homes becoming more popular here. Taiwanese factories have discovered Bangladesh. Don Isenberg has an excellent review of the whole Taiwan arms freeze mess at Asia Times. Taiwan’s export orders finally fell for the first time since 2003. Ma save us! I’m so glad our economy took off after Ma’s election. Radio Australia reports that — Ma save us! — the new Administration’s popularity is plummeting as AFP reports our unemployment rate pushes 4%. Don’t miss: Kanwa’s Andrei Chang with a great piece (as always) on Taiwan’s deteriorating defense situation.

Here you can see how a landslide gashed the forest and filled the road with mud. Road crews have moved the mud off to the side, pushing it over the concrete embankments. Clearly, if you want perpetual employment, road crew at Sun Moon Lake is a good choice.

Life on the lake went on. A farmer tends his flowers…

As the sun was setting, we left….

[Taiwan]

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This is the third time that the same person, 65-year-old Su An-sheng of the far right “Concentric Patriotism Association” has been filmed attacking prominent figures in the pan-DPP camp, including a similar kick in the back of lawyer Ku Li-hsiung in August 2007, a push at the back of former Taiwan representative to Japan Koh Se-kai on June 18 and yesterday’s kick at Chen’s buttocks outside of the Taipei District Court.

These assaults are not only an insult to Taiwan’s democracy but a threat to its continued and should not be viewed as isolated incidents.

Attacking a former president is scarcely less severe of an offense than assaulting a serving president and we hope that the Taipei City police and prosecutors treat this incident with the gravity it merits and not just release the apparent perpetrator after two days detention.

The root of these attacks lies both in the accumulated years of emotionally charged verbal attacks against the DPP politician by pan-KMT opponents, primarily because Chen’s electoral victories in March 2000 and March 2004 threatened and then realized the transfer of power from the KMT after nearly 55 years of authoritarian and one-party power.

In the wake of these victories, Chen has been incessantly criticized for countless “crimes and misdemeanors,” including unproven charges of corruption and, as in this case, “slander” for highlighting official malfeasance by formerly powerful KMT generals in the massive scandal over the massive Lafayette frigate procurement.

During the past few years, numerous pan-KMT politicians have threatened violence against Chen, even though threatening the life of the president verbally or in writing is patently illegal.

For example, former People First Party legislator Lee Tung-hau openly declared in a televised legislative committee meeting in April 2004 that “anyone who encounters Chen Shui-bian can kill him!”

Similar sentiments were widely expressed during the months of “Depose Chen” campaign in the summer and fall of 2006.

For example, during a sit-in outside the Legislative Yuan by then PFP chairman James Soong calling for Chen’s recall, slogans were pasted up on the walls of the Legislative complex by PFP supporters at demanded Chen’s “execution,” “assassination” or “liquidation” and even “Drink A-bian’s blood!”

Such sentiments were also expressed outside the courthouse yesterday morning. Even though Chen appeared to answer to slander charges, a KMT supporter brandished a placard declaring that Chen was “guilty of corruption and should be sentenced to death!”

History of violence

We should also not forget the statement made by then KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou during a meeting of his party’s Central Standing Committee on May 25, 2006 that ratified a recall vote against Chen to the effect that “the bullet is in the chamber” and “the trigger is cocked” and his declaration that Chen “will die an ugly death” if he did not resign.

….

Naturally, we do not intend to overlook or excuse acts of violence or threats by pan-green supporters, but there is no record of similarly open or lurid threats against the lives of serving KMT presidents by any DPP politicians, either during the period of KMT authoritarian or one-party rule during which any such threats would have been severely punished or the present.

Moreover, we must never forget that the only party with a history of massive violence in Taiwan is precisely the KMT itself, which murdered thousands of dissidents during the four decades of “white terror” under martial law rule from the late 1940s through the early 1990s and regularly mobilized gangs to commit acts of violence against dissidents.

No less worrisome are signs that the KMT has regained its former “ownership” of the judicial branch.

