My hypothesis was that recognition of Term 1 would exceed that of Term 2, which in turn would greatly exceed that of Term 3.
This is in direct contrast with the editors of the China Post, who inexplicably maintain (not as a hypothesis, but as a cold, hard fact!) that Term 3 garners the greatest recognition.
As it turns out, both I and the China Post are incorrect, as the results indicate:
Term
Number Of People Who Recognize The Term
"China's eternal first lady"
0
May-ling Soong
0
Madame Chiang Kai-shek
0
The informal survey was conducted among 5 Westerners – three of whom were twentyish in age, and two who were fiftyish. My favorite response came from a fiftysomething, who upon hearing the name, May-ling Soong, asked with a completely straight face, "Is she Korean?"
Ha! Dennis, I love you, man!
So there you have it. In the West – apart from the geriatric wards and a few amateur history buffs like myself - May-ling Soong is an utter non-entity.
A nobody.
And what's more, this applies not only to her, but to her husband as well. For it was a genuine surprise to me that even the fifty-year-olds didn't recognize the name, "Chiang Kai-shek".
But how's that for cosmic justice? Chiang Kai-shek murdered Taiwanese in 1947, and what's history's reward?
Postscript: Of course, a sample size of 5 does not a scientific poll make. But, I wager, that's 5 more than the editors of the China Post ever bothered to ask.
Which is entirely in keeping with the newspaper's slap-dash philosophy: "Why get the facts straight, when you can just make shit up?"
Oh, my goodness! What a strange little paracosm the editors of the China Post dwell in!
Here's the China Post, on how it imagines we foreigners think of Lady Chiang Kai-shek:
On display at the “Forever Madame Chiang” exhibit [at Taiwan's Dead Dictator Memorial Hall] are more than 250 photos and memorabilia of May-ling Soong, better known in the West as China's eternal first lady. [Emphasis added]
Where to begin?
Listen, about the only China-related epithet Westerners are familiar with is "Butcher of Beijing". And that's really about it.
Now in all fairness, there isa book by that name. But since it languishes somewhere around #680,000 on Amazon's best seller's list, we can safely conclude that the phrase is not likely to ever catch on.
As a Westerner, my hypothesis is that in terms of recognition:
Madame Chiang Kai-shek>May-ling Soong>>>"China's eternal first lady"
In the next day or two, I'll poll a few people here in Waiguoren-land, and see how my prediction holds up.
…an overworked 29-year-old production line worker was recently indicted by prosecutors for drafting a false death certificate for his mother as an excuse to take time off.
The worker, surnamed Chang (張), allegedly submitted the document to request a five-day absence after an extended period of regularly working overtime.
Now, this would all be a source of comic fun (a la George Costanza)…if he wasn't being pursued by the long arm of the law.
Since he is, I make but one observation: Prosecutors' zeal for the law is clearly on display when they go after a single 29-year-old document forger who's been overworked beyond endurance.
Where though, is their enthusiasm for prosecuting companies which egregiously violate Taiwanese labor laws?
President Ma Ying-jeou [of Taiwan] yesterday pledged to strengthen inspections on food and beverage manufacturers and severely punish those with problematic products amid a scare over adulturated cooking oils.
My advice to Taiwanese food executives?
When using the phone: speak less Mandarin…and more Klingon.
Postscript: Guess I should explain the "President Wiretap" allusion.
The curious thing about all this wiretapping is that the Special Investigation Division (SID) apparently isn't gathering any evidence. The SID claims not to have any recordings!
Saying prosecutors later found that the wiretaps were unable to record any telephone conversations, [Ma Ying-jeou's] minister [of Justice] said they “are not so serious.”
Guess they just haven't figured out how to hit PLAY and RECORD simultaneously.
Why did the Taiwanese vessel continue to flee even after the Coast Guard ship began raking its engines with gunfire?
