Teamwork

The current administration running the show here in Taiwan has done a lot in just a short period of time to muck things up in the key relationships with the United States and Japan. However, in at least one area, the three countries have found common ground. From the Daily Yomiuri ザ・デイリー読売 comes "Japan seeks WTO solution to EU tariff issue Taiwan, U.S. also to request world trade body to abolish duties on IT products". Some excerpts:

"Japan, Taiwan and the United States will ask the World Trade Organization on Aug. 29 to set up a panel charged with resolving the dispute over high tariffs imposed by the European Union on information technology imports to the EU market...Tōkyō, Taipei and Washington have insisted that the EU's tariff policy toward IT equipment imports, which they consider to be unfairly high, violates a WTO agreement...Japan, Taiwan and the United States have been at odds with the EU over its tariffs on three import items: liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors for computers, which can also be used for watching TV programs; all-in-one printers, which function as photocopiers, fax machines and scanners; and set-top boxes, which are used for converting signals for TV such as cable TV programs. Tōkyō, Washington and Taipei have imposed no tariffs on these three items under the WTO accord, which treats IT-related equipment imports as nontariff items. However, the EU has imposed a 14 percent tariff on imported LCD monitors, a 6 percent tariff on all-in-one printers and a 13.9 percent tariff on set-top boxes. The EU's tariff policy is based on its own assumption that LCD monitors are comparable to TV sets, and all-in-one printers to copying machines. The EU treats the three import items as home electrical appliances, meaning considerably higher tariffs are imposed on them...The WTO is expected to establish a panel, as sought by Tōkyō, Taipei and Washington, as early as September. But it likely will take the panel about two years to settle the dispute..."

No matter what else happens, the Europeans will always be there to gang up on!

And it looks like Mr. Ma has finally settled on someone to take over the post of Taiwan's top representative to Japan (rom the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ"Taiwan appoints Feng top envoy to Japan"):

"The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday the appointment of John Feng, an experienced diplomat and ruling Nationalist Party 中国国民党 heavyweight, as the island's top representative to Japan. The appointment of 62-year-old Feng to head the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office 台北経済文化代表処 — Taiwan's de facto embassy in Tōkyō 東京 in the absence of formal bilateral relations — ended weeks of speculation as to who would fill the post and when. The post has been vacant since Koh Se-kai 許世楷 resigned last month following a diplomatic row between Taipei and Tōkyō over the sinking of a Taiwanese fishing boat after it was struck by a Japan Coast Guard 海上保安庁 vessel near the disputed, Japan-controlled, Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島 in the East China Sea."

About bloody time.

Eat the Young

A gold medal for China's star hurdler Liu Xiang 劉翔 eludes, following his withdrawal from the Men's 110-meter hurdles at the Beijing Olympics. It's bad enough his dream of another Olympic gold medal has been shattered, but the poor guy now has to face the wrath of a disappointed nation, according to this article ("Hurdler Liu faces cyber-wrath in China") that appeared in the Daily Yomiuri ザ・デイリー読売. Nationalism is an illness, and the Chinese version of it is a particularly nasty strain, but apparently it also exists in parasitical form, and can begin to devour its host, at least judging from some of the comments directed at Liu from Chinese bloggers:

"...runaway soldier...cowardly act...1.3 billion people hurt--a new world record...Was this his last race after becoming rich?...You're finished!"

Hell hath no fury like a Chinese nationalist denied the chance to bask in his/her nation's glory. As one commenter noted:

"It [China] is an unusual society. Many Chinese like to shift responsibility and duty to others. If that person succeeds, he is revered. If the opposite happens, he will be condemned."

Is it any wonder I have little interest in these Games?

One clued-in, the other clueless

Two articles in the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ today, one by a writer who gets it, the other by someone who appears to have a tenuous grip on reality (no, it isn't Gregory Clark).

The always insightful Max Hirsch of Kyōdō News 共同通信社 writes of how "Taipei's next Tokyo envoy eludes in wake of Ma's handling of row":

"More than a month after Taiwan's envoy to Japan resigned his post, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九 faces a dearth of candidates he can trust to appoint as de facto ambassador to Tōkyō, revealing yet another stumbling block in bilateral relations..."

Hard to believe, yet the appointment process has so far failed to yield a replacement for the last representative, who was forced out by hardline elements in the ruling KMT 中国国民党:

"Koh Se-kai 許世楷, the last top envoy, resigned July 10 in the midst of a diplomatic row between Taipei and Tōkyō over a boat collision in disputed waters. Koh slammed Ma for his 'impulsive' handling of the row, which included recalling Koh and permitting a phalanx of Taiwan Coast Guard vessels to foray back into the waters to accompany a local protest boat. Prime Minister Liu Chao-shiuan 劉兆玄 threatened war on Japan over the disputed area in the East China Sea 東シナ海 that includes an uninhabited, Japan-administered chain of islets rich in fishery resources and possibly natural gas reserves."

