Category: Taiwanese Politics

KMT Moots New Job-Creation Program

What, didn't you see this coming?

1)  Record number of Chinese tourists in Taiwan

     AsiaOne.com reports:

Daily tourist arrivals from China hit 4,600 [on March 22/09], according to the newspaper [the Economic Daily].

2)  [KMT] Legislator proposes bill to decriminalize prostitution

Hey, a lot of average Joe Ho's love their ho's.  And think of the damage to Sino-Taiwanese relations if some two-bit sheriff somewhere were to turn around and ARREST them for it !

Now the thing is, I'm actually pretty libertarian on prostitution and drug legalization issues.  So ideologically-speaking, I ought to be applauding the KMT on this one.

But the timing is rather suspect.  And just because I'm libertarian on this doesn't mean I can't be cynical about it as well.

UPDATE:  I should note that Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party isn't all of one mind on the issue:

KMT Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said Cheng’s proposal was “controversial.” It would be unreasonable to seek to legalize the sex trade while, at the same time, the National Communications Commission was banning TV commercials that accentuated women’s breasts, he said.

THERE'S the problem in a nutshell.  Too many KMT politicians are pro-China; too darn few of them are pro-Cleavage.

UPDATE #2:  I understand the new tourism slogan will be, "Taiwan:  Touch (A Lot More Than Just) Your Heart"

UPDATE #3:  Heh.  Some hardware geeks from Australia agree the Yao Yao and Shu Shu ads should be banned — not because they're exploitative of women, but because their voices are so annoying.

UPDATE #4:  Another heh.

UPDATE #5:  "Doctor, you forgot your calipers."  The immortal scene from The Aviator.

No Problem With Ma As KMT Chief?

Should presidents (or prime ministers) of democratic countries accept dual roles as chairmen of their parties as well?  It's a question I confess not having thought much about, but I suppose that if the posts are held by different people, the line is more clearly demarcated between party and state affairs.

Dr. William Fang of the China Post believes the opposite , arguing that Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou should, in addition to his current job, become chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party as well:

First it must be noted that in advanced democracies such as the United States and Great Britain, heads of the parties in power are also the highest administrative leaders of these countries.  No one accuses these rulers of being power-thirsty because they use their power [while simultaneously holding these two jobs] prudently and wisely to advance the interests of their nations.  [emphasis added]

The strength of Fang's case is unfortunately weakened by the fact that he's flat-out wrong.  America's president is currently Barack Obama (from the Democratic Party) — but the chairman of the Democratic party is not Obama:  It's Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.

As for Great Britain, its current prime minister is Gordon Brown (of the Labour Party).  But the chair of the Labour Party is not Brown:  It's a woman named Cathy Speight (to verify, click here and scroll down a couple of pages).

Now, perhaps there ARE examples of democratic countries where politicians successfully juggle roles as executives of both the party and the state.  America and the U.K. however, are not countries on that list.

“I Can’t Imagine Anything So Heartlessly Wickedly Cruel”

If memory serves, that's a line from Brideshead Revisited, when Lady Marchmain dresses down Charles Ryder for deliberately giving her alcoholic son money for drink.

A story about how a Taiwanese local government similarly subsidizes alcoholism, from Monday's China Post:

Thanks to the lucrative business of a distilling company, residents of [Taiwan's] offshore Kinmen County started getting their "KKL liquor vouchers" distributed by the county government yesterday.

Magistrate Lee Chu-feng said the "KKL liquor vouchers" — which allows each resident to get NT$3,600 [about $100 U.S.]  worth of the products of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor, Inc. (KKL) — are a bounty to all people living and working on the islets under the jurisdiction of the county government.

[. . .]

Magistrate Lee said 85,143 residents are entitled to the vouchers.

The fund comes from the profits of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor, which is owned by the county government.  [emphasis added]

Fortunately, the Kinmen county government doesn't own shares in the local heroin business.  That they're willing to publicize, anyways.

A year or two back I went back to my home town, and was taken aback to see a liquor store RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a homeless shelter in the downtown.  Now, I'm about as pro-capitalist as they come, but anybody who'd open a liquor store next to a homeless shelter has got a pretty black heart.