With luck, these questions will be answered in subsequent investigations. But here's a few puzzling statements regarding the matter by Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou and Taiwan's Taipei Times.
"A country [such as the Philippines] has the authority to enforce laws in its exclusive economic zone, but it can only send officials to board a fishing ship for inspection. No countries should use force against civilian boats."
"By opening fire on the Taiwanese fishing boat and killing the fisherman, the Philippines has violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which bans use of force against any unarmed fishing boat."
I've skimmed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and I cannot find any such prohibition whatsoever against the use of force against unarmed fishing boats. I've also tried to drill down further in the 9,314 line document by searching for the terms, "unarmed", "civilian" and "use of force" — again, coming up empty.
So what am I missing?
The only precedent to the contrary that I can cite off the top of my head is last year's case of a Chinese fisherman who was killed by the Palau Coast Guard. I don't believe Beijing raised UNCLOS as an objection…and the case ended when the remaining Chinese fishermen were each fined $1,000 USD and sent packing for violating Palau's Exclusive Economic Zone.
Article 225: Duty to avoid adverse consequences in the exercise of the powers of enforcement
In the exercise under this Convention of their powers of enforcement against foreign vessels, States shall not endanger the safety of navigation or otherwise create any hazard to a vessel, or bring it to an unsafe port or anchorage, or expose the marine environment to an unreasonable risk.
To a non-lawyer type such as myself, this looks pretty convincing at a first glance. "States shall not endanger…a vessel" — that would seem to categorically prohibit the hazardous firing of dozens of live rounds into a ship's engine area.
But I have at least 3 problems with this reading:
1
If this is true, then management and enforcement of fishery resources is rendered completely impotent. All law depends upon the State's monopoly on the use of violence. Take away the credible threat of force and no law remains – only social convention and etiquette. The whole raison d'etre of UNCLOS was not to create an economic free-for-all, but to create a system of marine property rights via Exclusive Economic Zones.
2
Other signatories to UNCLOS have determined that they MAY use violence in apprehending fish poachers.
Australian attorneys (who are somewhat more conversant in the Law of the Sea than myself!) believe such conduct conforms with the requirements of UNCLOS.
(Interestingly enough, the Australian government quotes Section 7 Article 225 of UNCLOS in the context of escorting an apprehended ship back to port. The Aussies appear to narrowly interpret this article as meaning that once a fishing boat is detained, it cannot be maliciously led over reefs or rocky shoals or what-have-you.)
As signatories to UNCLOS, such an agreement would have been superflous – if the two countries were already bound by UNCLOS to renounce the use of force against fish poachers.
Been a while since I last checked the blog, and I noticed a comment on my Tsai Eng-meng post.
For those unfamiliar with Tsai Eng-meng, Tsai Eng-meng is a Taiwanese food magnate. Got his start in Taiwan, but made it big in China.
Upon returning to Taiwan, Tsai bought up some Taiwanese news media organs. And changed their editorial stances to more Communist-friendly positions.
But around the beginning of 2012, Tsai caused a stir in an interview with the Washington Post, remarking that the Chinese Communists were jolly good fellows who just couldn't possibly have killed very many people at Tiananmen Square. His reason for thinking so? Because the driver of a single tank hesitated to run over the iconic "Tank Man" of Tiananmen Square.
(As I recall, he also expressed scorn for Taiwan's hard-won democratic freedom, which he derided as a poor substitute for a walletful of Chinese redbacks.)
And so, without further ado, I submit my replies to one of Tsai's comradely supporters.
Jon: Not to side with Tsai here…
The Foreigner: Here it comes…
Jon: …but he was citing the fact that the "Tank Man" lie [sic], which is often perpetuated in western media.
The Foreigner: Can I interrupt to say that it suits you? The whole passive-aggression routine, I mean.
If experience is any guide, I do believe you're fishing for some kind of groveling apology.
Jon: For example a supermajority of Americans believe falsely that the "Tank Man" at Tiananmen was run over by those tanks.
