Public reaction to McDonald’s plans to expand into West Lake, a Chinese tourist landmark often referred to as “heaven on earth”, was predictably dismissive. The Qianjiang Evening News criticized the plan, writing, “In the future, will Uncle McDonald (Ronald McDonald) with his red hair, and big smile on his face, be sitting on a bench just metres away from the Broken Bridge?” Online netizens reacted much the same. “This is a joke,” one person wrote on Weibo. “Can we turn Mao’s old house into a KFC?”

However, the outrage was not enough to sway the proposal. In addition to McDonald’s, a Starbucks also opened on the property two months ago.

Before approving the proposal, former Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage, Chen Wenjin, argued the residence was a cultural resource and that any commercial proposals should pass the scrutiny of government agencies and experts.

Chen also said the administration would ensure that the residence’s facade and internal structure remain unchanged, and that the residence would continue to serve the public good.

Chiang Ching-kuo was given the two-story residence by the mayor of Hangzhou after the Kuomintang successfully repelled the Japanese invasion during World War II. Ching-kuo’s father, Chiang Kai-shek, was given another residence, also on the West Lake property. Chiang Ching-kuo is said to have planted many of the trees on the property.

After the Kuomintang was ousted from mainland China by the Communists, Chiang Ching-kuo eventually succeeded his father and became President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) where he enacted press and free speech reforms, and allowed local Taiwanese to obtain positions of power in the government.

This isn’t the first time Western fast food franchises have set up shop in culturally-significant locations. In 2007, following a campaign initiated by former CCTV anchor Rui Chenggang, public outcry forced Starbucks to close a store it had opened at the Forbidden City in Beijing.

The post Kuomintang Leader’s Former Home Turned Into… a McDonald’s appeared first on The Nanfang.

The ticket seller, an older man with one of those flat, sincere faces, tapped a stubby finger on a notice posted on the window. “Can’t make changes within one hour of the train leaving.”

I made a few tart comments that cast aspersions on the ancestry and good behavior of the idiots who thought up that rule.

“Ok, ok. It’s no problem,” he relented. “I’ll give you a seat.” I thanked him profusely and soon I was the proud owner of seat 23, car 6, for the next two hours. “But don’t do it again,” he warned. “Rules are rules.”

I was thinking about this in the context of Frozen Garlic’s excellent post on Hung Hsiu-chu winning the primary. He remarked:

In retrospect, this battle was a victory for front room politics. All the people who thought that the game in the front room was meaningless and that the real decision would be hashed out in the smoke-filled back room were rudely surprised. I’m convinced that if they could do it again, Wang and Wu would have simply registered for the primary. Hopefully this year’s experience will convince aspirants in future races to jump in and participate in the regular procedures rather than hoping for an old-style coronation. If you want the candidate’s sash, you need to seek it openly and aggressively. (I wonder if the Sunflower students are happy at this victory over black box politics!)

In fact, KMT Chairman Eric Chu had been battling for real rules in the primary process that had actual teeth, rather than backroom deals. Speaker of the Legislature Wang has been making running-if-my-party-needs-me noises, so I think there are still plenty of people still not convinced that backroom deals are dead. But what’s interesting is that Wang and Wu didn’t run because they figured, as always before, the KMT bigwigs would arrange events behind the scenes. The purpose of rules is to shaft lesser beings, not to apply to oneself…

The excellent writer Anon at Thinking-Taiwan reviews the Hung candidacy… he noted:

If such protest movements are an illegal and undesirable way to express public opinion, how about enacting change through the lead opposition party? That’s no good, either; Hung despises the DPP. She called it a troublemaker using populist tricks that will destroy the foundation for peace, close off the country, incite social hatred, and lead the people into destitution. A common trope of hers is that popular protests against KMT prerogatives are not manifestations of the will of the public; instead they are incited by the DPP and its ilk. For example, when asked about the high school history curriculum controversy yesterday, she said, “Don’t use the pure hearts of students to manufacture conflict.” 

Anon reviewed her positions and came to the same conclusion I did the other day: she’s totally out of touch with the mainstream in most of her positions. Yesterday she remarked that Taiwan independence was unconstitutional. She then went on to describe the problem of Taiwan’s people:

Hung said that what worries Taiwanese is the prospect of unification taking place on China’s terms, because China wishes to apply its “one country, two systems” formula in the unification of Taiwan, while Taiwan wants to see a unified China characterized by freedom, democracy and the rule of law.

Nope. What worries Taiwanese is annexation to China, period. Fullstop.

