Sizihwan Bay, a popular tourist attraction featuring long sandy beaches located in the south-western corner of Taiwan, has been severely impacted by traffic congestion and the 4,000 mainland visitors it receives on a daily basis.

Residents are not satisfied with the local government’s response to simply limit tour buses and provide better public transportation, and have threatened to block streets to keep mainlanders out.

In an effort to ease cross-strait relations, the Taiwanese government has allowed free-roaming individual permits to residents of a growing number of mainland cities. On Wednesday, Taipei granted this privilege to another 11 mainland cities, bringing the total to 47.

More than 1.18 million mainlanders visited Taiwan on individual permits in 2014, the most since June 2011 when the policy was first introduced, and twice the total of mainland tourists in 2013.

The Kaoshiung government is warning Sizihwan Bay residents that local tourism may suffer if they block roads, although that seems to be what they are seeking.

The post Taiwan Tourist Town Threatens to Block Roads to Keep Mainlanders Out appeared first on The Nanfang.

The Grand Hotel reopened its Yuan Yuan restaurant on March 11 with an expanded menu of Jiangsu and Zhejiang delicacies and Taiwanese dishes.

That’s right. Jiangsu and Zhejiang have delicacies, but Taiwan? Just dishes. After raving about delicacies for the emperor and favorite foods of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the article does an “oh yeah” at the bottom and mentions that there are “Taiwanese dishes” for foreign guests. The mindset behind the article is rather obvious.

Food is one of the most important sites for KMT colonization of Taiwan, and it is probably its greatest victory. Whereas almost all other KMT strategies for colonizing Taiwanese minds, from the claim that Taiwanese are Chinese to the rewriting of Taiwan’s history, have generated resistance from locals, there has been no resistance to the KMT’s exploitation of food and food tourism.

Taiwanese cuisine was invented in the Japanese period. Prior to that period there was no such thing as Taiwanese cuisine, it was all Chinese food. Colonizers all face the same problem: having colonized X, they must define what X is. They must define it so that it is intelligible to the colonized and to the citizens of the colonizer’s homeland, and it must be defined as inferior to the colonizer’s own culture. Early on in the Japanese period restaurant menus were referring to Taiwanese cuisine — it first appeared in 1898 in the print media — and state banquets offered “Taiwanese” dishes as a way to help construct and define what Taiwan was, because, as officials reported, Chinese and Taiwanese foods were not easily distinguished. The colonial government even published a Taiwan kanshu kiki (Records of Taiwanese Customs) monthly from Jan 1901 to Aug 1907, which contained Taiwanese banquet menus and other menus as evidence of what Taiwan culture was.

This evolution began officially with the Taiwan Pavilion erected at the Fifth National Exhibition in Osaka in 1903, for which 6,000 items were shipped over from Taiwan to ensure “authenticity.” Chefs were brought over from Taiwan to prepare the dishes, and young ladies were brought over to keep the diners company, young women being a significant feature of Taiwanese restaurants during the Japanese colonial period (for details, see Embodying Nation in Food Consumption, a PHD thesis for Leiden by Chen Yu-ren).

This creation of a Taiwanese cuisine was a fait accompli when the KMT came over and recolonized Taiwan with a faux Chinese culture. The KMT followed the same strategy it followed with Taiwan culture in general: it subsumed Taiwanese cuisine as a regional and provincial cuisine. That is the strategy followed in the Grand Hotel PR handout above, where Taiwanese dishes are placed on a level as one more provincial style food like that of Zhejiang or Jiangsu, except not as good.