Last week, prosecutors sent a signal that the personal rights of citizens, even presidential candidates, can be abrogated at will by the KMT-controlled Legislative Yuan last Friday when they indicted former DPP legislators Lee Ying-yuan and several other campaign workers for former DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh for trying to prevent four KMT legislators from leaving the Hsieh campaign headquarters after they entered the building without permission and tried to illegally force their way into Hsieh’s office.

All leaders in a democratic society have the responsibility to discipline supporters who threaten or engage in violence, but such an obligation is especially incumbent on the KMT given its legacy of state terror and the continued recourse to verbal violence by KMT politicians.

It is therefore essential for President Ma to take demonstrative action to uphold political harmony and stability by opening condemning the use of political physical or verbal violence.

[Taiwan]

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Taiwan arms…last week’s Heritage speech by PACOM’s Adm. Tim Keating continues to generate attention in Asia, given his admission of a US “arms sale freeze” in order not to risk disruption of the currently improved China-Taiwan situation.

But we were wrong in reporting that Keating explicitly said he “consults” with China on the arms sale question. We misheard something and did not double-check the transcript until a couple of Loyal Readers said they couldn’t find any mention of consultation, per se.

TAIWAN ARMS…as noted in the Summary, we owe PACOM Adm. Tim Keating an apology for taking what he did say about Taiwan arms, and mistakenly thinking he was also explicitly saying he consults with China about Taiwan arms.

We were listening to his remarks at Heritage last Wednesday at about 400 miles an hour, and a private email seemed to confirm what we thought we heard, which, HAD he explicitly said it, would seem to be in violation of the spirit, if not also the letter, of the Taiwan Relations Act.

Careful reading of the transcript by faithful Loyal Readers has confirmed that we were wrong…he didn’t say it. He didn’t even use the word “freeze” still being attributed to him, as per today’s Wall Street Journal story, which is a useful summary of the current situation [MT: this piece is by the excellent Ting-yi Tsai, now the Wall Street Journal correspondent here]:

TAIPEI — The White House appears increasingly unlikely to proceed with a planned $11 billion weapons sale to Taiwan, a decision that critics say could alter the strategic balance between the island and China and that could leave a thorny issue for the next U.S. president.

The weapons package — which includes antimissile systems sold by Raytheon Co. and helicopters from United Technologies Corp. and Boeing Co. — originated with an offer by U.S. President George W. Bush just months after he took office in 2001. The arms offer was the biggest for Taiwan in at least a decade, but political infighting on the island blocked allocation of funds until last December, when its legislature finally approved funding.

Since then, however, the Bush administration has yet to send formal requests to Congress that are needed for such sales, raising questions about the deal’s prospects.

Then, in remarks Wednesday, the top U.S. military official in the Pacific effectively acknowledged that the Bush administration has frozen arms sales to Taiwan, at least temporarily. Adm. Timothy Keating said U.S. analysis “indicates there is no pressing, compelling need for, at this moment, arms sales to Taiwan of the systems that we’re talking about.”

Some proponents of the sale are now worried it won’t happen before Mr. Bush finishes his term in January. “It seems reasonably clear that the [Bush] administration has decided not to sell arms to Taiwan,” says Harvey Feldman, a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.

The U.S. is obligated to provide Taiwan with “arms of a defensive character” under the Taiwan Relations Act, passed in 1979 to govern relations with the island after the U.S. severed formal ties with it and recognized Beijing. China’s government, which claims Taiwan as part of its rightful territory, has long demanded that the U.S. cease all weapons sales to the island.

The delay comes as relations are improving between Taiwan and China under new Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, after years of tension. Officials from the Ma administration and his Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, say the president remains determined to acquire the weapons that Taiwan needs.

Critics say Mr. Ma isn’t doing enough to push for the arms package. They point out that the Kuomintang fought budgetary allocation for the weapons for years when it was the opposition party.

Observers suggest there may be less urgency in Taiwan to push for such a sale as relations with China evolve and that a deal would strain any tentative overtures. Two weeks ago the two countries began the first regularly scheduled nonstop flights between them in nearly 60 years. The two sides also agreed to a sharp rise in the number of Chinese tourists allowed to go to Taiwan.