And that goes ditto for any government that does essentially the same thing.

UPDATE: I'm fairly certain I've misquoted Evelyn Waugh for the title.  The "heartlessly wickedly cruel" part is right, though.

“High-Class Mainlander” Becomes Synonymous With “World-Class Asshat”

Still haven't blogged about Kuo Kuan-ying, the KMT bigot from the Taiwanese civil service who fancies himself just a cut above all those provincial Taiwanese yokels he was destined to lord it over.

Kuo initially denied that he posted anti-Taiwanese screeds on a blog under the pen name of Fan Lan-chin (A pseudonym, which roughly translated, means something like, "Respectable Chinese Nationalist").  But eventually he came clean — and, his KMT patrons, feeling the political heat, quickly fired him under the cloak of a lot of phony, made-up excuses. 

End of story, I thought.

But it turns out that in the early part of the scandal, Kuo wrote an article in his own praise, attached a colleague's name to the column instead of his own (with the colleague's consent), and had the column printed in a Taiwanese paper.

You're a hell of a guy, you are, Kuo.  Turning your buddy into a sockpuppet like that.

From yesterday's Taipei Times:

[Pan Shun-yun], first secretary at the Taipei Representative Office in Paris, seemed to come forward to dismiss criticism of Kuo in an opinion piece under his byline and using his diplomatic title that was published on the [United Daily News'] opinion page last Wednesday.

But Kuo's sock, Pan Shun-yun, didn't just defend Kuo.  No, some of those uppity Taiwanese had the temerity to criticize the writing style of Kuo's secret blogger identity, Fan Lan-chin.  So Kuo had alter ego #2 (Pan the sock) defend the honor of alter-ego #1 (Fan the bigot) as well.  Yesterday's China Post contained this delightful detail:

Pan wrote in support of Fan Lanqin, who is described as a "literary genius" very popular among [Government Information Office] colleagues.

Look at me everyone!  I'm a high-class mainlander!  And a literary genius!  And a . . . oh dear, is this sounding vain?  Never mind, it'll look much better when I put someone ELSE'S name on all this adulation and affect an "aw, shucks" demeanor afterward !

( I am so smart, I am so smart.  S-M-R-T.  I mean, S-M-A-R-R-T. )

OK, now I know the man's been fired already, but seriously, has anybody thought of going back to check his job application for his GIO gig?  'Cause call me crazy, but some of those "Letters of Recommendation" may not be ENTIRELY on the up-and-up . . .

KMT civil servant Kuo Kuan-ying, graying and balding with glasses. Kuo considers himself much better than his fellow Taiwanese, fancying himself a 'high-class mainlander' instead.

Meet Kuo Kuan-ying.  High-Class Mainlander.  Respectable Chinese Nationalist.  Literary genius.

Also congenital liar.  Chinese racial supremacist.  Communist sympathizer.  Sockpuppeteer par excellence. 

Not to mention World-Class Asshat.

Postscript:  (Kuo Kuan-ying photo from the Apr 1/09 edition of the Taipei Times.  Kuo's the one in glasses, surrounded by black-shirted Taiwanese gangsters.)

UPDATE:  A great moment in sockpuppet history.  L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik had his blog suspended on their website for a couple years after he was exposed engaging in that sort of nonsense.

i-1

Rod Blagojevich and Chen Shui-bian

A couple weeks ago, David Ting (of Taiwan's China Post) wrote a column which invited comparison between the Blagojevich case in America with the Chen Shui-bian case in Taiwan:

Chen Shui-bian's frothy-mouthed drivel in court, defiant and unchastened, evokes images of Ron [sic] Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who was impeached and ousted from office two months ago for "plotting to sell" [an] Illinois senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.  "Blago" too, denied he had ever done anything wrong.  Yes, if by A-bian's standard.  The youthful-looking Serb descendant was only guilty of "plotting to sell the plum position, and had his political career ruined.  Was Blagojevich aggrieved?  The international media showed no sympathy for him.  It seems, therefore, our ex-president may have made the wrong bet by trying to politicize his case with the help of foreign media, which may cut both ways.