As the KMT lost its grip on society, the idea of Taiwanese food has become slippery and contested. It was promoted under the Chen Administration and in State Banquets during the Chen Shui-bian administrations. For KMT True Believers, it remains a provincial cuisine. For other locals, it has many meanings. As Chen’s PHD thesis notes, even when people cannot define Taiwanese cuisine, they still say this or that dish is a Taiwanese dish. They identify Taiwanese cuisine as foods of home or of their childhood. Others can articulate a detailed and defensible view — note that articulating a “national” cuisine is a project that nationalists of all stripes believe they must engage in, hence for Taiwan nationalists a “national cuisine” must be defined. In response, Hakkas frequently assert their own cuisine against Hoklo/Taiwanese cuisine. We manufacture identities to fight the imposition of identities…

The KMT lost the battle to define Taiwanese cuisine as a mere provincial cuisine, though that reflex remains, as the Grand Hotel PR piece above shows. But it won the war. All over Taiwan, if you say a city name, like Changhua or Hsinchu, people associate a food with it automatically (ba wan and mi fen). Even foreigners know many of these associations. This attitude is common in Taiwan, but it is rare in the rest of the world. You can associate foods with cities or locations, of course, but it is usually not the first thing thought of. If you say Los Angeles most people will mentionHollywood. You have to press them for a food association. But in Taiwan it is quite the opposite. Few places are first associated with a particular industry or historical site or famous building. If you ask people about Taichung they will say sun cookies, but you have to press them to divulge what industries are associated with the city.

Why? It’s political, of course. In most countries tourism consists of local history and nature. I grew up in Michigan, where we visited the Upper Peninsula and state parks for nature, and local battlefields and forts for history. No one ever suggested that the state’s prodigious cherry production should be its key association. But in Taiwan, the food association functions to keep locals from associating places with their history, and thus, developing associations with local history that in turn would support and build local identities… Hence, in Taiwan, local domestic tourism is not historical tourism, but food tourism.

Congrats on the victory, KMT.

UPDATE: A commenter noted below:

Through the 1970’s there were strict restrictions on accurate public maps of Taiwan (for security purposes). School children were taught to view Taiwan as merely one part of “our glorious China”.

Even through the 1990’s, much of Taiwan’s history and civics curriculum was China-centered.

The KMT, on a central level, decided to avoid addressing their problematic narrative as the government of all China while occupying a former Japanese colony, an experience that was fresh in the minds of the Taiwanese.

They decided to invent and deploy “local foods” as a means to teach Taiwanese geography to avoid political differences and to avoid local identification in favor of the Chinese Nationalist identification.

It was a way to reconcile obvious cultural differences with the nationalist narrative, while dismissing cultural differences as either regional, or in terms of a portrayal of an area’s “development”. This took the conversation away from ideas of ethnic differences. In China this was a means to defuse different nationalisms after the fall of the Ching.

This is not accidental.

The post Is Taiwanese Food a Delicacy, or a Mere Dish? appeared first on The Nanfang.

When you see scenes like this you know why Taipei really needs an airport express. Last week I arrived at Taipei Bus Station (located right next to Taipei Main Station) and there I saw this huge line of people waiting to board the bus to the airport. When the bus arrived there were so many passengers that I had no choice but to wait for the next one. Overall it took me about an hour and a half to get from the bus station to the airport.

Then I arrived in Hong Kong. I exchanged some money, bought something to drink, recharged my Octopus Card (the equivalent of Taipei’s Easy Card) and took that amazing, super modern, spacious Airport Express that runs from Hong Kong International Airport to Central in just 25 minutes!

When I first came to Taiwan at the end of 2011, I took one of these old buses. I bought a ticket, exited the airport and looked for the right bus stop. Then a guy from the bus company shouted at me in Chinese, asking me where I wanted to go. Then I boarded the bus, which took over an hour to get to Taipei Main Station. I must say that for someone travelling alone, for the first time in Asia, who is already quite nervous because of all the expectations and the uncertainty, and who is tired and hungry and doesn’t know anything about this new place, the journey from the airport to Taipei is not as comfortable as in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai or other big cities in East Asia.