Lawrence Walker, a spokesman for the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei, said the U.S.’s position on arms sales to Taiwan remains unchanged.

Some analysts say Mr. Bush may only be delaying the sale until after he travels to China next month for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. “The best chance [for the sales] is right after the Olympics,” said Randall Schriver, a former senior Asia official at the State Department under Mr. Bush.

The $11 billion package includes Boeing Apache Longbow attack helicopters, Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters, Raytheon Patriot PAC-3 air-defense batteries, and designs for diesel electric submarines. For those sales to go through, the State Department must first issue formal “notifications” to Congress, but it hasn’t done so.

Unless the U.S. completes legislative approval of the sales by the end of September, the package might have to be reviewed again next summer by the next administration. In addition, Taiwan’s allocation for the weapons expires at the end of this year, meaning the legislature would have to approve it again.

-0-

Now, on the point of a “freeze”, whether or not “consulted” about…the then-necessary amendment to the TRA (inserted back in 1970 over the figurative dead-bodies of the State Department and White House) was a major part of the “price” paid to Congress by the Carter Administration for “normalization” with the PRC.

Since then, as relations between Beijing, Taipei, and Washington, in all of their combinations, have become more complex, a normal human being can be forgiven for thinking that it’s plain common sense that the US and China would “consult”, in some fashion, before the US decided to introduce sophisticated new armaments into the Cross-Strait equation.

Similarly, the US has complained, for years, to Beijing about its policy of a massive conventional missile build-up along the Strait, although pro-Taiwan critics of the Clinton and Bush administrations would not agree the “complaints” have had teeth.[MT: the issue was two-fold. Not only were the complaints not as loud as they could have been and were not backed by action, the US also complained even more loudly about Chen Shui-bian's essentially harmless political moves. For example, it made a much greater fuss about the harmless NUC shutdown than any noise it made about China's military.]

In any event, as Adm. Keating made abundantly clear, the US policy for now is not for us to introduce potentially de-stabilizing arms into the region…so long as current trends continue.[MT: that is not quite correct. The US policy is to prevent all arms from entering Taiwan, des-stabilizing or not. Previously it had only been to prevent offensive weapons from reaching Taiwan. Nelson's formulation argues essentially that any weapons are destabilizing.]

The really difficult part of this policy is measuring the sometimes very fine line between building Taiwan’s confidence that it can peacefully negotiate its future with China, vs undermining Taiwan’s ability to do so by holding back sales, despite improvements by the PLA.

The equation is further complicated by the US military role, sometimes implied, sometimes directly stated, in providing a security umbrella under which both Beijing and Taipei can more productively interact.

These are interlocking equations, and during the Bush Administrations’ unhappy experience with the DPP government of President Chen, domestic political contradictions on Taiwan often made calculating the right balance increasingly difficult.

Hopes are high that the Ma KMT government will make the various computations easier for all involved…but that’s a calculation which still rests very much on decisions in Beijing, and deployments of and by the PLA.

At a certain point, the question of purely the military balance, if one can separate that from strategic intent and geo politics, may “un-freeze” the US arms sale package on the table since 2001.

Next time Adm. Keating talks about it, we promise to listen better.

[Taiwan]

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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, traditionally the two guarantors of the island’s independence.

Ma’s victory in the March presidential election following the KMT’s gaining of control of the parliament, the Legislative Yuan, in January elections has been broadly welcomed, especially in Washington.

The campaign pledge by Ma to improve relations with China, which claims to own the island, was seen as welcome relief after nearly a decade of tension during the presidency of the arch Taiwanese nationalist Chen Shui-bian.

An “unforeseen” effect of a Ma presidency was moving closer to China and distancing itself from Tokyo and Beijing? Lots of people spotted that one! Including this blogger, on many occasions.

Manthorpe’s article is a good review with plenty of background — often lacking in the international media. The meat of the piece says:

But although Ma pledged not to seek political unification between Taiwan and China, there are indications the pro-China stance of his administration is going further than his campaign promises indicated.