The incident described above certainly did not get the Ma administration off on a good footing, and the president has been scrambling ever since to try and repair the damage he and his underlings have caused. Not only has a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島 needlessly been allowed to disrupt relations between Japan and Taiwan, but:

"...the incident also reignited suspicions in Japan that at worst he is anti-Japan, or at best indifferent toward Tōkyō. Reinforcing those fears is his alleged dithering over whom to appoint as top representative to Japan — a post Ma has made little mention of since taking office May 20. In fact, Ma's inaugural speech raised eyebrows for its complete lack of reference to Japan, the island's second-biggest trading partner after China and a potential security benefactor."

Sources in Ma's government claim there are not enough qualified Japan experts to choose from, but considering the close historical and commercial ties between the two countries, this is really hard to swallow. There are plenty of knowledgeable Taiwanese when it comes to Japanese affairs, but I suspect most of them do not share the China-centric focus of the mainlander-dominated KMT. As Koh puts it in the conclusion to the article:

"...Ma's policy focus on Beijing over Tōkyō is causing many senior Japan experts to get cold feet in considering the position...'The representative needs to have mutual trust with Ma, so that's why this has become a fairly difficult search,' (Koh) said."

None of this would make any difference to UCLA professor Tom Plate, whose hero worship of Ma just gets more and more embarrassing to read with each article he gets published. Seriously, this guy comes across as a teenage girl with posters of the ROC 中華民国 president adorning her bedroom walls. Check out some of these quotes from "Ma goes for Taiwan gold in matters of trust" (even that headline says something):

"A true winner came to Los Angeles earlier this month...a refreshing breeze in Chinese politics. He is smart (educated at the best university in Taiwan before earning a law degree from Harvard), good-looking and charmingly modest...he translated his own Chinese into English. He was measured and casually precise."

Isn't he just dreamy?! All this hero-worship on Plate's part has apparently blinded him to the realities of Taiwan, and its position vis-a-vis China:

"He (Ma) is Chinese, but he has had nothing to do with the Beijing Olympics."

It could be argued that Ma isn't Taiwanese, so perhaps Plate has it (unintentionally) right here after all, but I haven't come across any other Western writers referring to the man as being Chinese.

"...Ma — a former mayor of the capital city — is a refreshing breeze in Chinese politics..."

And here I thought that Ma had been involved in "Taiwanese" politics all this time. Silly me, I'm not an academic at a prestigious West Coast school.

"At a dinner (in Los Angeles) in a downtown hotel, speaking mainly to professionals with strong ties to Taiwan, he outlined an approach to relations with China that deserves enthusiastic U.S. support. The key to improving the special relationship between Beijing, T'aipei and Washington, he said, is to maintain and practice 'high-level trust' — adding that 'mistrust will only breed more tension' and possible conflict. Beijing's leadership doesn't 'like surprises' any more than the average American CEO. Cross-strait conflict is something that the U.S. absolutely doesn't want, China itself probably doesn't want, and Taiwan certainly should not want."

None of this represents any new or profound thinking on the situation between China and Taiwan, yet Plate seems to think some kind of great breakthrough has occurred. The Taipei Times had an editorial today suggesting otherwise, which we will get to in a moment. Meanwhile, Plate is on a roll:

"Ma hasn't yet visited China as president, but when the invitation comes, he looks ready to handle it. He respects Beijing and its achievements, and wishes their Olympics every success. For its part, Beijing needs to respect the people of Taiwan, whose hard work and dedication have turned the little island into one of Asia's pre-eminent economic Tigers. Taiwan, he said, must accept China's rise to the budding status of a superpower, though without humiliating kowtowing. That means its policy must have both 'wisdom' and 'flexibility' — rooted in basic principles of decency and humanity, while recognizing China's own special problems and special interests."

And do those "special interests" include the annexation of a for-all-intents-and-purposes sovereign state? Plate doesn't say, but he appears to have found someone else to share in the Ma lovefest:

"A former U.S. diplomat still active in the Taiwan-U.S. relationship breathed a sigh of relief while listening to Ma, whom he clearly regarded as a godsend. The previous Taiwanese president — from the island's opposing pro-independence political party — had practically ground him and Washington down with his confrontational policy toward Beijing. Pushing the envelope — or baiting Beijing — can work only if you don't fly over the edge while doing so. Ma would rather use an envelope to send a serious adult message than push it into a hazardous area merely for political effect. And his main message would be: Let us make peace, not war. Let us proceed as adult Chinese, with mutual admiration and trust. In the language of the Olympics, the degree of difficulty for this trick is very high. But if Ma can pull it off, he will have gone far and gotten the gold."