Yes, Taipei indeed needs its own Airport Express, and luckily it will get one by the end of this year! I am very happy about this not only because I am a big fan of public transport (while I do not like cars and scooters), but also because I think that every great tourist destination needs to offer visitors the highest possible level of comfort.

The Taipei-Taoyuan Airport Express will open at the end of this year. A ticket will cost NTD 160 (around EUR 4.60) and the journey from Taipei Main Station to Taoyuan Airport will take only 35 minutes.

Currently there are just four ways to get to Taoyuan Airport. The first is the aforementioned bus. The second is to take a train to Taoyuan and then take a shuttle bus (around 55 minutes). The third is to take the high-speed rail from Taipei to Taoyuan Station and then take a shuttle bus (around 30, 40 minutes; tickets cost 190 NTD). However, traffic jams can cause delays. The fourth way is, of course, to just take a taxi. Getting to the airport by taxi costs around 1000 NTD and takes around 30, 40 minutes.

The post Taipei Airport to Finally Get Airport Express Train to Downtown appeared first on The Nanfang.

This week the focus was on Wang Jin-pyng, the Speaker of the Legislature and the man most hated by Ma Ying-jeou, who has been trying to get him kicked out of the KMT for the last couple of years. Wang has been touted by the media as a possibility. He’s over 70, popular with the Taiwanese KMT and often identified as their leader, but also in with the mainlander elites. Recall that in the infamous KMT Chairmanship election of a decade ago, Wang was supported by the mainlander elites, Ma, by the rank and file.

I’m not going into the many problems with Wang. Just going to mention that the story is Eric Chu will kiss and make up with the wily, also 70+ James Soong to run a Wang-Soong ticket for 2016 and unite the blues. Soong is a very interesting figure — at key junctures he has made moves that made it possible for the pro-Taiwan side to emerge victorious. In the conflict between the reactionaries and the mainstream KMT under Lee Teng-hui, he supported Lee, enabling him to get a grip on the presidency. In 2000 he ran as a pan-Blue independent and split the KMT vote, enabling Chen Shui-bian to win the presidency. His PFP party flared bright for a couple of elections, then was reincorporated by the KMT. Soong himself has become a marginal figure. But a Wang-Soong ticket would be unpredictable and interesting.

Another story running around. A prominent Taoist temple picked a text to help soothsayers predict the coming year, and they picked a text related to Empress Wu of the Tang. This was seen as an omen favorable to the DPP’s Tsai.

RTI: When asked about Wang Jin-pyng for President, Tsai Ing-wen said it would be inappropriate to comment, while Su Tseng-chang called him a respected opponent….

Wu Den-yi, the widely despised vice president, was in the news saying he hadn’t made up his mind about running for president. All I have to say about that is “Please please please.”

The KMT has tough choices ahead. The public wants Eric Chu, but doesn’t seem to think he can win. If Chu, the KMT Chairman, runs, he has to give up his position in New Taipei City as mayor, a position he won by 1% of the vote. There is a good chance the DPP will win a by-election there, since the KMT lacks politicians to run for the spot. If he loses the presidency and New Taipei City, the KMT will have no major executive positions, just a few small counties. If he doesn’t run, then there is no similar figure who can step up.

Meanwhile, everyone in the DPP has rejected the idea of running as Tsai Ing-wen’s running mate. Stay tuned, the next few months are going to be fraught with speculation and rumor.

The post Speculating on Taiwan’s 2016 Presidential Election appeared first on The Nanfang.

According to reports, a fight broke out between a Taiwanese worker and a foreigner from Namibia yesterday (February 17). The clash erupted at around 17:00 local time at Hongshulin Station (紅樹林站), on Taipei Metro Line 2.

Apparently the fight started because of a queuing dispute when the passengers boarded the train. The worker allegedly hit the foreigner with pliers. The man started bleeding from the head. The victim’s Taiwanese wife then tried to keep the worker away.