Most startling was a comment earlier this month by KMT vice-chairman Kuan Chung during a visit to China that Taiwan’s unification with China remains the party’s goal.

The flip side of this cozying up to Beijing is the new Taipei government distancing itself from its traditional allies, especially Japan.

This came to the fore last month when a Taiwanese fishing boat sank after an accidental collision with a Japanese coast guard cutter off the Japanese-held Senkakou Islands, which the Taiwanese call the Tiaoyutai.

Taiwan claims to own the islands, but successive governments in Tokyo and Taipei have not allowed the dispute to get out of hand or taint economic and political relations.

Ma, however, took the belligerent course of dispatching nine Taiwanese naval vessels to the waters around the Tiaoyutai.

The last section talks about the arms freeze:

A dramatic contrast to Washington’s initial welcoming of Ma’s election is the Bush administration’s decision to freeze arms sales to Taiwan.

This decision is especially odd because for eight years the Bush administration has been urging Taipei to take more responsibility for its own defence and to buy $16 billion-worth of American arms, including anti-missile systems, warplanes and submarines.

Former president Chen’s administration wanted to take up the offer, but was constantly blocked from doing so by the KMT control of parliament.

Now in power, Ma wants the package, but the Bush administration is saying no.

This may in part be a gesture of thanks to Beijing for its help in pressing North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.

But there are also influential elements in Washington’s military establishment that mistrust China’s military modernization and who fear selling arms to Taiwan these days is tantamount to giving Beijing American military secrets.

It is often said that China would have US military secrets if they got their hands on US equipment from Taiwan, but I have also heard experts say the threat is overblown. It reads to me like more rationalization for the Bush Administration’s positions.

No, I expect that Washington will send out some feelers that it is displeased, and Ma will make a move to placate Washington. Temporary happiness will bloom inside the Beltway, and meanwhile the KMT will continue to move the island towards China.

[Taiwan]

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Newly Published Book Gives Inside View of International Support Network for Human Rights in Taiwan during Martial Law Era

A Borrow Voice - cover
In the late 1960s, Li Ao 李敖, Peng Ming-min 彭明敏, and Roger Hsieh 謝聰敏 made the acquaintance of several foreign friends that had long-reaching international implications: Martin Ennals, Milo Thornberry 唐培禮, Robert Ricketts, Miyake Kiyoko 三宅清子 and Lynn Miles 梅心怡.

Visiting Taiwan twice in 1969-70, Amnesty International General-Secretary Ennals asked Li and Hsieh to help secret ROC political prisoner information to AI. Thornberry, Ricketts and Miles, all Americans, were deported from Taiwan in 1971 for acting to facilitate the plan, and for helping Peng to escape to Sweden the year before. A network was set up to run information to AI and other concerned groups abroad, with Miyake remaining in Taiwan as the main liaison with the political prisoners’ families. She escaped detection until 1976.

Presenting this and other details of the inner workings of an international information and rescue network spanning the globe is A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights through International Networks. The 479-page compendium of personal accounts and documents was edited by two of the principals, Miles and Linda Gail Arrigo 艾琳達. Arrigo became involved in 1977, when she arrived to do field research for her thesis on women factory workers.

First-hand accounts by nearly forty participants tell what it was like to run great risks to expose how under martial law people were being routinely disappeared, tortured, executed, and driven insane from long years in prison. The story begins with the outwardly quiescent 1950s, when the martial law regime was able to pass itself off before the international community as free and democratic, and continues to 1980, when the Kaohsiung Incident forced the Taiwan Garrison Command and the Government Information Office to open its scourt proceedings to an indignant world audience.

Explaining the book’s title, the editors write this is “a story of borders challenged, crossed and erased. The boundaries to be broken were not limited to those defining the nation-state, but included the divisions of race, language, culture, and ideology…. [W]e lent our ease of passage and our voices to those who had neither. We provided a ‘borrowed voice’ that we could only hope would speak out against the tortured silence.” Transcending ideology meant joining together with pro-independence activists like Chen Chu 陳菊 and unificationists like Chen Ku-ying 陳鼓應.