So the last president, in the view of Plate and the unnamed diplomat, was a childlike warmonger who was borderline insane. Thank goodness we have an "adult Chinese" like Ma to put everything right. I guess there is no such thing as an "adult Taiwanese", because such a person would not be very trustful of a regime that has committed untold numbers of human rights abuses on its own peoples, while continually threatening to bring death and destruction down on a "little island".

As far as I can tell, Tom Plate is not of an ethnic Chinese background, so I don't know why he seems so enthusiastic about delivering a country that, in his own words, has "their own democracy" into the hands of an autocratic dictatorship promoting the idea of a "Greater China". I doubt he will ever read the Taipei Times' take on the present administration in Taiwan, but even if he did, it probably wouldn't change the homo-erotic attraction he feels towards Ma Ying-jeou. The editors of the TT, however, are less than impressed by the government's "achievements" so far. In "A newer KMT method of torture", they compare the present state of affairs to the Chinese water torture:

"Nowadays, it seems like those drops of water are being applied to Taiwan’s forehead, with each droplet taxing the nation’s identity a little more each time. What’s worse is that — like a real victim of torture — Taiwanese appear to be strapped to a chair and fated to a long period of suffering. And the torturer is a tag team: the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

Drip: 'Chinese Taipei.' Drop: 'Chunghwa Post.' Drip: No WHO or UN application under the name 'Taiwan.' Drop: Our elected president is but a 'Mr.' Drip: The possible renaming of National Democracy Memorial Hall, after the murderous dictator the monument was built for."

So, Professor Plate, are renaming Taiwan Post to Chunghwa Post 中華郵政, applying for international organizations under the Olympic moniker "Chinese Taipei" (instead of as "Taiwan", or even the "Republic of China"), and the eventual restoration of the name of Chiang Kai-shek 蒋介石, a man responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Taiwanese, examples of a mature, responsible "Chinese" leader who will preserve Taiwan's "dignity"? Or are they the acts of a child bent on gradually handing over the fate of 23 million people to what, for many of them, is an alien regime? The Taipei Times concludes by writing of:

"...a blurring of the lines the Ma administration has undertaken and the confusing signals that make it increasingly difficult for the rest of the world to tell the difference between Taiwan and China. If those signals continue, the world could very well reach the conclusion that Taiwan just doesn’t care whether people can tell the difference between the two countries, which can only result in further isolation for Taiwanese."

Tom Plate apparently reached that stage a long time ago.

Amber does Taichū

I had been promising my daughter a train ride for the past week, and this Sunday I delivered on my promise. My wife has a cold, so she elected to stay home and rest this afternoon, leaving Amber and I to wander the streets of downtown T'aichung (Taijhong) 台中 for several hours. We began by catching the 12:20 local train 各駅停車 from Fengyuan (Fongyuan) Station 豊原駅. This being Taiwan, the train naturally arrived around 12:30. Here is Amber excitedly looking at the train as it is pulling into the station:

Amber enjoyed the train ride, but I wasn't too happy about the gauntlet she had to run through to get to a seat. People were reaching out to touch her as she walked by, and I sensed that it bothered her somewhat. However, daddy's lap made for a safe refuge, and she was able to enjoy the trip into Taichung. Exiting the station, we crossed over to Chungcheng (Jhongjheng) Road, and started walking north, pausing to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant with a Hida-Takayama 飛騨高山 theme (there were posters of Takayama all over the restaurant). Amber and I shared some pork cutlets and rice, then headed back outside.

Chikuang (Jiguang) Street is a supposed pedestrian mall filled with clothing stores and food stalls. Trouble was many of the shops were closed, and plenty of cars and scooters were driving along the allegedly vehicle-free lane. It seems to me that many in Taiwan just don't get it - if you truly want a better quality of life, a good start would be to actually respect the intentions behind setting up places like Chikuang Street. Instead of enjoying a pleasant stroll down a vibrant market road, Amber and I had to stick to dirty sidewalks, walking by shuttered storefronts and hundreds of parked scooters.

