Month: March 2008

KMT Does A 180 On Taiwanese Price Controls

If I remember correctly, the KMT spent much of last fall hammering the Chen administration for not doing more to rein in high fuel and food prices.  Later, during February of this year, KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou promised SUBSIDIZED fuel for Taiwanese fishermen. And it was just March 10th – eleven days before the presidential election – that KMT lawmakers DEMANDED that Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs maintain price controls on gas and utilities:

"We want [Minister of Economic Affairs] Steve Chen to declare he will continue the price freezes until after April 1," one concerned Kuomintang lawmaker said.  [emphasis added]

Other legislators joined in calling on Steve Chen to keep the freeze in place until after a new president is sworn in.

Ah, how the worm turns.  By March 25th, all those price freezes suddenly didn’t look so attractive to the KMT anymore. Because if those prices are unfrozen later, as they eventually must be, their newly-elected man Ma will take the heat.  Much better that those prices go up NOW, so lame-duck Chen Shui-bian can shoulder all the blame:

Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) yesterday defended the Cabinet’s decision to maintain a freeze on the prices of water, electricity, liquefied petroleum gas and fuel oil until the new government is inaugurated on May 20.

Chang denounced criticism from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators at a legislative question-and-answer session that the Cabinet had made the decision in order to leave an "awful mess" for the KMT following the handover.

"I cannot accept being accused of leaving an `awful mess’ behind. Amid soaring commodity prices, the difficulties that people face in making a living is the most serious problem the government needs to deal with," Chang said when approached for comment outside the legislature.

What we can see clearly here is that within a scant 14 days, the KMT went from being the enthusiastic advocate of price controls to the laissez-faire party of free-floating prices.  First they demagogued the cost of living issue, frightening the Chen administration into implementing price caps.  Then they bragged about how efficient former KMT dictator Chiang Ching-kuo’s price controls were back in the economic glory days of the seventies.  And just a few days prior to the presidential that they insisted the government maintain price freezes – only to demand the opposite three days AFTER the election.

How fortunate for Taiwan that the KMT’s opposition to price controls is so well grounded in principles, rather than low political expediency!

Olympic Torch Route Disruptions

Saw the protests on CNN last night.  Almost made me wish Taiwan HAD let itself be a part of the torch relay.  Mighta made for one helluva show!

The network also featured the efforts of Tibetans to form their own alternative "Tibetan Olympics."  Kind of a slapdash affair, it looks like.  Nevertheless, if Western governments really want to rebuke Beijing, they might want to forget about the whole boycott thing and instead send a few athletes to the Tibetan Olympics as well.

And if Beijing objects?  Hey, just innocently remind them of their own mantra: international athletics should always be kept non-political…

Chinese Government Cracks Down On Tibetan Protesters – In Canada

Found this one on Ezra Levant’s blog – apparently a 15 year-old Tibetan teenager protesting outside a Chinese consulate in the Great White North climbed over a fence and was held for 45 minutes before police arrived:

“[The Chinese security staff] blew smoke in his face…"

Sorry, but I’m not hyperventilating yet.

"…and he was ordered to sign a letter apologizing…"

Doesn’t say he actually SIGNED the confession.

"…they handcuffed him and twisted his hands…"

OK, now I’d call that possible torture territory.  But surely the self-proclaimed keepers of 5000 years of Chinese civilization and culture wouldn’t stoop so low as … sexual molestation of a minor?

"…they tore apart his pants.”

Lovely.  Wonder if anyone has stopped to ask former KMT chairman Lien Chan of Taiwan if he approves of the Chinese crackdown.  (Lien, for those who don’t remember, is the Taiwanese politician who pledged to join hands with the Communist Party of China in order to oppose "splittism.")

KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou SEIZES Power In Taiwan

(Heh.  Just can’ts help me-self.  After all, that’s how, as recently as yesterday, the China Post characterized Chen Shui-bian’s previous election wins.  So I figure fair’s fair.)

A-gu and Michael Turton both share their thoughts on yesterday’s presidential election.  And in an earlier post, A-gu puts forward some ideas about the way forward for Taiwan’s independence party.

UPDATE (Mar 24/08):  David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy has a write-up on the counting of the votes.