Li, Hsieh, Shih Ming-teh 施明德 have been invited to the press conference, which will be moderated by Prof. Mab Huang 黃默, director of the Chang Fo-Chuan Center for the Study of Human Rights, Soochow University 東吳大學張佛泉人權研究中心主任.

[Taiwan]

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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, after a short intro, come the KMT talking points:

With the backdrop of economic depression Ma’s calls to reinvigorate the economy by freer trade and improved relations with China proved stronger than the fears that those ties could lead to a loss in independence.

In case you didn’t notice, 5.7% growth last year and 6% growth in the first half of this year is “economic depression.” And people wonder why Americans don’t know anything about the outside world.

Of course, you know what follows on the heels of that nonsense: The Claim That Won’t Die:

Born in Hong Kong in 1950, Ma studied at Harvard Law School and worked as a lawyer in New York in 1981 before returning Taiwan.

Was Ma a lawyer in NY? AFAIK he never passed the Bar there.

And then there is tourism…

Ma’s administration hopes that Chinese tourists from the mainland will boost the sluggish tourism industry and talks are already underway to increase the number of weekly flights.

“Sluggish tourism industry?” Weren’t the last three years all record breakers?

*sigh*

UPDATE: I checked again on July 30, 2008, 15 days after the story was posted and after several of us wrote in. Ma is still premier, and the KMT talking points are still there.

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I was perusing missionary blogs the other day — as if the heat of a Taiwan summer wasn’t soporific enough already — and stumbled across this brilliant insight:

Among other things, I shared with the nurse that the initial reaction to the idols that many of us foreigners have when seeing them for the first time is that they inspire horror.

Knowing it was my duty as a blogger to expose this horror, I immediately swung into action. Grabbing my camera, I sped over the local temple, where there was a festival in action in all of its horrible panoply. Since this is a family blog, I feel I must warn you, dear reader, that what follows are graphic photos of people praying, singing, chatting, eating, and buying things. I hope you are not too deeply offended.

Vendors selling fruit for sacrifices.

People meander in and out. One of the most enjoyable things about Taiwan temples is the way they function as community centers where people carry on all the business of life.

A number of vendors selling food, medicine….

…and trinkets also set up stalls at the festival.

Another horror: begging monks.

Waiting for mom?

Inside the temple, a typical Taiwan crush.

Tables overflowing with sacrifices.

Offerings of song and prayer. I apologize for the graphic nature of this photo.

The full, untrammeled horror of a temple interior.

I walked in to have a chat with an old guy who used to sell me mian xian for breakfast, and found this table full of femmes selling necklaces of beads.

A popular Taiwan jelly drink served up in volume at the festival. Here the women cut up the jelly to make it drink-sized.

My apologies for the violent nature of this graphic photo of food processing.

Sacrifices laid out on the table.

Religious tracts. I have an abiding interest in early Christian history, and watching Chinese polytheism, and how Christians interact with China’s more sophisticated and diverse religious expression, has given me some insight into how ancient Rome must have greeted the first Christians.

Re-arranging the ashes in the ghost money burner.

Avert your eyes! This is not cute! This is a horror!

It’s a tough enough religious market for Christian missionaries, without this constant expression of borderline colonialistic chauvinism. I also see it as a substantial misrepresentation of foreigner attitudes — in 18 years involved with Taiwan I have never heard a local foreigner express “horror” at the thought of local religion — nearly everyone I know finds it interesting, and a source of wonder, enjoyment, and endless puzzling over ‘What does this mean?’ Local bloggers have spent many a post documenting the strange and wonderful things they find inside temples. Taiwan is home to a legion of foreigners who wander across the countryside, camera in hand, spending countless hours inside temples, fascinated. I count myself greatly fortunate to be in a country where private religious expression is often a public event, one that I can attend, and where I am politely and warmly welcomed, even if I am taking photos.