Even Ma, who prior to 2008 had taken the exact same position that Beijing did in saying that both sides of the strait should determine the future of Taiwan, shifted to the position that only Taiwan’s people could determine its future. He reiterated that last year (WantWant finds three instances of that since Nov of 2008). Hung in fact is to the right of Ma’s public statements (but note that Ma also paired that with the ROC Constitution in his Jun 2014 statement). Ma was able to grit his teeth and urk out that he was Taiwanese before each election and even leave Taipei for a “long stay” among hoi polloi outside Taipei. I’m very curious to see how Hung will handle that. Her comments about how the KMT has been forced to be quiet about its core beliefs (ThinkingTaiwan)…

Over these past years, we have lived as if we are inside the framework established by our opponents. When it comes to basic principles about the position of our country, and the core ideals of our party, we have fearfully forfeited the right to speak

…. suggest that she will go down with the ship, guns proudly spitting “I’m Chinese!” defiance in all directions. Solidarity had a good laugh on Twitter at her shock at being thought of Ma Ying-jeou v2.0.

Solidarity pointed me to a Storm media piece on early polls. TVBS offered a poll that showed Hung over the DPP’s Tsai by 3. The NCCU prediction market responded with a poll showing Tsai over Hung 50-29, with Tsai over Hung/Soong 44-22-21. Soong hurts them equally apparently. So concerned is the KMT over her candidacy that the legislative KMTers derailed constitutional negotiations by attempting to have the legislative and presidential separated as part of the deal.

I warned on this each time I mention Hung: it ain’t over yet. She still has to pass the Congress on Jul 19th. But nothing suggests that the July Congress will revoke this process and pick a candidate the old way.

Anon at Thinking-Taiwan noted that she’s a regression to the mid-1990s KMT. I think to understand how the backroom dealers were content with Hung and what this “regression” context is, we need to return to the 1990s. I wrote on this before:

In fact, in January of 1988, when Chiang Ching-kuo died and Lee ascended to the Presidency, a hardline faction of mainlander officers threatened a coup. The intervention of James Soong, who mediated the crisis, enabled Lee to retain power. The early years of Lee’s presidency were thus overshadowed by the conflict between Hau, point man for this faction (the “non-mainstream faction”), and Lee representing the Party Machine and the mainstream KMT factions, over the direction of the KMT, and the shape of the government. Lee moved Hau out of his position as Chief of the General Staff, into the post of Minister of Defense, and finally to the position of Premier in May of 1990. Hau was appointed to that position because of the continuing threat of hardliners who wanted to run Hau as an alternative Presidential candidate in the March 1990 election, and because the previous premier, Lee Huan, had sided with the hardline mainlanders against Lee Teng-hui (he was a close associate of Chiang Ching-kuo). In fact Hau would eventually run as the Veep on an alternative ticket with Lin Yang-kang in 1996.

This struggle between the more-Chinese-than-China, more-KMT-than-the-KMT faction led by Hau and the mainstream KMT led by Lee Teng-hui has now played out to its last bitter, pathetic end in the KMT: the non-mainstream faction has won the war and iced all mainstream candidates like Wang and even Chu (I suspect), but at the cost of the party itself. If there aren’t major changes, and soon, their candidate, like the ancient impersonator of the Meso-American god Xipe Toltec, will be paraded around the nation like royalty for a year before being flayed alive.

The post Following the KMT’s Rules appeared first on The Nanfang.

Twenty-five years I’ve been watching Taiwan politics. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed them so much.

I went off to Guguan on my bike yesterday planning to ignore the internet. I just wanted to come home to find everything resolved. Instead, it became more of a mess.

Not that I’m disappointed or anything.

The day opened with Apple Daily publishing an interview with President Ma Ying-jeou, who more or less ripped Eric Chu, the KMT Chairman, for not running.

“As party chairman, (Eric Chu) has the responsibility to find the most suitable candidate,” Ma told Apple Daily, a tabloid-style newspaper. “If that fails, he himself has decent qualities and should not dodge the responsibility that is his to shoulder.”

(Did you catch that? FocusTaiwan, the government’s own news source, referred to Apple Daily as a “tabloid-style newspaper.”)

Despite pressure from all sides, Chu again denied he was going to run for President.

“The decision not to run has subjected me to more pressure and criticism than if I had decided to run,” said Chu, who is widely considered as his party’s best chance of beating Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), chairwoman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in next year’s presidential elections. Chu said the decision not to compete does not mean he is ” biding his time or fears defeat,” but rather that he is honoring his promise of serving out his four-year term as mayor of New Taipei City, as promised during the local government election campaign last year.

As a KMT chairman, he said, he has been working to revive the party’s spirits since its crushing defeat in the local elections last November.

He has also been working for true unity of the party, Chu said at a press conference held at the KMT’s headquarters after the closing time for the collection of registration forms for the party’s presidential primary.

Noting that some people have been saying that he is refusing to run for president because he is afraid to lose, Chu said if that were the case he would not have run for the chairmanship of the party.

Serving as KMT chairman is “a difficult and underappreciated job,” said Chu, 53.

He said that if the KMT wins the 2016 election, the new president will serve concurrently as party chairman, and if the KMT loses, “I certainly will have to step down to take responsibility” for the loss.