President-Elect Ma Ying-jeou Shows His Teeth

A day before the election, his surrogates threaten an American national, Theresa Shaheen, for offering to make clear whether Ma still has an American green card:

 Theresa Shaheen, former chairwoman of the American Institute in Taiwan, is being given a…warning against getting involved in the "green card" issue over Kuomintang presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou.

"We wish Ms. Shaheen to know that it’s unlawful for an foreign national to get involved in an election in Taiwan," a top aide to Ma said yesterday. According to the Election Law, no foreign nationals may electioneer for a candidate in Taiwan.

Interestingly enough, the Ma campaign was more than happy enough to quote "unnamed sources in America" who said their candidate had nothing to worry about – his green card was no longer valid.  But give one of those sources a verifiable name and face (along with an answer Ma doesn’t like), and suddenly his attack dogs come out snarling.

(By the way, the whole "Is Ma’s green card still valid or isn’t it?" controversy was profoundly uninteresting to me.  If anything, the fact that Ma considered emigrating from Taiwan when it was still a dictatorship in the ’70s inclines me to think more, not less of him!)

UPDATE (Mar 31/08):  Therese Shaheen denies the KMT story that she was ever willing to wade into the green card controversy:

In her statement, in English and Chinese, Shaheen said she was "never involved in any matters" regarding the green card issue during the presidential campaign.

"Fantastic rumors about my alleged involvement, my plans to make public statements about it, and the allegation that I was doing so because I favored one party over the other were 100 percent false," she said.

And So It Begins

KMT stalwarts begin to openly discuss changing Taiwan into an illiberal democracy:

…there is nothing "terrible" if one party controls both the legislative and executive branches of government.  Nothing terrible has happened in Singapore after the ruling PAP’s (People Action Party) established one-party dominance.  In fact, Singapore is the envy of the developing world, just as Taiwan once was.

It would be only too easy to rattle off a list of one-party states that subsequently became hells-on-earth.  Funny how president-elect Ma Ying-jeou never mentioned this little scheme in front of the electorate.  But then I guess he’s clever enough to realize proposing a soft dictatorship BEFORE the polls open might not have gone down so well with the voting public.

The Problem With Monomania

…is that it blinds people to the fact that other people have other values.  And so it is with the Chinese single-minded obsession with the economy über alles.  From the International Herald Tribune:

[A Chinese political scientist from Tsinghua University] added that Beijing’s leaders were probably also mystified at any suggestion that their policies [in Tibet] have been unfair.

"They think they are doing something right, something good, because they give a lot of financial aid to the Tibetan region," he said.

Speaking of blindness (tone-deafness, actually), how about this quote from Zhang Qingli, Communist Party Secretary of the Tibet "Autonomous" Region:

"The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans."

The State is God.  I’d say that’s about a hundred times more offensive than any of the Danish cartoons – and I’m not a Buddhist.

The Devil’s In The Details

Taiwan’s campaign document scandal?  It’s no biggie, says the China Post:

As a matter of fact, DPP city councilors of Taipei made a similar on-the-spot check on the Ma campaign headquarters on March 4.

There was no confrontation, however.

The March 5th Taipei Times and China Post‘s archives have no mention of this (at least, after a cursory check), but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  Still, I have a few questions about this supposed inspection.  Answers to the following might help us decide how similar the two cases really are:

  • Did the DPP city councilors on the 4th enter Ma’s KMT campaign headquarters alone, or as part of a bi-partisan group composed of KMT city councilors as well?  The March 12th "investigators" belonged to one party only (the KMT).
  • Did the DPP city councilors on March 4th visit Ma’s campaign offices as part of an expected, pre-scheduled inspection, or was it a snap inspection?  Alex Fei and his merry band showed up completely unannounced on March 12th.
  • Did the DPP city councilors pretend to be fire safety inspectors on their March 4th inspection, as the KMT legislators did during their "inspection" on the 12th?
  • Were the DPP city councilors asked to leave by security guards, and did they comply?  When asked to vacate the premises, the KMT legislators on the 12th elected not to do so.
  • Did the DPP city councilors on March 4th try to enter Ma Ying-jeou’s office unattended, which would have allowed them to rifle through campaign documents and troll through his computer systems?  Depending on the version of March 12th’s events, the KMT legislators tried to (or actually DID) exactly that.