The Foreigner:Bullshit.
A cursory web check of the New York Times, Newsweek and Time reveals nothing of the kind. NONE of them declare that Tank Man was definitely run over by tanks at Tiananmen.
Furthermore, I find it exceedingly difficult to believe anybody wasted good money to poll Americans about "Tank Man". But, assuming for the moment that it IS true, you forgot to mention that the Chinese DID run over at least one man (Fang Zheng) with their tanks. (To this day, the Communist propaganda ministry maintains that Fang Zheng lost his legs in an everyday, run-of-the-mill "traffic accident".)
So perhaps Americans' beliefs are a perfectly understandable result of mistaken identity:
Tank Man gets photographed in front of limb-crushing tanks.
Fang Zheng is photographed minus a couple of limbs (compliments of Tsai Eng-meng's Communist benefactors).
Mental conflation of Tank Man (who was NOT run over by Chinese tanks) with Fang Zheng (who WAS run over by Chinese tanks).
But here's a crazy PR suggestion: if the Chinese don't want Westerners to think they run people over with tanks…MAYBE they should stop running people over with their tanks!
Jon: He is still alive according to most accounts and the "conspiracy theory" sites claim he died months later.
The Foreigner: It is, of course, a red herring to bring up the fate of any one single individual (Tank Man) in the face of a massacre of thousands. Tsai's hasty generalization is that since Tank Man MAY have survived, then "not that many [Chinese demonstrators] could really have died."
And if Anne Frank were to turn up alive tomorrow, would this Communist quisling then argue that the Jewish Holocaust never happened?
Also, it's patently untrue to say Tank Man is still alive according to "most accounts". Wikipedia — hardly a "conspiracy theory" site — points out the conflicting stories on that score.
If he IS alive, let him come forward to say so to the media.
Oh, that's right. He can't. Because if he comes forward, the Chinese government will kill him.
Golly. Maybe the Butchers of Beijing really AREN'T the nice, harmless guys Tsai Eng-meng claims they are. Ya think?
Jon: As for "democracy-hating", there is nobody who truly loves ALL democracy. For example, the Weimar Republic elected Hitler.
The Foreigner: The "Weimar Republic" didn't vote for Hitler. The political system known as "democracy" didn't vote for Hitler.
MEN voted for Hitler. Men who hated democracy, and wanted it abolished.
Men such as Tsai Eng-meng. And yourself.
It was Germany's great misfortune that these men got what they wished for.
Jon: The French Republic massacred women and children (guillotined them).
The Foreigner: Straw man. Democracy, as a term describing a form of government advocated in the modern world, does not include the French revolutionary model lacking constitional safeguards (formal and informal).
But allow me to make a further rebuttal to your line of thinking. Around the time of the French revolution, doctors carried out a host of unproven treatments, some of which were either ineffective or even downright harmful to their patients (blistering of the skin or confinement for psychological problems, bloodletting, enema use, frontal lobotomies, "spermatorrhoea" prevention, homeopathy, and purging).
On the other hand, they also pioneered procedures which have stood the test of time, such as vaccinations, percussion-based diagnosis, and various surgical techniques.
Only an ignoramus would argue that modern doctors should be loathed and present-day medicine rejected out-of-hand simply because doctors of the past once used some questionable practices.
By the same token, only the genuinely infantile reject modern liberal democracy simply because 200 years ago, some long-dead Frenchmen didn't recognize the importance of checks-and-balances, the necessity of constitutionalism, and the limits to the perfectability of man.
The Foreigner: Excuse me while I look that up in the latest edition of the Oxford Chinglish Dictionary.
Jon: …a million Filipinos in the Philippine-American War, where the US conquered and annexed an independent nation, destroying their Republic, even though the Philippine Republic used the US constitution.
The Foreigner: I believe the number is closer to 250,000…and it's debatable whether it was a deliberate genocide.
