Month: May 2008

Big Whoop

Monday’s Taiwan News and China Post both featured this story:  Despite new law, [Taiwanese] children are still being given father’s surname

Taiwan’s civil statutes were changed in May 2007 to allow children to adopt their mother’s surname, heralded at the time as a breakthrough in this patriarchal society.

But the results of a poll released yesterday show that legal reform has failed to budge entrenched cultural attitudes, at least for the time being.

The poll found that only 4.3 percent of parents of newborn children took advantage of the new law over the past year and registered their children with the mother’s surname, said the Awakening Foundation, the women’s rights group responsible for conducting the poll.

"To promote equal rights between the two sexes on the issue of which of the parents’ family names is used in naming children, Taiwan’s society still needs to overcome both legal obstacles and cultural restraints," said foundation Chairwoman Fan Yun, in response to the results.  [emphasis added]

There are perfectly valid reasons why parents might want to give their child the mother’s surname, so having a law like this on the books isn’t a bad thing.  But I honestly don’t see how Fan Yun thinks devoting her group’s scarce resources to changing "cultural restraints" regarding this issue is going to change Taiwanese society one iota. 

(Well actually, I suppose it WOULD give newlyweds one MORE thing to argue about…) 

All right, let’s suppose a law was passed here tomorrow, forcing children to take on the names of BOTH parents (as is the Spanish custom).  Just how would that make Taiwanese society any less patriarchal?  Anyone want to make the case for me that Spanish culture isn’t patriarchal simply because of the convention they use for naming their offspring?

Really now.  I would think Taiwanese feminist groups had bigger fish to fry.

Postscript:  Interesting trivia note — Chinese families were apparently matrilineal up to around 1600 B.C.

South Korean Olympic Torch Roundup

First, let’s cut to the video.  (Sound levels may vary from clip to clip, so you may want to lower your volume before clicking on each link.)

Chinese mob assaults Korean-Americans in a hotel lobby for holding a Tibetan flag.  (According to a written account at Chosun.com, 400 angry Chinese chased them into the building, although only 100 of those managed to follow them inside.)

The two Korean-Americans who were attacked speak.  Class acts, them both.

An American or Canadian woman protesting the treatment of North Korean refugees in China gets more than she bargained for when the Chinese mob swarms forward.

A South Korean TV news account.  A third party added some English captions — which don’t pretend to be evenhanded, but do provide some context.

Another Korean TV news account, sans subtitles.  Incredibly, Chinese diplomat Ning Fukui BRAGS about his handiwork in this one for a few seconds in English.

Speaking of Ning Fukui, here’s how the South Korean cops got taken to the cleaners by the good ambassador:

Korean police acknowledged they had not anticipated such big, wild crowds for Sunday’s event, according to Eo Choeng-soo, commissioner general of the National Police Agency.

"We were told by the Chinese ambassador that the Chinese crowd would be about 1,000 to 1,200," Eo said in a press conference yesterday.

[…]

The police estimated about 6,500 Chinese students attended the event.

 

Ning Fukui, Chinese Ambassador to South Korea

(Would I lie to you?  China’s ambassador to South Korea, Ning Fukui.  Image from The Seoul Times)

OK, being misled is one thing, but are Korean cops just COMPLETELY stupid?  From The Marmot’s Hole:

Police did, in fact, deploy only 9,300 personnel along the route, much less than the 14,000 cops they deployed during last month’s protests against rising university tuitions. A police official said — sit down for this — that they thought the Chinese embassy would be able to control the Chinese demonstrators, but it didn’t turn out that way. The official added that legal action would be taken against the Chinese they arrested following investigations.

UPDATE: Sorry, I just can’t get over that police official.  We thought the Chinese embassy would be able to control the Chinese demonstrators.

Ever wonder what happens when 6,500 foreign students start a political riot at the behest of their government in the capital of another nation?  Visa restrictions, baby.

Call me sympathetic, but diplomatic immunity kind of precludes this one:  South Korean groups vow to sue Chinese ambassador.

And from the blogs:

A series of photos from the protests in Seoul.

Some background on the new South Korean proposals to tighten the requirements for Chinese student visas following this little display.

So, will the Chinese government issue any apologies for "hurting the feelings of the KOREAN people?"

As I suspected, China’s censorship-by-thug on the streets of Seoul is not proving popular among Koreans.  The Chinese government seems to be coming to grips with the P.R. disaster it has made for itself.  Its diplomats, though not quite in a full kowtow position, are offering either an apology or whatever it is that Asian diplomats offer when national pride prevents one . . .

[…]

President Lee, it should be remembered, has made an issue of restoring the public order that Roh had allowed to erode.  If he lets these goon squads escape real punishment, the Korean street will be furious, and rightfully so.  If the South Korean authorities prosecute, the Chinese street will be furious, and it will probably be lost on many of them that doing the same thing in China would likely earn them a stretch in the laogai or a fatal beating in a local police station.  For a day, Seoul became for politically repressed Chinese youth what Tijuana is for sexually repressed American youth.