Taipei Metro staff immediately intervened. The attacker appeared unrepentant as he continued to curse the man who was lying on the floor. The victim was taken to Mackay Memorial Hospital in Danshui. The police have opened an investigation.

According to the victim, he and his wife were taking the train to Zhongshan Station. They were the first ones in the line, but a 61-year-old Taiwanese worker surnamed Qiu jumped the queue. The foreigner patted on the man’s bag and complained in English about the man’s behaviour. An argument between the two started, which continued after they boarded the train. The 61-year-old man cursed the foreigner and his wife. He drew closer to the couple, and the foreigner pushed him back for fear he might harm his wife. Then the Taiwanese man hit his head with pliers.

When the Taipei Metro staff entered the train, the victim was taken to the hospital and his wife was interrogated by the police. The 61-year-old Qiu had left the scene of the event, but police eventually caught up with him. He apologised for what he had done, stating that he had grown angry because the foreigner had pushed him. Qiu now faces charges.

According to some eyewitnesses, however, it was the foreigner who jumped the queue. This angered not only Qiu, but also other passengers.

Netizens‘ responses were mixed. Some people condemned the attacker. For example, a netizen wrote: “Beating someone is wrong” (打人就是不對). Others, however, criticised the foreigner.  A netizen compared him to the notorious Jason, a foreigner who assailed a Taipei bus driver last year. “Last time it was also a foreigner (老外) who cursed a bus driver.  What a pity that he had the good luck not to bump into such an uncouth worker. PS: This kind of foreigner always has a Taiwanese woman accompanying them.”

The victim has been identified as a Namibian athlete. According to Focus Taiwan his name is Juhannes Benade, and is 41 years old. Yet no information about a person of this name is available online. However, a Namibian athlete named Reginald Benade moved to Taiwan in 2010.

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KMT candidates Hsu Chih-jung (徐志榮) and Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) were victorious in Miaoli County and Nantou County respectively.

The DPP prevailed in Taichung City, Pingtung County and Changhua County, with their seats won by Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書), Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) and Chen Su-yueh (陳素月), respectively.

Frozen Garlic, analyst extraordinaire, like everyone else, noted that the results really didn’t reflect on the KMT’s new Chairman Eric Chu. He also observes:

The reason that I think the DPP won a small victory has to do with the results in Taichung and Changhua. Both of these wins came by a wide margin – roughly 25% in Taichung and 18% in Changhua. While the DPP won both of these seats in 2012, these have hardly been solid DPP territory. The KMT held both prior to 2012, and Ma Ying-jeou won more votes than Tsai Ing-wen in both districts. On election night 2012, it was fairly easy to argue that the DPP had won the seats due to the popularity of the individual candidates rather than to general support for the entire party. Today’s result changes that picture. Now it appears that the DPP might really have a clear edge over the KMT in both districts. Further, it now has two new people sitting in those seats who have a year to consolidate their support before the next general election. The KMT will certainly run competent candidates in 2016, but there aren’t any looming heavyweights preparing to challenge either of the two new legislators. From today’s vantage point, it looks as if these two seats, which were marginal for the DPP in 2012, are quickly turning into safe DPP seats.

Two great shifts have occurred in the last two decades. The first was what I like to think of as the Great Voter Shift, when millions of votes won by Lee Teng-hui in the 1996 election shifted over to the DPP between 1996 and 2004. The second is now underway — it looks as though the DPP is slowly eating away at the battleground of central Taiwan and converting it to DPP territory, chunk by chunk. If the DPP can solidify its grip on central Taiwan, then the KMT will be relegated to a party of Taipei, its environs, and a few mountain districts. But as the close vote in Nantou shows, even that cannot be taken for granted much longer.

Thus, the importance of Lin Chia-lung’s capture of the Taichung municipality mayorship for the DPP’s 2016 chances cannot be overestimated — double-edged, it gives the DPP advantages in elections, but Lin absolutely must perform if the DPP is to continue its progress in central Taiwan. Losing the mayorship the next time around would be a disaster for the DPP. One of his three appointed Deputy Mayors has been impeached by the Control Yuan in a complicated case from yesteryear.