He said, however, that if his decision not to compete in the presidential election will cause even more disarray and disunity in the party, he will step down as chairman.

Several sharp people I know have been saying since Chu became Chairman of the KMT months ago that he wouldn’t run for President. I have never believed it, assuming that even if he really didn’t run, all this kabuki theater would get him on board, eventually. But pressure from all sides has failed. In fact, there are calls already within the KMT for Chu to resign since he failed to provide a meaningful candidate (!).

After Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) on Friday apologized to supporters while saying he would not be joining the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary, some KMT lawmakers reacted angrily, blaming KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), with some calling for Chu’s resignation as chairman if the party ends up with a less-than-satisfactory candidate.

Ah, what a joy it is for me to be comprehensively wrong about Chu. I always thought he would come out. What a joy it is as well to see this acted out in public by KMT officialdom. My wife has been ROFL watching me walking around the house, grinning from ear to ear.

Solidarity has Chu’s speech in English here.

This means that the KMT really has no candidate, with the election eight months from now. That leaves:

On Saturday, Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), former Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良), and Huang Po-shou (黃柏夀), the chief secretary of Dayuan Township in Taoyuan County, were the only KMT hopefuls who collected registration forms for the party’s presidential primary.

It’s irrelevant who they pick from this bunch: Tsai Ing-wen will steamroller them. I will thoroughly enjoy watching former Vice President of JP Morgan and NSC director Douglas Paal come to Taiwan at election time and do his dog and pony show for… Huang Po-shou, a former township secretary with great ambition. Recall that Chu has already said that the KMT won’t be spending money on the Presidential campaign — whoever runs has to fund it on their own. A friend of mine on FB summed it up nicely:

Imagine if in 2008, knowing they’d lose because of Bush, none of the top Republicans ran for president, and the party was ultimately left with only these 3 primary candidates: former health secretary Michael O. Leavitt, far-right legislator Allen West, and the secretary of the GOP’s Kokomo, Indiana chapter. This is exactly what’s happening to Taiwan’s ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), right now.

Chu is probably saving money for the legislative elections which will take place the same day. But if the KMT goes with one of these inferior candidates, then the legislative election will take a huge hit.

When they lose, Chu will have to step down.

Speculation about Chu is heading in several directions. Chu doesn’t want to run because he wants to save himself for 2020 (he’ll be 57 then). Chu doesn’t want to run because he is gun-shy and out of his depth. Chu went to China and saw the light — Xi, no politician either and apparently unable to identify where his interests lay, treated him like a mentally defective farmhand who wanted to marry his daughter, instead of a prodigal son come home — and discovered he is Taiwanese, not Chinese. Chu doesn’t want to preside over a presidency married to Ma’s cripplingly stupid China policies. Chu doesn’t want to run because the KMT will lose both the election and New Taipei City in the by-election, and then Chu will have to resign from the Chairmanship, meaning that he will be left with nothing but memories. Chu doesn’t want to run because he really is committed to the people of New Taipei City. Chu doesn’t want to run because he never wanted to be Chairman either.

Whatever the reason, Chu doesn’t want to run. Even if they somehow draft him, he’ll be seen as a reluctant candidate, wounded by repeated denials. Recall that the KMT has another month before it is supposed to announce a candidate.

And there’s Hau, running the KMT on a day-to-day basis while Chu does other stuff. Like Chu (a former accounting prof, which also shows how the KMT uses the universities as job programs for mainlanders, one of the ways the KMT uses all the government and quasi-government and industry organizations as job programs for mainlanders), Hau is a mainlander and former professor who had greatness thrust upon him. One has to wonder whether he will have the same reaction as Chu.

And there’s Wang Jin-pyng, the Taiwanese Speaker of the Legislature who withdrew from the race on Friday after having his candidacy blocked by the Ma camp and the mainlander core. Recall that Wang is the leader of the Taiwanese KMT, or the “southern KMT”, the Taiwanese faction politicians who run the KMT at the local level and which the KMT is entirely dependent on for its local presence. The mainlander core didn’t want Wang because he isn’t a mainlander — not a Chinese. Nothing like ethnic chauvinism as a basis for political choices. That’s a giant middle finger to the party factions and to Taiwanese who are KMTers, because at the local level Wang is something of a hero in a local-boy-makes-good way. That won’t be good for party unity going into the election.

I want to put away a nice bottle of whisky for election day. Any suggestions?

UPDATE: DON’T MISS Solidarity’s excellent take on Eric Chu.
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Daily Links:

• FAPA rebuts Ma interview in WSJ
• Canadian immigration officers told to pay closer attention to Chinese + non-Chinese marriages
• Shortening work week could harm businesses, say businessmen.
• Taiwan’s indigenous people at the UN
• Family from India nabbed for heroin trafficking into Taiwan.
• VOA: Taiwanese weigh pros and cons of engagement with China.

The post The KMT Has No Presidential Candidate With 8 Months To Go appeared first on The Nanfang.