The Foreigner in Formosa

The REAL Reason Lien Chan Sells Taiwan Out To China

Money for nothin' and your lap dances for free.

(Image from . . . ah, hell, I don't know.  This pic's been on my hard drive for ages!)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Jul 22/2009):  The original (uncropped) photo was from the October 29th, 2005 edition of the Taipei Times.  Can't find it on their website anymore, but here it is at Muzi.com.

From The Archives: Chinese Students In Taiwan

I just KNEW I'd written a post on this topic before.  August of 2007 . . . lotta water under the bridge:

Should Chinese Students Be Permitted To Study In Taiwan?

Pretty long (4 screens), but thorough.  To be entirely honest, you might be able to get away with skipping the first screen.

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen: Just Another Low-Down, Dirty Demagogue?

Taiwan's China Post, on democracy advocates who insist that a referendum be held on any peace treaty the KMT signs with China which might endanger Taiwanese sovereignty.

. . . endless calls for plebiscites and referendums are the stock in trade of "champions of democracy," i.e., populist demagogues.

In other words, the Taiwanese had better just STFU.  The constitution ALLOWS the president to surrender the country to China.  Conveniently for him (and the Butchers of Beijing), it DOESN'T ALLOW the unwashed plebs to object via referendum.

(And if they DO, they'll be locked up, or worse.  All in full accordance with the "law" -- the law which in theory, is there to PROTECT their rights.)

Interestingly enough, a man the Post reveres was also in favor of direct democracy.  That man would be Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the Republic of China.  Here's Sun, in his own words:

"In district political affairs citizens should have the rights of universal suffrage, initiative, referendum and recall."

In reply, someone at the Post might say, "Ah, but Sun wasn't in favor of NATIONAL referendums."  Which is true.  Here's Sun again:

"In national political affairs they should. while directly exercising the right of election, delegate the three other rights to their representatives in the People's Congress."

Hard to see however, how anyone could argue that initiatives and referendums at the LOCAL LEVEL are somehow good and virtuous, while at the same time referendums at the NATIONAL LEVEL (by some miracle of transubstantiation) become unholy, demagogic obscenities.

Bread, Circuses . . . Opening Ceremonies

Wouldn't it be ever so cool to have a Nuremberg Rally Olympic Opening Ceremony every day?

Less than a year after China hosted the Olympics, Beijing is planning to put its stunningly choreographed opening ceremony back on as a regular evening show at the “Bird’s Nest”, the main stadium built for the games.

Hard to collect a cash flow from all those pirated DVDs, I guess.

Zhang Hengli, vice-president of the National Stadium Company that now runs the Bird's Nest, said: “. . . We need to find an investor and deal with potential issues of intellectual property of the International Olympic Committee.”  [emphasis added throughout]

Oh, the IOC is gonna be THRILLED about this.  Kinda takes the sense of occasion out of a once-in-every-four-year event, don't it?

But they'll probably cave.  Faster than a Szechuan schoolhouse.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:  Readers may encounter a registration page for the original story in the Financial Times if they've read more than three FT articles over the past month.  For those not interested in registering, this blog link contains the full article, verbatim.

UPDATE #2:  Just ran across this year-old opinion piece about last year's torch run from an Indian (uh, INDIA-Indian).  Interesting to see it from his perspective:

By this real-life, modern Chinese Opera on the “pilgrimage of the Sacred Flame of the Holy Olympics” one is reminded of the ancient Hindu ritual of Ashwamedha Yajna during which the sacred horse passing through any territory had to be protected by the vast army of soldiers of the King performing the Yajna. If anyone interfered with the journey of the sacred horse, that person was eliminated on the spot by the army guarding the sacred horse. The land through which sacred horse passed had to either accept the suzerainty of or fight the King-Emperor performing the yajna. There are clear parallels in the grandiose Chinese plan for the Olympic torch relay route and the pressure by the Chinese government on the host nations for the security of the torch as well as on the IOC to support the Chinese government’s action against the Tibetan protesters on foreign soils. The “sinister men in blue” accompanying the torch everywhere have been scuffling with policemen and the public as if naturally entitled to do so. These blue track-suited Chinese commandos guarding the “sacred flame” and brutally man-handling the protestors on the soil of third countries concretely symbolize the geo-political aspirations for world domination by a resurgent and aggressive China.  [emphasis added]

"World domination" may be a bit much.  But we can see the Chinese Nationalist Party's idea of allowing PRC police to operate on Taiwanese soil is bound to go just SWIMMINGLY.