From Chikuang Street, we made our way over to Minch'uan (Mincyuan) Road, and turned right to visit a pair of old government buildings dating from the Japanese era. First stop was Taichung's original city hall and later Bureau of Transportation and Tourism building, dating from 1920. It's now an exhibition hall, and inside was a display of Peking Opera 京劇 costumes. It was too bad photography wasn't allowed indoors, as the building's interior was beautiful, and the opera exhibit was pretty good too (Amber especially liked the dragon motifs). Nonetheless, it's great to see an old structure like this one being put to good use, instead of being torn down and replaced by something more "modern". Across the street is the current City Hall, which was built in 1924. The Taichung city government has had long-standing plans to move to a location further north in the city. If that does happen, I hope something will be done to preserve the attractive structure, just like its neighbor.

Next, we walked along Tzuyou (Zihyou) Street, an area known as Taichung's "cake street". Amber wanted to go into one bakery, which we did, and emerged with a couple of pastries. The thing I couldn't understand was, while there were plenty of bakeries to choose from, none of them (at least from what I could see) had any tables where you could enjoy what you had just purchased, so we ended up taking our treats to a branch of 85°C Coffee. Amber didn't seem to mind much:

Following a brief detour through Herbal Medicine Street, we reached the final destination of our walk, Taichung Park, a city landmark laid out by (who else?) the Japanese back in 1903. It was here that Pamela picked us up in the car for the drive back to Fengyuan (Taichung Station would have been pretty hectic around 5pm on a Sunday). While waiting for my wife, Amber and I walked through part of the park. Or at least I walked, as Amber was running everywhere. Taichung Park is a popular meeting place on Sundays for Taichung County's Southeast Asian community, who generally have only this day of the week off, and use it to get together with their compatriots at the park. Several of them were quite interested in Amber, and my daughter enjoyed the attention. Who wouldn't?

And thus a father-daughter Sunday afternoon outing came to an end. If the route we took sounds familiar, it's outlined on pages 238-239 of "The Rough Guide to Taiwan". Had it been just me, I would have been pretty disappointed with the suggested course. Despite all the pronouncements of the city government, downtown Taichung is still pretty rundown and decrepit in parts, and doesn't seem to be getting any better. Amber, however, really enjoyed herself, and never tired, despite all the walking around we did (though she did fall asleep in the car on the way back to Fengyuan). So let me pass along my thanks to the editors at RT.

大坑でマイケルとハイキングをしている

I joined up with Micheal Turton this morning for a short walk on a couple of trails in the Tak'eng (Dakeng) area. Starting out from the parking lot for Trails 6, 7 and 8, we first went down to a cemetery. Being Ghost Month 盂蘭盆, I would've thought the graveyard would have been a busy place, but Micheal pointed out the spirits were probably out wandering the earth at that time in the morning. Being an eminently practical fellow, he decided the quickest route was to walk through the cemetery, rather than on the road going around it:

The weather was the clearest I've seen it in ages. The view stretched all the way to the foothills of Nant'ou (Nantou) County 南投県, approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) away. T'aichung (Taijhong) 台中, it goes without saying, looked great under the blue skies. Here's a view into the city courtesy of the zoom lens:

The hot weather (in addition to the morning walkers) kept most of the local lifeforms hidden away, but there a lot of dragonflies out and about. I unintentionally got a shot of this one in "Star Trek" lighting mode. You know, whenever Captain Kirk met an attractive woman, she would always be backlit in soft light:

A last glimpse towards the city down below, before the trail turned inward, and eventually back down to the parking lot:

いろいろな事

Several articles have appeared in the media in recent weeks lamenting the damage being done to Taiwan's relations with the United States and Japan by the administration of Mr. Ma 馬英九. Today's Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ has one such story, entitled "Taiwan's Ma in damage control over Japan ties", which points out how:

"Japan (is) increasingly worried over Ma's attitude toward Tōkyō and his handling of ties with rival China. Increasingly acute, those concerns have prompted Ma to scramble, albeit quietly, for damage control before T'aipei-Tōkyō ties deteriorate beyond repair."

In the wake of his government's ridiculous handling of the Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島 incident, and therefore:

"Eager to calm nerves in Japan, Ma has assigned Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng 王金平 to articulate his policies and lead a delegation of lawmakers on a goodwill visit. Taipei's top envoy for China, Chiang Pin-kun, is also scheduled to visit Tōkyō later this month. Unlike Wang's trip, news of Chiang's upcoming Japan mission has been subdued, with few officials commenting on his itinerary and objectives."

Regarding the latter envoy, the article notes that:

"...Chiang is also a Japan affairs expert and ruling Nationalist Party 中国国民党 vice chairman, and is thus uniquely positioned to soothe Tōkyō over what seems to be its greatest concern — that Ma is moving Taiwan too close to China. For regional security, the stakes are high, with the (Taiwan) strait representing a buffer zone between the U.S.-Japan alliance and a rising China, whose growing military, economic and diplomatic clout poses challenges to the balance of power. As chairman of Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation — the semiofficial agency in charge of direct contact with Beijing — fewer Taipei officials are better versed in cross-strait relations than Chiang, who...received instructions from Ma to portray those warming relations as beneficial to Japan."