[Taiwan]

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For the past three years one of Wild’s big issues has been the conservation of the highly endangered humpback dolphins (or “Matsu’s Fish”) in the near-shore waters of western Taiwan. Our work and that of the Matsu’s Fish Conservation Union (MFCU - a group of seven major Taiwanese NGOs including Wild) was sparked off and is supported greatly by the prolific reporting of Dr. John Wang and Sichu Yang of FormosaCetus Research and Conservation Group, the small research team which has worked hard since 2002 to survey this distinct Taiwanese population and gather vital information about their numbers, basic biology and state of health. Their photographs have allowed us to see the dolphins up-close, including the wounds that around 30% of the population bear, believed to be a result of interactions with fishing vessels and nets. Photographs, news and scientific reports can be accessed at the MFCU website.

Now you can also watch the Taiwanese humpback dolphin population in these two videos, filmed and provided by FormosaCetus. Clearly visible in the background is Formosa Plastics Mailiao Industrial Park in Yunlin County - where proponents of further development have denied the presence of these dolphins. Thanks to the work of FormosaCetus, including this kind of footage, we are able to disprove such claims and give this population a better hope of survival.

Wild is now fundraising to support this year’s humpback dolphin survey, which is to be part of a long-term plan to monitor the population size. The information gained from this survey will advise urgently needed conservation action and allow us, the authorities and other stakeholders to assess and improve on any action that is taken to protect the population from extinction. To support the FormosaCetus 2008 research project please contact Chris at +886 (0)2 2382 5789 or chrisgagele@gmail.com.

The Dolphin research project is in urgent need of funds, and no donation is too small. Hopefully later this summer I’ll be able to sit down with some of the researchers to talk about their research program and the future of the dolphins.

[Taiwan]

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Language, language, how it shapes our perception of reality, especially when it is used by supposed “reliable” news organizations. I came upon a beautiful series of pictures taken in Taiwan yesterday of members of the country’s Amnesty International branch arranging their bodies to spell out 自由 “ziyou,” or “freedom,” in denunciation of human rights violations in China (see cover of the Taipei Times, July 13, 2008).

What readers of the Taipei Times will not see, however, is the original AP photo caption, which read “… as they denounce the Chinese government for allegedly violating human rights” (italics added).

“Allegedly? There is nothing “alleged” about human rights violations in China; rather, they are known and widespread. This is either sloppy journalism on AP’s part or an unconscionable attempt to demonstrate so-called journalistic neutrality to a degree that blinds it to reality. Did AP reporters in Rwanda in 1994 refer to an “alleged” genocide? Was a Palestinian family “allegedly” killed by an Israeli tank shell? Were Israelis eating at a pizzeria “allegedly” killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself at the entrance of the restaurant? Why the special treatment for China, as it arrests its citizens, executes more prisoners in a year than anyone else and murders demonstrators and dissidents?

And a local reporter alert me to this gem about angry Kaohsiungers from a Newsweek article on the factory closings in China:

……..Credit Suisse’s top economist for Asia, Dong Tao, witnessed five factories in the process of shutting down. Workers had queued outside and “bosses were making severance payments,” he says.

Such scenes are reminiscent of bygone industrial transitions in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in which low-end factories—the engines that powered economic takeoff—lost competitiveness and either migrated or shut down. Twenty years ago Guangdong was the place most small, family-owned manufacturers in Asia flocked to, making it China’s top exporting province and a magnet for migrant labor from the hinterland. But since 2005, wages have risen 14 percent a year and the yuan began to appreciate, the trend has reversed. Tougher labor, tax and environmental rules implemented this year, combined with spiraling energy and material costs, have driven thousands of factories to quit the delta, the start of an inevitable “hollowing out,” says Tao. “Twenty years ago [Taiwan's southern industrial city] Kaohsiung was the fifth largest container port in the world, but today it’s an angry town with 20 percent unemployment. This is what’s going to happen in [China's] Guangdong province.”

I haven’t been down to Kaohsiung in a few months, but I can’t recall any reports of 20% unemployment and much anger from our second city. Perhaps “Credit Suisse’s top economist for Asia” was misquoted….

