Rant: Ma Ying-jeou Is A Dirtbag

We all already knew that, but it's cathartic occasionally to say so.

Taiwan: Ma Re-Elected

UGH.  The Cine-Sib called to vent this morning.  We're not at all happy with this, Ma, or the KMT.  Still, voter turnout was estimated at more than 70% with about 13.5 million votes cast, and about 800,000 votes made the difference between Ma and the DPP's Tsai.  It would have been nice to have a woman president.  Still, here is one small consolation: James Soong fared miserably in third place.

45 US Senators Want F-16s for Taiwan

Check this out.  More here. See the 45 senators' letter to Obama dated May 26.  While I'm gratified that 45 senators have some grasp of what's at stake, I'm pessimistic because the top leadership (*cough* Ma!  *cough* Obama! *cough*)  is simply so ... well, apparently clueless of said stakes.  Take a look at this piquant observation by Michael Turton:

The F-16s aren't coming here because the Ma Administration doesn't really want them and the Obama Administration doesn't want to sell them -- Ma is just making noise -- and because, as a friend of mine and I were just discussing tonight, there's a growing spirit of resignation in DC that Taiwan is circling the drain. Apparently everyone has forgotten the simple lesson that you don't make the monster smaller by feeding it. I'm glad I won't have to be the official who has to explain to the public why the US wouldn't defend 23 million people in an allied democracy with its own armed forces but will go to war over some uninhabited rocks in the ocean because of the US-Japan Security Treaty.

*Headdesk*  In a similar vein, one might see a parallel with another tiny country that is an embattled allied democracy with its own armed forces.  (At least that country has a decent head of state instead of the disgraceful squish that Ma is.)  At least both nations have some solid Congressional support ... but that's not enough.

Taiwan: Ma and the Military

*Sigh.*

Taiwan: Abysmally Unpopular Ma Ying-jeou -- and Disassembling Bad Analyses Thereof

Check out this recent post from the always-good View From Taiwan. Michael takes a look at an odd piece of recent "analysis" that, in his words:

Sometimes not too bad, sometimes completely wrong, Rigger [the analyst in question] mostly sounds like a colonialist missionary trying to explain to the audience at home, in a fair and open-minded manner, the beliefs of the local heathens, which he understands in terms of his own Christianity. . . Rigger does not appear anywhere to get the complexities of local politics. The whole piece is framed in the best Establishment style by the cross-strait relationship, as if Rigger were simply squinting through a telescope on the banks of the Potomac at Taiwan.

Alas, this is all too frequent a trait of "analysis" about Taiwan.

Taiwan: In the Aftermath of Legislative Elections

Here's some analysis of the KMT's recent poor showing. My favorite blurb from it:

Many Washington analysts need to stop assuming that Taiwan wants to be absorbed by the Chinese leviathan and made its 34th province.

Well, DUH!

I don't know a single Taiwanese who wants to be eaten up by the undemocratic mainland behemoth. And the telegenic Ma Ying-jeou's popularity is falling through the floor.

More here, with comparison of US and Taiwan's political atmospheres.

Conversations with the Cine-Sib, Plus "Sherlock Holmes" Movie Review Haiku

It's great to be back with the Cinema-Mad Sibling and our friends! Yesterday the Cine-Sib and I went to watch "Sherlock Holmes" with La Parisienne and Foxtrot (yay!).

Now, the post is entitled "Conversations with the Cine-Sib," so here are a couple notable quotables ending with his haiku review of the Holmes flick.

On the current president:

"Obambi's just like Ma (Ying-jeou)! He gives great speeches and looks pretty, but then you elect him and find out that his policies are crap and that the guy's a d*****bag."

(Here's an example.)


On the Pantybomber/Undi-bomber/Boxers-or-Briefs Bomber:

You know, gentle reader, this may finally shut up all those multiculti apologists and security ostriches who just want to talk to terrorists and appease them in the hope of getting them to stop trying to murder people. Because ...

"How do you reason with a guy who's willing to set his own junk on fire?"


And finally . . . *drum roll please* . . .

The Cine-Sib Haiku Review of "Sherlock Holmes":

Finally it's here
What a Holmes movie should be
The game is afoot.

Surprisingly good
Completely reinvented
Bring on the sequel

Characters are real
Flawed but all have certain depth
Believable, yeah

Yes, he liked it so much that he wrote 3 haiku instead of just 1. My own review will be online shortly. UPDATE: My full review is now online.

OK, now I'm off to make eggs Benedict for the MM clan.

Racism in China: A Reality Show and The Black Pearl

OK, silly movie title shout-out aside, this example of racism in China is illuminating in a sad way. I suppose we could call it "bumblebee racism" since it's yellow-on-black. It's the story of Lou Jing, whose mother is Chinese and father is African-American:

" . . . I often got more attention than the other girls. It made me feel strange," Lou [Jing] said.