The issue of Blagojevich's and Chen's innocence or guilt is completely separate from the question as to whether their treatment by the justice system has been politically-neutral.  Compare and contrast:

1)  After Blagojevich received his bail-bond hearing, police escorted him out of the courthouse through an underground tunnel so the media could NOT take any "gotcha!" perp-walk footage.

Taiwan's former president was treated with far less discretion.  Police paraded him in handcuffs in full view of media cameras.

2)  Blagojevich was granted bail on the very same day he was arrested.  Bail was set at a paltry $4,500.  In addition, his passport was confiscated as a precaution against flight.

Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian was not granted bail — he was instead thrown into pre-trial detention, where conditions are apparently worse than Taiwan's regular penal system.  No hot showers, even in winter.  Bread and water for lunch.  That sort of thing.

(Chen's most recent request for bail was denied, partly because the current judge said the former president has not shown REMORSE for crimes he has not yet been tried or convicted upon.  This court will not grant you the presumption of innocence, sir, unless you first admit to us that you are GUILTY!)

3)  Blagojevich is at liberty to publicly protest his innocence on CBS' Late Night with David Letterman, NBC's Today, CNN's Larry King Live and Fox's On the Record with Greta van Susteren.

Taiwan's Chen on the other hand, was held incommunicado to all, save his lawyer.  In fact, when Chen's lawyer relayed to the public a POEM the former president wrote in detention to his wife, the KMT government began exploring options for legal sanctions against that lawyer.

(For purposes of completeness, I should also mention that Chen WAS briefly released by a judge, after which a KMT legislator threatened to have the judge investigated.  When the judge was duly replaced, the new judge sent Chen back to detention.  Chen is, however, now permitted at least SOME contact with the outside world, I understand.)

4)  To my knowledge, no Republican politician has ever publicly gloated over Blagojevich's fall.

In Taiwan, KMT legislators openly remarked that Chen's arrest was a joyous event.  Some of the rank-and-file agreed, setting off firecrackers in celebration.

Postscript:  The treatment of Bernard Madoff, the man accused of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, is also instructive.

Bernard Madoff was initially offered bail at $10 million.  When he couldn't come up with the money, he was offered an ankle bracelet and house arrest:

The new conditions require "round-the-clock monitoring at the defendant's building, 24 hours a day, including video monitoring of the defendant's apartment door(s) and communications devices and services permitting it to send a direct signal from an observation post to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the event of the appearance of harm or flight." Both Madoff and his wife, Ruth, have surrendered their passports as a part of the bail condition, and Ruth Madoff has signed confessions of judgment on the multi-million dollar properties in her name in Palm Beach, Florida and Montauk, Long Island, two of the nation's most desirous luxury retreats.

Now, Madoff's crimes are truly despicable.  A $50 billion Ponzi scheme.  Some people say $17 billion — whatever.  Charities — including Elie Wiesel's — plundered of their assets.  People's life savings wiped out.  Two or three suicides, so far . . .

And yet, despite public opposition, the American judge decided that house arrest in this case was preferable to incarceration.  Preferable, that is, until the defendant had been found guilty in a court of law.  There was no rush — society could surely wait 6 months or a year before sending Madoff to the big house.  (And as it turned out, it only took 3 months for the guy to plead guilty.)

What I've tried to demonstrate is that the Taiwanese judicial system has always had a whole spectrum of legal instruments to wield against former president Chen, and has at almost every turn chosen the harshest and most punitive.  Bail (be it  $4,500 or $10 million), passport confiscation, ankle bracelets or house arrest — all these things were options for dealing with the POSSIBILITY of Chen's flight prior to trial.  Yet the court scorned them in favor of pretrial detention in which the suspect was held incommunicado.

I think it's fair for the international media to wonder why.