I find it amusing that the China Post attempts to spin the attempted theft of independence party documents as nothing more than a run-of-the-mill inspection.  If the inspection was so routine, why does the China Post contradict itself by saying it was ‘inane’?  Because if the check was as completely proper and ordinary as the China Post insinuates, then the KMT legislators cannot be accused of ‘inanity’ – they were simply doing their jobs.  Ma Ying-jeou should never have apologized then, for blame would belong solely to the rioters: rioters who interfered with a lawful, proper, everyday inspection.

But if there’s something not-quite-kosher about the KMT’s March 12th "inspection" – as the Post concedes by calling it ‘inane’ – then bringing up cases of inspections that WERE lawful, proper and ordinary serves only to muddy the waters around the issue.

Postscript:  Of course, muddying the waters is one of the China Post‘s specialties.  Perhaps the most blatant example of this is when columnist and editorial writer Joe Hung tries to persuade foreign readers that the 2004 shooting of President Chen Shui-bian was staged.  How is it possible, he asks, that President Chen was shot when not a SINGLE spectator at the campaign parade heard the the gunshot?

Now, any foreign reader has got to see that and think, "Wow, that certainly DOES sound mysterious."  But what the average foreign reader DOESN’T know (and any damn fool living in Taiwan IS aware of) is that the shooting took place at a campaign parade where there were HUNDREDS of big, noisy-ass FIRECRACKERS blowing up.  Blowing up left, right and center.  Pretty hard to hear one or two gunshots in that environment, as Hung is well aware.

To be blunt then: Joe Hung has a major credibility problem.  So that’s why I’m from Missouri when he tells us the March 4th and the March 12th inspections were somehow similar.

Another Taiwanese Politician Threatens Suicide

OK, this is starting to resemble bad soap opera:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman John Kuan (關中) yesterday dismissed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) accusations that he had bribed voters, vowing to commit suicide if the rival party could back its claims.

[…]

"I will accept my punishment and commit seppuku at the party’s headquarters if they can present evidence that I have bribed others," Guan told a press conference at KMT headquarters. "The two legislators should also end their lives if they cannot prove their allegations."

Seppuku refers to the Japanese ritual of committing suicide by disembowelment.

First Alex Fai, now this guy.  Well, I actually DO remember Ma Ying-jeou’s father made a similar threat a few years ago.  Don’t recall this case, although I probably wasn’t paying attention at the time:

Many also remember that last October, a Central Election Commission member recommended by the People First Party, Chao Shu-chien (趙叔鍵), also offered to commit seppuku "to defend the dignity of an academic" if the commission voted on whether the two planned referendums should be held alongside the January legislative election.

Sunday’s Taipei Times has a piece on how all of this trivializes the issue of suicide, and of course I’m not going to argue with that.  But the frequency of these threats recently causes me to wonder:  Is this a part of traditional Chinese political culture, or a part of Japanese culture that was grafted on locally?  Is there some kind of significance to the fact that members of the KMT and People First Party should specifically threaten seppuku, when both those political parties tend to feel an abhorrence of all things Japanese?   And lastly, have there been any cases in Taiwan within living memory where someone has actually followed through?

I don’t pretend to know.  Hey, I just live here.

UPDATE (Mar 17/08):  Last night, I tried to imagine how we would react to this kind of ploy in the West.  First of all, I’m pretty certain we’d consider the politician completely nuts.  Beyond that though, mental health professionals would probably be given air time to voice their disapproval.  Support groups for families of suicide victims would be apoplectic.  People whose lives had been affected by suicide would write angry (or distraught) letters – and the politician would be forced to apologize.

That that doesn’t happen here is interesting.  Different cultural attitudes towards suicide, perhaps?  Or is it that civil society is weaker here, so the type of pressure I’ve outlined simply isn’t brought to bear?

UPDATE (Apr 4/08):  OK, this isn’t a politician, but…damn:

On Wednesday, Liao Shu-hsin (廖述炘), the director of a pro-independence underground radio station in Taipei, allegedly immolated himself in his grief over the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) loss in the presidential election. Liao reportedly felt that his dream of seeing a “Republic of Taiwan” established was no longer possible.

UPDATE (Apr 5/08):  More on the sad case of Liao Shu-hsin in today’s Taipei Times.