The reality show hosts fondly called her "chocolate girl" and "black pearl." The Chinese media fixated on her skin color. Netizens flooded Web sites with comments saying she "never should have been born" and telling her to "get out of China."

. . . "She used to wonder why she had black skin," said one classmate. "We thought about this question together and decided to tell her it's because she likes dark chocolate. So her skin turned darker gradually."

Another classmate weighed in, "We said it's because she used to drink too much soy sauce."

RELATED POST: Ethnic tensions in South Korea. Also, racial chauvinism by Ma Ying-jeou.

Taiwan: China Continues Its Military Deployment

Beijing's charm offensive and feckless President Ma's conciliatory policies have not done anything to reduce the actual risk. Dignified Rant has the latest, which comes with this quote:

"Despite the easing of tensions across the Strait, China has not reduced its military deployment targeting Taiwan," the defence ministry said in its annual report.

"China has continued its arms build-up to the point that it has tipped the military balance in the Taiwan Strait," the report said, referring to China's inventory of 1,500 ballistic and cruise missiles.

WELL, DUH, PEOPLE! See too what View From Taiwan has to say.

Taiwan: US Troops Land with Typhoon Aid

American troops are in Taiwan for the first time in 30 years, and they are on a humanitarian mission.

(OK, I await the first wild-eyed crazy campus uber-leftist to yell, "US out of Taiwan!")

On the other hand, some folks are quite pleased to see the Americans, who left from their base in Okinawa. I for one am very happy indeed to see my home country help out my ancestral country. I just wish those GIs could stay.

Oh, and the indispensable Michael Turton notes that thus far Taiwan has refused military aid from Beijing. OK, but there's no rescue for Ma Ying-jeou, whose approval rating is in the basement (down to a miserable 29% post-typhoon from over 50% recently). The basement's flooding, Ma.

More: China has sent some prefabricated houses, and the always-dependable Aussies have sent medical supplies, as did Singapore, Great Britain, and Israel. South Korea has sent rescue workers.

By the way, my dad is back in America from his trip to Pingtung. He's fine, and he reports seeing the water and buildings collapsing, including a hotel that later filmed by CNN while it fell into a huge rush of flood water. Yikes.

Almost forgot: here's how to help if you like.

Taiwan: Post-Typhoon Political Fallout

Ma Ying-jeou is looking all wet. Is this his Katrina moment? Or his Lien Chan redux moment? Ma, supposedly so telegenic and charismatic and all that, is behaving like an idiot by refusing to take any responsibility, and he's deservedly getting HAMMERED. For goodness sake, he's been blaming everyone else -- including the weather service.

UPDATE: Even the New York Times is covering this story.

Oh, and here's a terrible anecdote that nonetheless makes me more convinced that ever that (a) you can't depend on government for things, and (b) there is no substitute for self-reliance:

On Monday, during an earlier tour of his waterlogged nation, Mr. Ma was seen promising a bulldozer to a man who was searching for the body of his father. Two days later, after failing to persuade officials to make good on the pledge, the man, Lee Yu-ying, was forced to rent his own equipment to dig out his father’s mud-encased car. “What kind of help was that?” Mr. Lee asked TVBS, a cable news channel.

Poor Mr. Lee.

Taiwan: Ma's Empty Image

Here is a damning critique of Ma. If you read it, though, you might see a slight parallel to another good-looking leader who is, alas, more or less disastrous.

Blurb about Ma:

The unfortunate reality for all Taiwan citizens is that Ma's image as a superior leader has been built on the incompetence of others and the fact that his relatively high approval rates were derived from his personal image instead of appreciation for his actual (in)competence and the lackluster performance of his administrative team.

Indecisiveness and lack of transparency in decision-making, inability to impose internal discipline, excessive uses of double-standards in political manoeuvring and outright opportunism constitute Ma's political weaknesses.

Hmmmmmm.

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? Taiwan to Reduce Its Military

Here is the news story. Add Dignified Rant's commentary.

Ma Ying-jeou is a FREAKING DISASTER. He could go down in history as the guy who presided over Taiwan's destruction as an independent democratic state. I cannot BELIEVE the sort of news I hear coming out of Taiwan. Oh, plenty of people are furious as all get out, but Ma is calling the shots. Does he just not understand the dangers here? Is he that naive that he actually believes Beijing's protestations of good will? Or is he and the KMT perfectly happy to sell out the democrats in exchange for goodies and privileges as imperial satraps to Beijing?

Excuse me while I go beat my head against the wall.