UPDATE #3:  Chinese black jails.  Coming soon to a Taiwanese town near you?  (Hat tip to That's Impossible:  Politics from Taiwan)

Chinese Communist Party, Meet Leo Johnson

Bonus points if you remember Leo Johnson was the abusive husband from Twin Peaks.  Leo comes home one night and gets suspicious of the wife.  Seems there are cigarette butts in the ashtray, which aren't the kind Shelly usually buys . . .

"And another thing.  From now on you smoke ONE brand of cigarettes from now on.  Because if I ever see another brand of cigarettes around here, I'm gonna snap your neck like a twig."

Leo is a fictional character. 

Or is he?

Local government officials in China have been ordered to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of [Chinese-made] cigarettes in a move to boost the local economy during the global financial crisis.

[...]

Even local schools have been issued with a smoking quota for teachers, while one village was ordered to purchase 400 cartons of cigarettes a year for its officials, according to the local government’s website.

[...]

Three “non-compliant” cigarette butts were discovered by the “cigarette marketing consolidate team” which informed the teacher he had violated the related civil servants “cigarette usage rule” After some negotiation the school was spared a fine, but subjected to “public criticism” for “undisciplined practices”.

Pretty lucky no one's neck got snapped like a twig, huh?

(Image of Leo Johnson from MySpace.com)

Hat tip to Counting Cats in Zanzibar for this one.

Shouldn't This Be The Emblem Painted On Jingfu Gate?

Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party takes a historical monument -- a gate built during the Qing Dynasty -- and paints their own party symbol on it.  Surprise, surprise.

Really though, if the KMT wasn't so single-mindedly obsessed with their own self-aggrandizement, they'd take the Qing-era site, and paint a Qing Dynasty flag on it.

That would be the rational thing to do.  If The Party was even remotely concerned with the preservation of history.

(Image from Photoalbum.Davison.ca)

Of course, this would create the intriguing problem of what to do about historic Japanese-era buildings.  Oh, what to do, what to do?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:  Letters from Taiwan has a post on the subject.  Sounds like the KMT culturally vandalized the historic site back in 1966.  (Hat tip to The View)

UPDATE #2:  More at Arthur Dent's site.

KMT Institutes Catch-And-Release Program For Chinese Spies

It's all part of Chinese puppet president on Taiwan Ma Ying-jeou's ingenious Swiss-cheese defense strategy.  Build a big wall, then punch holes in it.  Or in 21st Century parlance, ask for advanced fighter aircraft -- then let spies take pics of military installations with impunity:

A Chinese tourist who was arrested on Monday for entering a military facility and taking pictures was released on his own recognizance late on Tuesday night.

[...]

. . . [the Chinese "tourist"] was caught taking photos of military equipment installed at a computer warfare command center that is part of a military recruitment complex on Keelung Road in downtown Taipei. The recruitment center is open to the general public, but the computer warfare command area is a restricted facility.

Guy sneaks into a cyberwarfare center, and the Taiwanese authorities release him without bail.  Perish the thought that an honorable Communist Party member such as he would ever abscond !

(Compare that to former president Chen Shui-bian, who's has been held in pre-trial detention for 6 1/2 months.  But then, he doesn't have friends in Zhongnanhai places.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:  Takes on this from The View from Taiwan and J. Michael Cole.

UPDATE (Jun 3/09):  The Chinese spy returns home, scot-free.  We'll be seeing a lot of this, I think.

Self-Determination

High-class mainlander Comsymps over at Taiwan's China Post, working like stakhanovites to convince Taiwanese to surrender to the Communist Chinese.

Now suppose a dissenting voter objects to the outcome of [a hypothetical independence referendum].  Suppose she says, "I am a proud citizen of the Republic of China.  I want my country to include the Chinese mainland.  I refuse to be reclassified as a citizen of Taiwan!  You are trampling over my right to determine my political status!"  How will champions of Taiwan independence respond?

Actually, if that's the tack you want to take, then the right to determine one's political status is being trampled right now -- by the ROC constitution.  And in the complete ABSENCE of any independence referendums!  Because it takes all kinds to make a country -- Taiwan independence advocates, elderly Japanophiles . . . youthful America lovers:

I am a proud citizen of Taiwan / Japan / America.  I want my country to include Taiwan / Japan / America.  I refuse to be classified as a citizen of the Republic of China!  The R.O.C. constitution is trampling over my right to determine my political status!