…but all is not bad. The always interesting hopeless Taiwanophile Andrew Leonard at Salon.com had a nifty piece on soybeans and subprime and of course, Taiwan….

Now, I was all prepared to wax lyrical about how, to this day, Chinese corporations in Taiwan and Hong Kong and China are still dominated by family allegiances (and riven by family squabbling) that remind one of nothing so much as Ming Dynasty imperial princes scheming for influence and power in the fifteenth century. I also find it striking how short the time span seems between Wanchun selling soy sauce on the street during the Japanese occupation and his nephew Hong-tu betting on mortgage securities linked to subprime loans in the U.S. today. We would do well to remember how shallow modern capitalism’s roots are in either China or Taiwan.

The entire piece, like Leonard’s column, is an good discussion of the interaction of local and global that we call “the Taiwan market.” I talk about the Tsai family scandal, and the modern Rebar scandal of the same category, here.

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Taiwan’s ambitious force modernization goals include procurement of P-3C maritime patrol aircraft, army attack helicopters, army utility helicopters, PAC-3 missile defense systems, F-16C/D fighters, and diesel-electric submarines, and upgrading Taiwan’s existing PAC-2+ systems. Importantly, as proponents of higher defense spending point out, strengthening Taiwan’s defense entails more than force modernization alone. The transformation of the military is an equally important component of Taiwan’s defense modernization program. Indeed, beyond its plans to purchase new weapons and equipment, Taiwan is also trying to move toward a professional, all-volunteer military, and this has important implications for the island’s defense budget because the transition to an all-volunteer military will result in further and perhaps quite substantial increases in personnel costs, which are already high as a share of overall defense spending. Taiwan’s efforts to streamline its military may help offset this to some extent. The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense (MND) plans to reduce the size of the military from its current 270,000 members to about 250,000, and then gradually reduce the size of the armed forces further to 200,000 troops (China Post, May 22; China Brief, July 3). Even as Taiwan continues to reduce the overall size of its military, however, it will likely need to spend more money on salaries, benefits, and quality of life improvements to recruit and retain the people it needs, especially highly skilled officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). In a recent testimony before the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee of the Legislative Yuan (LY)—Taiwan’s legislature, Defense Minister Chen Chao-min acknowledged that a defense budget equivalent to 3 percent of GDP would not be enough to complete the transition to an all-volunteer military (Taipei Times, May 22). The transition to an all-volunteer military will also increase the costs of benefits for retired military personnel, including education, welfare, and medical care expenses, as Kua Hua-chu, the head of Taiwan’s Veterans Affairs Commission, recently pointed out in testimony before the LY (China Post, June 3).

In other important issues, Kathrin Hille, one of the island’s most knowledgeable correspondents, reports in the Financial Times that Taiwan will not be buying the F-16s this year.

The move comes as the Bush administration debates what arms to sell Taiwan given the improvement in relations between Taipei and Beijing. One senior US official said the US was evaluating whether to sell Taiwan a separate $11bn (€6.95bn, £5.5bn) package of arms, but was not currently considering selling F-16s. He added that there was only a “low possibility” that a sale could happen this year.

The official said Taiwan had told the US its priority for now was the $11bn package, but the US expected Taiwan would return to the F-16 issue in the future. He said the US still needed to debate what weapons the US should supply Taiwan given the better relations with China, and whether F-16s were even appropriate.

“That may not be the best way to defend the island against an invasion. Who says F-16s are the best way? Who has made this judgement, Lockheed Martin? Because that is certainly an option for defence, but there are a whole lot of other ways that you protect yourself from an attack,” the official said. The Taiwanese move comes
as Admiral Timothy Keating, head of US Pacific command, this week said Washington had suspended arms sales to Taiwan because “there is no pressing, compelling need for at this moment arms sales to Taiwan”.

However, Taipei officials said they believed that the US had temporarily put off arms sales in order to secure Beijing’s co-operation in tackling trouble in Iran and North Korea.