Taiwan: Press Freedom Declining in China's Shadow

Read the 2009 edition of Freedom House's annual press freedom report (if you like charts, look at this PDF) and then read this analysis.

On the Taiwan front, there is disturbing news indeed. Last year, Taiwan was rated as Asia's freest press; this year the honor goes to New Zealand (if you want to argue about ethnic Asianness, then I can tell you that Japan is the freest large Asian nation). Last year, Taiwan was ranked 32 in the global survey; this year it falls to 43.

(For comparison, the US is 24, the UK and Canada are 27, and Australia is 38. #1 went to -- drum roll, please! -- Iceland. Dead last on the list? North Korea.)

See this editorial by Leon Chuang, chairman of the Association of Taiwan Journalists. He writes, among other things:

The lesson is that if Taiwan’s media cannot resist penetration by China, Taiwan will before long go the same way as Hong Kong.

President Ma Ying-jeou and his government should bear full responsibility for this black mark on the record of their first year in office.

Hong Kong's press freedom rating, by the way, has dropped from "free" to "partly free." China, in case you're wondering, is rated "not free" by Freedom House.

Things do not look good at all for either HK or Taiwanese media. Wake up, people.

Taiwan: Beijing and the KMT's Shared Goals

This article ends with this terrible (but true) observation:

"...the KMT and the Communists share the same goal: One China free of the DPP."

Taiwan: Chiang's Legacy and Historical Revisionism

I've been so busy ranting about taxes that I haven't looked back at Taiwan in a while, but I just did, and I'm not thrilled to see the KMT prancing around.

Indulging in a little historical revisionism mingled with current self-preening, are we, KMT? Taiwan News, though, is calling them on it. Blurb (my emphasis in boldface):

The ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang)'s celebration of the centenary of the late president Chiang Ching-kuo, the autocratic son and successor of KMT dictator Chiang Kai-shek, marks a major step in the restored KMT regime's attempted "historical cleansing" of the Taiwan people's "quiet revolution" of democracy.

The taxpayer financed commemorations for the late KMT leader have included a mountain of "pulp panegyrics" and exhibitions, a music concert, a website (www.cck.org.tw) and an official memorial service topped off by a 11,000 Chinese character essay by President Ma Ying-jeou, who is transparently positioning himself as his mentor's political successor.

In his address posted on Friday, Ma lauded the younger Chiang for launching the so-called "10 Major Construction Projects" in the early 1970s, improving the livelihood of the Taiwan people and creating an economic miracle" and "guiding democratic reform and lifting the freeze in cross-strait relations" with the People's Republic of China which is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, which expelled Chiang Kai-shek's KMT regime from the China mainland in 1949.

Ironically, Ma's keynote account is more noteworthy for what it omits than for what it includes.

For example, readers will look in vain for any mention of the younger Chiang's role as the mastermind of the KMT martial law regime's security network in the 1950s and 1960s and his role as the hands-on executor of the "White Terror" purge of alleged "communists," Taiwan independence advocates, liberal dissidents and rivals for power that cost the lives of at least 5,000 mainlanders and native Taiwanese, nearly 30,000 imprisoned political prisoners and the destruction of tens of thousands of families.

Learn the history! That way you can recognize whitewashing when you see it.

The editorial does have a firecracker of an ending, though:

But the very fact that Ma and the rest of the KMT leadership are unwilling to confront the true and full history of Chiang Ching-kuo and exposes their fear of the historical memory of the Taiwan people's successful if imperfect democratic revolution in the face of the incompetence of the restored KMT government.

The Taiwan people should never forget that our democracy was not a "gift" but a priceless treasure which the blood, sweat and work of hundreds of thousands of activists and the votes of millions of ordinary citizens "repossessed" from a dictatorial regime.

We should also never forget that we did it once and can do it again.

YES.

More here.

Taiwan: the President and the Yellow Emperor

As usual, Michael Turton has the goods. Read his post. Here is a blurb from him to get you started:

Racial chauvinism, demonstrated in Ma's personal honoring of the Yellow Emperor with its Yasukuni-like implications, is a powerful component of Ma's thinking, and his fostering of a retrograde Han chauvinism/superiority is an important affirmation of the remarks of people like Hsing Yun or GIO master blogger Kuo Kuan-ying. Indeed Ma criticized Kuo's comments by saying that everyone was a Son of the Yellow Emperor, affirming the Han Chauvinism that drove them even as he distanced himself from that chauvinism's more odious expressions. In terms of creating a civil society with a Taiwan identity at its heart, this is a step backwards.

Dang it, Taiwanese citizenship has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. I daresay what "a civil society with a Taiwan identity at its heart" evokes is being part of a free society with equal rights and protections for all members where "Taiwan" means a sovereign democracy, not a reductive blood tie. Not all Taiwanese are Han! And anyway, my dad is Hakka.