A reply to all of them might go something like this:

The classical liberals of the nineteenth century believed that individuals should be free to determine their own lives. It is why they advocated private property, voluntary exchange, and constitutionally limited government. They also believed that people should be free to reside in any country they wish. In general, therefore, they advocated freedom of movement. Governments should not compel people to stay within their political boundaries, nor should any government prohibit them from entering its territory for peaceful purposes.

An extension of this principle was that individuals should be free to determine through plebiscite what state they would belong to. This is distinctly different from the collectivists’ notion of “national self-determination,” the alleged necessity for all members of an ethnic, racial, linguistic, or cultural group to be incorporated within a single political entity, regardless of their wishes. Thus, for instance, the Nazis demanded that all members of the “Aryan race” be forcefully united within a Greater Germany under National Socialist leadership.

[Similar demands made by Chinese nationalists, be they KMT or CCP -- The Foreigner]

Classical liberalism is closer to “individual self-determination.” Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises argued in Liberalism (1927) that the liberal ideal allows individuals within towns, districts, and regions to vote on which state they would belong to; they could remain part of the existing state, join another state, or form a new one.

Mises stated that in principle this choice should be left to each individual, not majorities, since a minority (including a minority of one) might find itself within the jurisdiction of a government not of its own choosing. But because it was difficult to imagine how competing police and judicial systems could function on the same street corner, Mises viewed the majoritarian solution to be a workable second best.  [emphasis added]

Communist Party fellow-traveller (and faux-individualist) Bevin Chu is a big fan of the the majoritarian solution -- not for the honorable intention of empowering self-determination but for crushing it.  The Post usually endorses this scheme of Chu's, but on this one occasion feigns mild disapproval:

Suppose Beijing were to argue that "The political status of China must be determined by the 1.3 billion people of China.  The political status of the 1.3 billion people of the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau must be collectively determined by the 1.3 billion people of the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau by popular referendum."

Polls have revealed that 95% of the public [in the Communist People's Republic of China] opposes Taiwan independence.  Does anyone doubt what the outcome of a referendum on Taiwan independence would be?

Good one, Bev.  And while we're at it, let's keep those rebellious Danes in the Reich by means of a referendum among all true-blooded Germanic Aryans!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

POSTSCRIPT:  Quite frankly, it's surreal to be talking about independence referendums in Taiwan when the Chinese Nationalist Party controls both the presidency and 75% of the legislature.

Independence referendum in Taiwan?  Not gonna happen.

For a long, long time.

A is Not A, Claim Unobjective "Objectivists"

Always a hoot when the Confucian collectivists at Taiwan's China Post invoke individualism (!) to rationalize Taiwan's annexation by the Chinese Empire.  On Wednesday, the paper even tried to get away with the dishonest suggestion that Ayn Rand would have been cool with that.

From the editorial, A thought experiment on 'right to self-determination':

The "right to self-determination" is routinely defined as the collective right of the people of a given geographical region to determine their own political status.

[...]

But this conventional definition, considered utterly non-controversial by mainstream political scientists, is in fact conceptually defective at its very core, and gets us into all sorts of trouble.  One might say that the politically-correct "national right to self-determination" is one of those things that we know for sure that "just ain't so".

Really?  Try telling that to the freed peoples of the Austro-Hungarian, British, Turkish and Soviet Empires.  "Hey -- ya'll have no national right to self-determination.  Howdya like them apples?"

Human beings do indeed have the inalienable right to determine their own political status.  But only individual human beings have this right, not "the people of a given geographical region."  As novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand explained, the term "individual rights" is a redundancy.  There is no other kind of rights and no one else to possess them.

OK, now that Rand has been injected into the whole Taiwan independence debate, let's see what her actual thoughts on secession were:

Some people ask whether local groups or provinces have the right to secede from the country of which they are a part. The answer is: on [purely] ethnic grounds, no. Ethnicity is not a valid consideration, morally or politically, and does not endow anyone with any special rights. As to other than ethnic grounds, remember that rights belong only to individuals and that there is no such thing as “group rights.”

Sounds like the lady was dead-set against it.  But there's a catch . . .