The numbers are given in the chart above, from top to bottom: Taichung, Changhua, Miaoli, Nantou, and Pingtung.

A longtime observer pointed out that the key race here is the Miaoli one. That was the seat that would have been contested by Chen Wei-ting, the Sunflower leader who had to withdraw after sex harassment scandals came to light. The other races saw swings to the DPP, as Froze notes above, but despite the loss, the DPP made up 12% on its previous performance in the district, Miaoli 2. A signal of bad times coming for KMT candidates in the north and in the next election? Perhaps, but only time will tell.

The post DPP Wins 3 of 5 Seats in Taiwan Legislative By-Election appeared first on The Nanfang.

It’s true what they say: Life is what you make it. So while the air crash in Taipei, Taiwan that killed 31 people is a tragedy to many people, to three women at the scene it was just a backdrop for their smiling group photo, no matter how inappropriate it was.

The TransAsia flight scheduled for Quemoy Island crashed shortly after take-off when it was seen colliding with a highway overpass before crashing into the Keeling River. Of the total 58 people on board, 18 are injured and 12 remain unaccounted for.

READ: Incredible Images from Deadly Passenger Plane Crash This Morning in Taipei

The photo, first published by Hong Kong’s controversy-courting Apple Daily, shows three smiling women posing together as a fourth takes their picture as boats on the Keeling River behind them can be seen trying to recover crash victims. One of the three women is even holding up a “split finger” hand sign, the ubiquitous gesture seen in photograph poses in Asia.

Erroneously called a “selfie” by many reports, the incident has outraged many Chinese netizens who took offense to the inappropriateness of the women. One user commented, “There has always been these types of people that are numb and without any humanity!” Another asked, “My countrymen, where has your inner essence gone to? Where is your compassion?My countrymen, where has your inner essence gone to? Where is your compassion?“

News of the crash has gotten the attention of many mainlanders after it was revealed that the majority of passengers – 31 – are from from the mainland.

A similar outrage was directed at the Philippines in 2011 when eight people died after a bus full of Hong Kong tourists was taken hostage. Published photos showed smiling Filipinos – including police officers – standing in front of the shot-out bus, something for which many Chinese netizens took as a national insult. “It is a loss of humanity when I see the smile on the face of the Philippine police when they take the photos,” one person wrote.

The post Tourists Use Taiwan Plane Crash as Photo Backdrop appeared first on The Nanfang.

TransAsia Flight GE 235 crashed shortly after takeoff at around 11am, plunging into the Keelung River in Taipei’s south harbor after one of its wings collided with a highway and a taxi. The crash was caught on tape by a dash-cam.

Aside from the 12 fatalities, 18 people are injured while 31 people remain unaccounted for.

The ATR-72 turboprop had 53 passengers and five airline staff on board. Most passengers – 31 of them – were from Mainland China.

Flight GE 235 was scheduled to fly to the island of Quemoy, located off the coast of Fujian.

You can watch a video here, and scroll down for more photos.

UPDATE 1, February 4, 2:54pm: CCTV reports the number of fatalities have risen to 13.

UPDATE 2, Februrary 5, 10:22am: After a night of recovery efforts, the new number of fatalities stands at 31. Meanwhile, 17 people are listed as injured, and 12 people remain missing.

Photo: Caijing, Shenzhen Evening Report, China News Network

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President Chen Shui-bian, jailed on bribery charges, has been released on a one-month medical parole. This does not count against his prison time, and he will be returned to prison when his health improves. Everyone is in a tizzy….

Some are reading in the CSB release the consequences of the recent blowout election loss by the KMT, seeing it as the KMT fishing for votes in 2016. For example, see this CS Monitor piece.