Bad news for the island. As I have noted in the past, KMT officials publicly and privately have said they want the weapons — the decision appears to be a unilateral decision by the Bush Administration.

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Costa Rican President Oscar Arias denied any knowledge of a 1.5 million dollar donation from Taiwan for his country’s poor, but which allegedly was diverted for pet projects elsewhere in the government.

“I had no knowledge of this help from the government of Taiwan which I learned about from the press just recently,” he said in remarks published Saturday in the La Nacion newspaper.

La Nacion earlier this month alleged that the office of Arias’ brother and chief of staff, Rodriguez Arias, paid scores of government consultants with two million dollars that had been donated by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE).

The sad legacy of our lack of international status is stories like this….

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Peter Enav of AP. “Peter, can I take your picture for my blog?” “Which blog is that?” “The View from Taiwan.” “Weren’t you just excoriating us for our coverage?” “Uh…yes.” “Sure, go ahead!”

At the Shriver talk at the TFCC I met a whole bunch of people, including Peter Enav, above, and J. Michael Cole, a frequent commentator in the Taipei Times, and several Taipei Times reporters and editors. I also met someone I’ve admired for a long time, the journalist Ting-yi Tsai.

Speaking of lovely young ladies, some of my old students took me out to lunch last week. Here is Berenice, inside and out, one of the most beautiful people I know.

Lychee season is almost gone, and everyone is dumping their lychees cheap.

Usually a meandering and nearly-empty creek, the river overflows with turbid water after the rain.

The mosque in Taichung. There are about 50,000 Muslims in Taiwan, I’ve heard.

Fishing in what is grandiosely called a “river” but is actually, after years of “flood control” spending, now a concrete ditch filled with rocks too big for gravel manufacture.

We bought our kids laptops, and at the store where we made the purchase, my lovely former student Pheobe was working.

This fledgling fell from the nest, and no doubt became a victim of the neighborhood’s many stray dogs and cats.

Every morning around 10 down in Wufeng these chubby, contented dogs are sprawled along this wall, waiting for a bath.

After the rain, this local factory had a power shovel in there frantically building a dike.

An oasis of calm during the storm.

You can see from the scouring at the bottom of the picture how high the water was last night. In the background the mountains are clear under the darkening sky, as the rain continues to move in.

At the train station passengers rush to get tickets on a crowded Saturday.

Building abandoned and burnt out? No problem! No one will notice if you paper the front with bra ads….

Downriver can be glimpsed yet another squall, on its way to fill my daughter’s bedroom with leaks and make our dogs miserable.

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Remember that incident during the election when KMT legislators invaded DPP HQ and a scuffle resulted? (my post)? Well, Taiwan News reports that the prosecutors have decided to indict the DPP legislators for their defense against the invasion…

Prosecutors indicted four Democratic Progressive Party politicians yesterday for their role in trying to stop Kuomintang lawmakers from entering the DPP campaign headquarters shortly before the presidential election.

On March 12, three KMT legislators wanted to visit DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh’s (謝長廷) campaign headquarters in Taipei. They said they wanted to investigate whether the DPP was illegally using the building.

The visit, barely more than a week before the presidential election, turned into a confrontation between the lawmakers and large crowds of DPP supporters who tried to keep them out, with police caught between the two camps.

Taipei prosecutor Fred Lin (林錦村) said yesterday the DPP’s presidential campaign manager Li Ying-yuan, former lawmaker Eve Hsieh, and Taipei City Council members Chuang Juei-hsiung and Hung Chien-yi were being indicted because they had obstructed public affairs and restricted the KMT lawmakers’ freedom of movement.

Lin rejected the DPP campaigners’ counterargument that the KMT legislators should be indicted for forcing their way on to private property.

Lin said the lawmakers were fulfilling their duty by acting on a decision by a Legislative Yuan committee.

Scary stuff. This is all one with the repoliticization of all social institutions we are seeing — the two professors who lost their jobs over their political activity, the indictments of 5 DPP cabinet officials for special funds nonsense — only DPP officials were indicted — and the politicization of the military I discussed a couple of weeks ago. The trend here is not good….

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