If a province wants to secede from a dictatorship [We're looking at you, China !], or even from a mixed economy, in order to establish a free country—it has the right to do so.  [emphasis added]

Now, that part about the "mixed economy" is actually a huge caveat.  After all, even the most capitalist countries in the world possess at least SOME elements of socialism. . .

But if a local gang, ethnic or otherwise, wants to secede in order to establish its own government controls, it does not have that right. No group has the right to violate the rights of the individuals who happen to live in the same locality. A wish—individual or collective—is not a right.

We can clearly see that Rand whole-heartedly approved of the right to national self-determination -- for free peoples.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:  Consistent with that secession quote, I just found some pretty strong support for Taiwanese independence over at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

Eat your heart out, Bevin Chu.  A is still A.  Eh?

UPDATE #2:  More from Rand herself --

[A free nation] has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other nations.

KMT Girly-Man Threatens To Sue Those Awful, Awful Hecklers

Taiwan's Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan proves that you're never too old . . . to be an honorary member of the Strawberry Generation:

Yeh was confronted on Sunday evening by two Taiwanese students as he arrived at a dinner for Taiwan’s diplomatic allies. The women asked him what title he was using at the WHO meeting and accused him of “selling out Taiwan.”

[...]

“I really don’t know what these people want,” a tearful Yeh said later at a press conference.

Now, don't you take that kind of abuse from those pretty young coeds, Weepy.  Stand up for your rights !

When asked about his confrontation on Sunday night with two Taiwanese students and his threat to file lawsuits against them when he returns home, Yeh said he did not want to discuss the incident.

“Everybody has the right to speak out. I endorse the rights of the two students to speak out. But, when you do [protest], you need to make sure what you do is legal and show proper respect to others,” Yeh said.

Oh, yeah.  The country's in really good hands when its ministers TURN ON THE WATERWORKS when confronted by the disaffected knee-sock and pony-tail set.

Communist party thugs in the World Health Assembly, beware.  There's a new sheriff in town. 

Name's Yeh.  "Strawberry Shortcake" Yeh.

(But can Taiwan's new "tuff" guy defend the country's interests against that ornery, mean and miserable sneak, The Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak?)

("Quickdraw" Strawberry Shortcake Yeh -- sans his blazing stack of subpoenas.  Image from Taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLAST FROM THE PAST:  Remember the days when former Taiwanese President Chen was mocked -- not for threatening his hecklers with lawsuits, but for merely answering back?

Leave it to Yeh Ching-chuan to make Chen Shui-bian -- Chen Shui-bian! -- look like He-Man in comparison.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:  Yeh cattily "forgives" the hecklers.

Minister of Health Yeh Chin-chuan forgave co-eds from Taiwan yesterday for insulting him at a Geneva hotel dinner party on Saturday.

Yeh told reporters in Taipei by telephone the students are "ignoramuses" for disrupting the party he hosted in honor of health ministers from Taiwan's diplomatic allies.

"They are unlettered, rude compatriots," said Yeh, who is attending this year's World Health Assembly meeting as minister of the Department of Health, Chinese Taipei.

"But I forgive them," he said.  [emphasis added throughout]

Seeking to bury the hatchet, the college girls generously followed suit:

"Yeh Ching-chuan is a thin-skinned, litigious, communist butt-kisser . . . but regarding his tyrannical threats to sue us, we forgive him.  We're big enough to do that . . .  After all, it's not HIS fault that he gets cranky as hell during that certain time of the month."

Taiwan Deathrace 2009 (or, How Taipei's Not-So-Finest Ran Over Two Senior Citizens At A Scheduled Protest Rally)

This isn't going to be the post I originally planned because one of the victims of the Taipei P.D. (a 68 year old) has had part of his leg amputated, and may wind up with brain damage.

Pretty.  Fucking.  Incompetent.

At least, that was my first reaction.  Maybe for an encore the cops could run over a couple of kids in a playground zone.

Second reaction:  This is what happens when the Taipei's law enforcement routinely undercounts the number of participants at these protests.  The men in the squad cars hear the low-ball figures, and discount the need to drive safely in the area.

Only 50,000 people?  Why, that's not so many.  We can afford to drive like maniacs only a few blocks away . . .

(Or, to use the playground analogy, which playground would you be more careful driving next to -- the one which catered to a school of 50 kids, or another catering 600?)