There are enough instances of bad history between Taiwan's many people groups -- history that is slowly being overcome -- without Ma now banging the drum of chauvinistic Han identity. I hate identity politics! They always -- always -- end up being divisive and reductive.

I won't even open the can of worms that is mainland Communist China's conception of Han-ness or the political/expansionist idea that "hey, everyone is Chinese, really, so it's OK if we absorb these groups even if they don't want to be absorbed because they're Chinese too and all Chinese should be under one big Han umbrella (i.e., the CCP)."

Annual Pentagon Report on Chinese Military Power -- with an Eye on Taiwan

Here is a news piece, a blurb from the Dept. of Defense, and the report itself (in PDF format).

Here's a bit from the report on Taiwan specifically:

The PLA’s modernization vis-à-vis Taiwan has continued over the past year, including its build-up of short-range missiles opposite the island. In the near-term, China’s armed forces are rapidly developing coercive capabilities for the purpose of deterring Taiwan’s pursuit of de jure independence. These same capabilities could in the future be used to pressure Taiwan toward a settlement of the cross-Strait dispute on Beijing’s terms while simultaneously attempting to deter, delay, or deny any possible U.S. support for the island in case of conflict. This modernization and the threat to Taiwan continue despite significant reduction in cross-Strait tension over the last year since Taiwan elected a new president.

Feeling a bit queasy yet? (And note how Ma's feckless attempts at cross-Strait "peace" have done NOTHING to defuse Beijing's determination to quash independent Taiwan.) Try this:

Since 2000, China has continued its build-up of conventional ballistic missiles, building a nascent capacity for conventional short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) strikes against Taiwan into what has become one of China’s primary instruments of coercion, not only of Taiwan but of other regional neighbors. In 2000, China’s SRBM force was limited to one “regimental-sized unit” in southeastern China. China has expanded the force opposite Taiwan to seven brigades with a total of 1,050-1,150 missiles.

Note the updated number of missiles on the Chinese coast, all pointed straight at Taiwan. When I first started blogging, the number was around 800. Today it is approximately 1100 and counting. This sort of stuff always makes me laugh bitterly whenever people try to say that Taiwan is the belligerent troublemaker.

Add too China's recent bullyish behavior toward the US Navy in the South China Sea.

Beijing has been ramping up its military capability. It is absolutely imperative to keep an eagle eye on what the CCP is up to.

I end with this unsettling bit on Taiwan specifically, because I'm frankly biased that way. My emphasis in boldface.

Since 2000, the military balance in the Taiwan Strait has continued to shift in Beijing’s favor, marked by the sustained deployment of advanced military equipment to the Military Regions opposite Taiwan. In the 2002 report, the Department of Defense assessed that Taiwan “has enjoyed dominance of the airspace over the Taiwan Strait for many years.” This conclusion no longer holds true. With this reversal, China has been able to develop a range of limited military options to attempt to coerce Taipei.

Taiwan: 2 Views on Current Crossroads

See these recent posts by Dignified Rant and View From Taiwan, linking to a recent Nerdmoot on Taiwan security issues.

Don't even get me started on the fecklessness of Ma, my long-time soapbox of the military "balance" in the Taiwan Strait, or the sheer insanity of Ma's ingratiating policies toward a China that has made virtually no meaningful concessions at all. Throwing a couple of perniciously named Trojan Pandas across the Strait does NOT count.

Taiwan + Nerd News: President Ma's Harvard Mentor Offers Advice

I've been too busy to post much about the ongoing mess in Taiwan (go see various posts and links at Turton's blog), but I can't resist posting this one particular news story.

Most of you probably know by now that Ma Ying-jeou studied at Hahvahd in his student days. Now, in the middle of the political and legal circus surrounding the indictment of former president Chen Shui-bian, Ma's Hahvahd mentor and Nerd Lord has gone public with criticism and advice for his former student. Here is a piece of it:

The Harvard Law School mentor of Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou said Saturday that his former student needs to urgently act to prevent an "increasingly disturbing circus atmosphere" from prejudicing his predecessor's right to a fair trial.

. . . "It is as if there are people trying to repudiate all the progress that Taiwan has made over the past 15 years," he said, referring to the island's gradual transition from dictatorship to multiparty democracy.

. . . Cohen said Ma's handling of the Chen case revealed an apparent choice to placate the extremist wing of his ruling Nationalist Party rather than reaching out to Taiwan's broad political middle.

Ma, I hope you're paying attention. You still have a lot to learn, grasshopper.

Cohen's comments follow an unspeakably disgraceful episode involving various lawyers, prosecutors involved in the Chen case, and the Justice Minister himself (details here).