Criticism Of China Gets The KMT’s Goat

From last Monday's Taipei Times:

The National Geographic Channel received a warning from the National Communications Commission (NCC) last year for broadcasting a documentary involving violence and bloodshed at too early a time, potentially the first governmental penalty the channel has ever received in the 166 nations where the channel is available.

166 countries get National Geographic, and Taiwan gears up to be the FIRST COUNTRY IN HISTORY to slap it with fines for objectionable programming?  For two documentaries touching on the subject of the People's Republic of China?  Which not even the PRC (which also receives National Geographic) has complained about?

Hmm.  My Spidey-sense is tingling . . .

NCC Communications Content Department Director Jason Ho (何吉森) said yesterday that the commission had received quite a few complaints from parents when the channel first broadcast Ou Dede and His Daughters in 2007, a documentary on the Nu Tribe who reside in southwestern China.

Ho said parents complained that their children were terrified after watching the goat-beheading scene in the film, where blood was splattered everywhere. The documentary was broadcast at 1:30pm, Ho said.

“It [beheading the goat] was not a religious ritual and the goat was killed because of a feud between two families,” Ho said. “The scene lasted about two minutes and was not blocked by any mosaics. Neither did the channel warn the audience about the gory scene to come.”

Let's be honest:  it DOES sound pretty grisly.  Couldn't have been that bad though if no one from 166 other countries complained about it.

(BTW, is Mr. Ho implying that showing gory goat-beheadings on TV are only objectionable when they're done as a result of family feuds?  That they're A-OK when they're part of religious rituals?) 

There was another documentary the Taiwanese government just couldn't . . . stomach:

Meanwhile, the channel also received a note from the NCC about The Riddles of Dead Diva Mummy, another documentary on the anatomy of a female mummy from the Han Dynasty.

“The documentary explicitly showed the internal organs of the mummy,” Ho said, “The channel did warn the audience about the scene, but members on the panel thought it was more appropriate that the documentary was aired at a later hour.”

You've got to be kidding me.  The general practitioner in my neighborhood has a gigantic 3' X 4' anatomical poster prominently displayed in his office.  You know the one — the cut-away kind which shows EVERY internal organ of a man's GI tract, from the esophagus right down to the anal sphincter.

And yet a few dessicated and unrecognizable body parts on the small screen are somehow more objectionable than that?

We are being told to accept two things here:

1)  These two programs are uniquely offensive — out of the hundreds or thousands of documentaries that National Geographic has aired. 

And:

2)  Of all the parents there are to be found in a 166 countries, that Taiwan's parents are unequaled in their squeamishness.

Unlikely.  The Chinese Nationalist Party is hot for surrender to unification with China.  And so Radio Taiwan International is issued an order not to criticize China.  KMT-friendly media compliantly see no evil when Chinese tourists come to call.  And KMT shills pretending to be parents issue bogus complaints about educational networks like National Geographic, which are to be punished for confusing impressionable youths with negative images of the PRC.

After all, the KMT has labored mightily to convince the young in Taiwan that China is the land of cute and fuzzy pandas (and money, money, money!).  Why permit anyone to muddy the waters with images of family feuds and goat decapitations?

Misquoting Bismarck

From last Monday's China Post:

If [Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou] truly believes [that a free trade agreement with China will benefit Taiwan], like by far a great majority of people on Taiwan who do, he has to have it signed as soon as possible.  He must [know] what Otto von Bismarck said.  The Prussian chancellor told the legislators: "Not by speeches and votes of the majority are the great questions of the time decided."

As arguments go, that's a little incoherent.  The Post seems to be saying that a majority of Taiwanese want a free trade agreement with China . . . but Ma should ignore putting the measure to a vote because what the majority thinks is irrelevant!

Say what?  If the majority truly DOES want the free trade agreement, how could it possibly hurt to put it up for a vote?  After all, the treaty should pass hands down, right?

Curiously, the Post had to resort to misquotation in order to make their anti-democratic case.  Because the full quote is actually this:

Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided – that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.  [emphasis added]

Bismarck was essentially telling the legislature of his time to quit their jawing and vote for the increased military budget the king had requested.  You lawmakers can talk all you like, Bismarck was saying, but ultimately our country's position can only be maintained through its strength of arms.