But rather than argue about numbers, I'd like to point out that most of the casualties were caused by out-of-control military officers who went far beyond what the civilian leadership ever intended. It's a cause for celebration that modern democracies have matured and figured out that their militaries need to be kept on a much tighter leash.
Why and how did this maturation take place? It occurred because democracies are blessed with a built-in feedback mechanism: the free press. In short, American anti-imperialist papers were free to report atrocities, and thereby helped bring them to an end.
Which is something that doesn't ever happen in Tsai Eng-meng's glorious Communist utopia.
Or in Tsai Eng-meng's pro-Communist newspapers, for that matter.
Oh, one last thing before we move on…you neglected to mention that America went to the Philippines with the ultimate goal of granting it its independence. Which it did, in 1946.
Poor Tibet should be so lucky!
Jon[referring to dead Philippinos]: Rather funny. Democracy is a joke.
The Foreigner: Number of Chinese murdered (or, in your parlance, "genocided") by the anti-democratic doctrine within the last 50 years: 36,000,000. Number of Chinese killed by democracy within the last 50 years: 0.
Which of those two numbers is greater than the other, Jon?
I'll allow you to take your time to figure that out. Math is hard.
But since you're fond of jokes, here's a riddle for you:
Q: What do you call an Uncle Com who tries to bamboozle people into thinking the Chinese don't run their citizens over with tanks, when he's fully aware that they DO run their citizens over with tanks?
A: A lying asshole.
But I guess you've probably heard that one before.
Jon: If you go to any of the 200 democratic countries of the world…
The Foreigner: Which "world" are you referring to? Here on planet Earth, there are only 78 democracies.
Jon: …everyone on the street will say it's a democracy, but ask them if they can be president or a congressman, and the average folk always say "no", and ask why, and they say because they lack money or influence.
Basically democracy only elects the aristocracy (wealth or fame).
The Foreigner: Have you ever heard of a guy named Barack Obama (D)? Or Bill Clinton (D)? Or Ronald Reagan (R)? [Apr 10 / 2013 Update: Or Richard Nixon (R)?]
Word on the street is that they all came from fairly modest beginnings…
But you labor under a misconception. Liberal democracy entails the consent of the demos. It does NOT mean that everyone gets to be president for their fricken' birthday.
Money and influence help in life. If you don't have 'em, you may have to set your immediate sights a little lower. Run for dog catcher. Or the PTA. Or city commissioner.
Bust your ass at it. Do a good job. Don't steal from the public purse. Don't get caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
Do all that, and you just might get further than you ever thought you could.
But even should you fail there's one final thought you may yet still console yourself with: your well-meaning efforts have not landed you in a urine-soaked Communist political prison.
Jon: Aristotle hated democracy for this reason and preferred monarchy.
The Foreigner: Was that the reason? Or was it because he was born an aristocrat, and was quite naturally predisposed towards the form of government under which he was privileged? (Or, along similar lines, was it because he worked for Alexander the Great, and knew which side his bread was buttered?)
Nevertheless, I understand Aristotle also believed that there were some men whose very natures destined them for slavery. Never much cared for the notion, although I'm perfectly willing to admit he may have been right..about individuals such as yourself.
Aristotle: "The principle that the multitude ought to be supreme rather than the few best is one that is maintained, and, though not free from difficulty, yet seems to contain an element of truth.For the many, of whom each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. For each individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence, and when they meet together, they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses; that is a figure of their mind and disposition. Hence the many are better judges than a single man of music and poetry; for some understand one part, and some another, and among them they understand the whole." — Politics, Book 3.11
I'm not sensin' any of that "hate" you were talkin' about. He may have had his druthers, but unlike Tsai Eng-meng, he was at least honest enough to give democracy its due.
(And he certainly deserves credit for his intuition about the Wisdom of Crowds, long before anyone ever coined the phrase.)