With further information, it appears that reaction one was off the mark:

Taipei prosecutors said yesterday that based on [the driver Taipei Police Officer Lin Chien-chih's] cellphone record, he was on the phone at 7:34pm, around the time of the accident.

Lin denies being on the phone.

Prosecutors said Lin told them he was driving between 30kph and 40kph, but the broken windshield indicated the car was traveling much faster. Witnesses told reporters at the site that the driver was going at least 80kph.

Prosecutors said Lin did not apply the brakes before hitting the two men.

That's not incompetence -- that's flat-out vehicular assault.  Moreover, I believe I was too quick to dismiss the initial assessment of demonstrators at the scene, who insisted that the police DELIBERATELY ran down the two elderly men.

Now that we know the police DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO HIT THE BRAKES, we ought to at least entertain the possibility that this crime was intentional.

Taipei City Police reacted as they usually do to such incidents.  By lying to the public:

Fang Yang-ning, head of the Taipei city Police Department's traffic police corps, said it was purely an accident.

[...]

Fang denied accusations by some other demonstrators that the police officers had purposely hit the two men.

In the absence of an official investigation, Fang was instantly and without error able to ascertain that the tragic event was PURELY AN ACCIDENT.  How fortunate for Taipei that it employs the dedicated Fang Yang-ning, who is not only an exemplary officer, but a clairvoyant one as well !

In contrast to the Move along, show's over attitude of the police, the prosecutors seem to be handling the case about right.  We'll see how long that lasts, though.  Taipei's prosecutors have demonstrated they can be a pretty crooked lot themselves, once they receive orders from the presidential office to bury a case.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Jun 10/09):  Surprise, surprise.  The case against police officers in the cruiser gets buried.  The winners of Taiwan's Deathrace 2009 are given the draconian punishment of a single demerit on their work record.

That'll learn 'em !

Twenty Percent, Right Off The Top

Taiwan's China Post, denouncing the country's main independence party's efforts to prevent recognition of Chinese diplomas in Taiwan:

. . . [sovereignty-minded] legislators would deny Republic of China students the right to determine their own futures.  They would deny them the right to attend mainland universities.  They would deny them the right to obtain a higher education because they could not afford the tuition on Taiwan.

Let's leave aside the irony of the China Post now posing a champion of the individual (the paper which obsequiously applauded Taiwan's martial law-era rulers as it mercilessly crushed the rights of individuals for 40 years).

No, let's instead look at the security implications of the policy.  Mr. Peabody, if you'll do the honors and set the Way-Back machine back to the 1970s:

Western liberals, politicians and academics alike saw higher-education exchange programs [with East Germany] as a chance to foster mutual understanding between the superpowers.  But for Communist spymasters such as Markus Wolf, the wily head of East Germany's foreign-espionage service, the Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung or HVA, foreign-intelligence wing of the Stasi, the programs had one use only: They served as a rich source for recruiting American and British students as long-term penetration agents who could be groomed to work their way into government jobs in their own countries -- or into other influential spots in journalism, business, higher education (including scientific and technical studies) or the military.

[...]

Based on a huge cache of hitherto secret East German intelligence documents, including complete Stasi mole files of two British academics code-named "Armin" and "Diana," Insight/BBC has established the Stasi had a high recruitment success rate among American and British exchange students. "Regardless of whether these were students from Britain or other countries, as a general rule one out of 10 attempts to recruit someone for the secret service were successful," says Pieter Richter, a former HVA analyst.  [emphasis added]

There you have it.  A full TEN PERCENT of American & British students who studied in East Germany returned home as communist spies. 

What would the number be for Taiwanese students studying in China, I wonder?  Fewer language barriers.  Fewer cultural differences to work against their recruiters' effectiveness.  A "Greater China" mentality already inculcated into many of them by a Chinese nationalist educational establishment . . .

So I'll say 20%.  Yes, twenty percent.  Give or take some change.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Postscript:  I seem to recall blogging on this subject a couple years back, and that 10% figure seems to ring a bell.  Worth repeating now, now that the policy isn't just a hypothetical anymore.

I'm Gonna Be Pretty Disappointed

If the women in the new Trek movie aren't wearing uniforms like this.

Y'know, if the whole Starfleet Academy thing doesn't work out, there's always a brilliant future hawking Taiwanese aphrodisiacs.