Odd then, that the Post neglected to bring up this quote between the years 2006-2008, when the KMT blocked debate on a special arms bill 60 times.  Or now, when the KMT presides over military cutbacks in the face of a clear and growing threat from across the Taiwan Strait.

News From Taipei’s Famous Rashomon District

Two versions of the same event at Taiwan's National Palace Museum.  First, Tuesday's Taipei Times:

A Taiwanese tour guide died of a heart attack while taking Chinese tourists on a tour of the National Palace Museum yesterday.

[…]

The death of their tour guide did not seem to affect their mood. Most took out stacks of cash and snapped up souvenirs. The shopping spree continued later at Taipei 101 and Keelung night market.  [emphasis added]

Taiwan's English unificationist newspaper, the China Post, recalls the Chinese tourists' reactions a bit differently:

All 40 Amway China members on the No. 18 bus were shocked to witness the incident, indicating they were in no mood to tour the rest of the National Palace Museum.  [emphasis added]

Comments in a latter post.

FYI: This Man Knows Bugger-All About Advanced Chemical Kinetic Techniques To Investigate And Manipulate The Behavior Of Chemical Reactions For Relatively Large Molecules Using Crossed Molecular Beams

He was however, a lecturer at National Taiwan Police College, so I guess that DOES count for something!

KMT legislator Wu Yu-sheng, who claimed that Lee Yuan-tseh did not deserve the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1986.

(Image of KMT legislator Wu Yu-Sheng from the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan website)

From Monday's Taipei Times:

A number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators criticized former
Academia Sinica president [and Nobel Prize winner] Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) yesterday over Lee’s remark that local enterprises offered more money to the KMT’s presidential candidates than they did to those from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) called Lee’s remark “ridiculous” and “pointless.”

“[The remark shows] he did not deserve the Nobel Prize [in chemistry] and he failed Taiwan and its people,” Wu said.  [emphasis added]

Wu might want to remind himself that while politicians may win their seats through their expertise at excitable windbaggery, people usually win Nobel Prizes in chemistry for their contributions to the science of chemistry — not for their political opinions.

Lee's comment is a simply verifiable claim, one way or the other.  If Taiwan has a transparent political donation system (which may be a big IF), the numbers can be crunched and Lee's hypothesis proven . . . or disproven.

As for Wu's assertion — that Lee doesn't deserve the Nobel Prize in chemistry — that too, can be simply verified.  All Wu has to do is peruse Lee's entire published body of chemical research, and demonstrate in an empirical manner where Lee got it all wrong.

Should be a piece of cake — for even the most dim-witted individual with an advanced degree in chemical kinetics.

UPDATE (Mar 18/09):  Special thanks to the commenter who pointed out an error I made in the caption.

The mistake has (very belatedly) been corrected in the post.

i-1

Ma Ying-jeou, Meet Vaclav Klaus

Klaus would be the president of a country that DOESN'T hide its national symbols — and gets a mite tetchy when members of the Empire trample his nation's sovereignty:

The Czech Republic becomes the first former Soviet satellite to run the European Union today, as it takes over the EU presidency from President Nicolas Sarkozy after six months of dynamic crisis management.

[…]

In Prague Castle, the presidential seat, Klaus is refusing to fly the European flag for the next six months. He came face-to-face there with another verbal brawler, Danny Cohn-Bendit, the Franco-German Green. The encounter pitted the arch Eurosceptic against an ardent Euro-federalist. Cohn-Bendit accosted Klaus, unfurled the European flag and demanded to know why it was not fluttering over the castle.

"No one has ever spoken to me here in this tone. You aren't on the barricades of Paris. I have never heard anything so insolent in this hall . . . The way Cohn-Bendit speaks to me is exactly the way the Soviets used to speak."

Some nations are blessed with presidents who've got guts.  While others have presidents who are so lacking in that department that they order THEIR OWN COUNTRY'S FLAGS CONFISCATED to placate visitors from neighboring tyrannies.

(Hat tip to Ezra Levant)