Jon: And ALL of the Greek philosophers disagreed with elections, but rather preferred representatives to be chosen at random.
The Foreigner: It should then be a relatively simple matter for you to name at least five of them who held this opinion.
(Shaky camera-work alert. To listen, click PLAY and scroll the video off the screen.)
Update (Nov 8/2012): Tsai Eng-meng finds himself in the fine company of notable ancient Greek philosopherMahmoud Fraudmadinejad.
Update (Dec 7/2012): What's that, Ari? You'd like to weigh in on the subject of democracy again? Why certainly, be my guest…
"The basis of a democratic state is liberty; which, according to the common opinion of men, can only be enjoyed in such a state; this they affirm to be the great end of every democracy." –Aristotle, Politics Book 6.2
So, to paraphrase Jon's philosophical hero, Aristotle: "Liberty is the great result of every democracy."
Which just might be why would-be tyrants hate it so.
Update (Jan 9/2013): Jon averred:
"Basically democracy ONLY elects the aristocracy (wealth or fame)." [Emphasis added]
I gave 3 examples disproving this assertion. But this refutes the claim even more convincingly:
The chart plainly shows that half those in the U.S. Congress AREN'T wealthy. That works out to about 267 people (535 members of Congress / 2 = 267.5).
If someone has evidence that these 267 non-wealthy people are all incredibly famous (and yet, for some reason, not millionaires), then I'd be very interested in seeing it.
So it seems that there is a system in which only the rich and famous obtain political power. However, the evidence shows that that system is not democracy, but the one beloved by Tsai Eng-meng: Chinese Communism.
Update (Jul 24/2015): Yet more evidence that Communists always lie. What was that Jon said?
"the Philippine Republic used the US constitution"
The style of the document is patterned after the Spanish Constitution of 1812, which many Latin American charters from the same period similarly follow.
A Washington Post image of Tsai Eng-meng, billionaire chairman of the Taiwanese food/media company, The Want Want conglomerate.
It seems that with the recent re-election of Taiwan's capitulationist president Ma Ying-jeou, the island country's small population of pro-Communist plutocrats feel emboldened to out themselves as Tiananmen Massacre denialists. Or are they simply angling for jobs in Ma's propaganda ministry?
Tsai said he . . . used to fear China’s ruling Communist Party and didn’t want to risk doing business on the mainland, but that changed after the 1989 military assault on student protesters in Tiananmen Square. While the crackdown outraged most in Taiwan, Tsai said he was struck by footage of a lone protester standing in front of a People’s Liberation Army tank. The fact that the man wasn’t killed, he said, showed that reports of a massacre were not true: “I realized that not that many people could really have died.”
Wow. It gives pause to realize these are not merely the views of a isolated flake, but the views peddled by Tsai Eng-meng's newspaper and television divisions all across the nation-formerly-known-as-Taiwan.
For the sake of consumers, one can only hope that Want Want's food is less poisonous ☠ than the noxious views of its black-hearted chairman.
Postscript: The Taipei Times reports a somewhat…less-than-overwhelming response to Tsai's Tiananmen revisionism (and his concurrent calls for a swift Taiwanese surrender):
Several netizens have also vowed to boycott food products from Tsai’s business chains, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Tuesday. At press time last night, a “Resist the Want Want Group” page created on Facebook on Tuesday — whose boycott will continue until April 24 — had attracted 405 followers.
Not exactly the tar-and-feathers treatment, is it?
A whopping four hundred and five people.
Will boycott Want Want's products.
For the next three (count 'em, 3!) months.
(Bet the democracy-hating sonofabitch loses lots of sleep over THAT.)
Except that "formal document of surrender" doesn't test well with Taiwanese focus groups. For some reason or another. So the paper gets out the lipstick, and dubs their red-lipped porker "a peace accord".
One wonders why the paper doesn't go all-out, and insist the agreement consist of 17 points…