Finally, a brief summary of the average Chinese perspective of what transpired:

. . .the Chinese Street’s version:  "It didn’t happen!," and its inbred cousin, "It didn’t happen, and you should thank us for not killing you."  The "all we wanted was to throw you a party!" defense is so unintelligent as to evoke more pity than rage (I had no idea censorship was so costly to critical thinking skills).  Those who can at least perceive the futility of denial turn to argumentum ad hominem:  "you’re agents provocateurs," and inevitably enough, "running dogs" and  "fetid Jews."

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Lowering Expectations

A few weeks ago, Taiwan’s China Post began to fret:  How could the country’s incoming KMT president bring voters back down to earth after he promised them the moon and stars from a speedy economic opening to China?

This week, we got our answer.  This week, President-elect Ma Ying-jeou decided to appoint a SACRIFICIAL LAMB in charge of the process — and a willing scapegoat from another party, to boot.  Now, when Ma’s overly-ambitious deadlines are not met, the stink of failure will cling to some OTHER political party, not Ma’s own.  And when that inevitable failure DOES come, Ma will appoint a KMT man to the position, then conveniently announce that he’s granting the new guy a more reasonable deadline.  (Because naturally, the new appointee needs more time to "fix the damage" after the previous office-holder "botched the job so horribly" during her brief tenure.)

In the immediate term however, Ma has to suffer some abuse from his own side.  (Although as Michael Turton points out, Ma will actually get brownie points for political "inclusiveness" in other quarters.)  KMT members are demanding to know why government jobs are going to fringe independence party members, and not themselves.  As if on cue, they now talk down the chances of a quick opening to China, saying Ma’s choice is unacceptable to Beijing — the equivalent of eating pork in front of a Muslim.

There’s no avoiding that.  Ma either takes a hit now for a single "poor personnel decision" or he takes a hit later for his unrealistic plans — and I think he prefers the former for face-saving reasons.  But for the while, Ma (and the rest of us) will just have to endure criticism in the form of purple prose such as this:

Ma should bear in mind that there were thousands of overseas Chinese from all four corners of the world who flew back to Taiwan on their own to vote for him, to pin their dreams on him for the return of the spring of hope after eight years of winter of despair. Their hearts are now bleeding, torn asunder by the sudden death of their dreams.  [emphasis added]

Oh dear GOD, make it stop! . . .

POSTSCRIPT:  I’m struck by the Post‘s characterization of Ms. Lai Shin-yuan, the new Mainland Affairs Commission chairman, as "a firebrand legislator".

Um, is it asking too much that if you call a virtual unknown like Lai a firebrand, that you at least BACK IT UP with some quotes or examples or something?

UPDATE (May 10/08):  Deadline?  What deadline?

President-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) never made any announcements on the date cross-strait weekend charter flights would commence, nor did he promise to implement cross-strait weekend charter flights by July 4, Ma spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said yesterday.

Speaking of back-pedaling, the editors at Taiwan’s China Post must have received the memo from KMT Central Command:  Using Lai as our fall-guy (er, fall-gal) is something we’ll do when the July 4th TBA deadline is missed.  Back off – NOW.

And so, after spending 3 or 4 days blasting the woman last week (and lambasting Ma for nominating her), the Post made a dizzying about-face on Monday.  Why won’t everybody just Leave Lai Shing-yuan alone?, its editors asked.

Incredible.  First the the Post calls Lai a firebrand responsible for destroying "the spring of hope after eight years of winter of despair."  Then it called her nomination a betrayal:

But people with an average IQ fail to see any beauty from any angle. Ma defended his appointment by arguing that because there were 5.44 million people who did not vote for him, he has to "broaden the base of consensus." How strange is this argument? Is this the basis for betraying the 7.65 million who voted for him?

And after all that the folks at the China Post have the face to piously tell everyone ELSE to stop the witch hunt?

UPDATE: A Redshirt Proves That Whole ‘Goon And Thug’ Charge Wrong

After the earlier post, it’s only fair to mention this as well:

. . . several readers quickly pointed out that the photo appeared to be misleading. Click here to see a photo of the “kicked” guy [in Seoul] holding up a bicycle over his head. . . It appears to be a threatening gesture.  Was he threatening to toss the bicycle at Chinese counter-protesters?  I don’t know.  Some Chinese websites suggest he brought on the violence himself.

I suppose there’s a couple possibilities here.  Either one lone guy (who was eager for a beating) blithely walked into the middle of a group of hostile Chinese with his bicycle in order to threaten them with it . . . or, THEY surrounded HIM, and he got scared somewhere along the way.

(Might help to use Occam’s Razor on this one.)