After pointing out how the last sentence above is the basically the kind of lip-service Ma pays when he meets Japanese officials (has the JT got this guy pegged, or what?), the story concludes by observing that:

"Domestically, behind-the-scenes damage control measures have also emerged, with a Cabinet meeting last month focusing on ways to improve relations with Tōkyō. The flurry of activity comes after ties were sent reeling in June after a Japanese patrol boat rammed a Taiwanese fishing vessel."

It's too early to tell how much of this is genuine, and how much is for the sake of superficiality, but in any case, Ma has no one but himself to blame for the current mess. Not that he has accepted any responsibility. Not coincidentally, perhaps, former president Lee Tung-hui 李登輝 has decided now would be a good time to pay another visit to Japan ("Ex-President Lee reportedly to visit Japan"):

"Lee is scheduled to visit Okinawa Prefecture 沖縄県 from Sept. 22 to 25 and deliver an address at the University of the Ryūkyūs 琉球大学 on the second day of the visit...It will be the 85-year-old Lee's fourth visit to Japan since stepping down as president eight years ago."

On a completely different note, thanks to some great posts (and posters) on YouTube, I've been able to hear some great songs that I used to listen to on KDVS, 90.3 FM, out of UC Davis (my alma mater), back in the mid-late 1980's. Here is a sampling of tunes making this post-Baby Boomer/Gen Xer nostalgic (but not dismissive of today's music, either. I try to keep an open mind, a la John Peel):

"Last White Christmas" by the Basement Five

"Non-Alignment Pact" by Pere Ubu

"Across the Sea" by Salem 66

"Discipline" by God's Gift

The failures of a father in Kōri

I blew it today. All week we had been telling our daughter that she would have the opportunity on Sunday to ride a horse, and Amber naturally was very excited. So today we drove over to the Houli Horse Farm, in the neighboring town of Houli 后里. This day was also the last in the 2008 Musical Instruments Festival in Taichung County, not so coincidentally being held at the very same horse ranch. Houli, for some inexplicable reason, is the "saxophone capital of the world", so saxes were in abundance this afternoon at the festival (along with other kinds of instruments). Naturally, the place was packed with families, but everyone was in a good mood. Things were looking up, and Amber enjoyed feeding bread pieces to the carp, ducks and geese:

Then came time for the horse ride, and it was here that things went wrong. We bought tickets for Pamela and Amber to go a brief couple of laps around a small field on a horse, and while my wife got in line to wait for our turn, I took Amber over to some stables nearby to get a close-up look at the horses there. One horse walked over to get a closer look at my daughter. A young worker at the horse farm asked Amber if she would like to pet the horse, and Amber was happy to do so. So far, so good. Then the animal started to get closer to her, with the worker reassuring us it only wanted to "kiss" my little girl. And here was when I made a mistake in judgment. I should have realized the horse was getting too close, but I didn't, and the next thing everyone knew, it had one of Amber's fingers between its teeth! I managed to quickly get her finger out, but not quickly enough, as she was left with a bite mark and a bit of blood on the middle finger of her left hand. Worse of all, her mood had changed instantaneously from excitement to unhappiness. And sure enough, when we returned to Pamela, Amber was no longer very enthused about getting to ride a horse. We tried to put in her in the saddle, but after moving for only a few meters, the horse's attendant explained that a crying child only serves to make a horse nervous and upset, and so Pamela had to finish the ride on her own. Instead of getting to take pictures of a happy, smiling young girl enjoying her first ride on a horse, I instead had to comfort a scared child who wanted nothing to do with horses, at least on this day. Way to go, dad!

The rest of the afternoon wasn't a complete washout. Getting to go on the swings, not to mention the chance to beat up on 7-Eleven's mascot Open Chan...:

...can do wonders for the psyche of a traumatized child. Still, if I had only acted fast enough, all of us would have had a much better outing this afternoon, and my daughter would not now be so leery of horses (her finger is still a little swollen and red from the bite, but otherwise she's fine). Someday we'll try again to get her on a horse (and when we stopped off at a pet store on the way home to get some food for our cat, Amber wasn't afraid to pet some of the dogs there). If she's still afraid of the beasts then, I'll have only myself to blame. It's a good thing we don't observe the Taiwanese version of Father's Day, which always falls on August 8 - I certainly didn't do anything today that deserved thanks.