“It’s a good sign Ma Ying-jeou is willing to heal the political polarization,” says Wu Chung-li, research fellow at Taipei-based institute Academia Sinica. “I think this measure might increase his popularity in the near future.” But Mr. Wu doubts the gesture will aid the Nationalists in the coming presidential campaign.

It is not a sign that Ma is willing to heal the polarization; that polarization is one of the things that keeps the KMT in power. Taiwan’s partisan divide will be healed over the dead body of the KMT, when the KMT no longer has much influence, and the leadership knows that.

No, I think what this release signals is the waning power of Ma Ying-jeou. Some in the KMT know what I’ve been saying for years, that Chen Shui-bian dead in jail is a problem for the KMT, while Chen Shui-bian alive and shooting off his mouth is a problem for the DPP, and with Ma hobbled by brutal election loss and isolated in his own party, the brains finally prevailed over the urge to arbitrarily punish. Once again, I’d like to thank Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT for putting Chen in jail in an obviously politically-motivated trial, thus keeping him out of Tsai Ing-wen’s hair for the last several years and turning him into a martyr for the Taiwan cause.

Does the Chen Shui-bian parole signal a more pragmatic and less ideologically-driven KMT than the one under the hopelessly ideological and unpragmatic Ma Ying-jeou (cue my laughter at international media for ever using the word pragmatic to describe Ma)? The ascension of Eric Chu might augur that kind of possibility, if the Chen Shui-bian medical parole means anything. Dateline Taipei, the sometimes useful pro-KMT blog translated an editorial from UDN, the rabidly pro-KMT newspaper, on the kind of reforms the incoming KMT Chairman Eric will need to achieve that… key points.

….The KMT has suffered a serious defeat. Yet no one inside the KMT is demanding an accounting…

One… One of the main shortcomings of the KMT’s political culture, is its preoccupation with bickering over internal resources, its inability to recruit outside talent, and cultivate new talent. Over the long term, this has led to inbreeding and cliquishness. Ambitious and creative talents are marginalized and the party is hollowed out. Between 2009 and today, KMT membership fell from 50,000 to 35,000. The speed of the fall surpassed all expectations.

Let’s reiterate: the elites at the heart of the KMT ran Taiwan by controlling patronage networks that showered development cash on local factions. In return for the cash, the KMT did not permit the local factions to operate at the national level or form cross-regional networks, thus preventing any challenges to its power. But this means that there is no system for bringing local politicians into the national party level and grooming them for top leadership positions, and even if there was, it would still be difficult, because local politics in Taiwan is notoriously dirty. The talent issue can’t be resolved until the KMT cleans up its relationship with the local factions. Good luck with that. Ma Ying-jeou attempted an end run around the problem by appointing lots of academics to government positions. But that did not solve the issue within the party, because that “talent” didn’t enter the KMT and participate in politics, with a few exceptions like Jiang Yi-hwa, and because it still didn’t institute a mechanism for connecting the national party with promising local politicians.

Two. Consider the matter of party assets. Despite repeated party asset reorganizations, the matter has yet to be put to rest. It has become an albatross around the KMT’s neck. Eric Chu recently declared that the party must totally divest itself of improper assets. This is the proper approach. The party assets are held by only a few. Most party members never get even a whiff of them.

“The party assets are held by only a few.” That’s an interesting observation. It means that if Chu attacks the assets, he attacks the holdings of extremely powerful people. Hence, as I’ve already noted:

Chu promised to do something about the party assets — well, so did Ma in 2009. In fact Ma did as early as 2006, and in 2000 none other than Honorary Chairman Pickled in Brine Lien Chan, when he ran for President in 2000, promised to do the same. In other words, making noises about getting rid of the Party’s ill-gotten assets isn’t something that one does when one is a reformer. It’s part of the package of noises that anyone who assumes control over the KMT and aspires to higher positions must reproduce, because it is a widely supported centrist position, not because they actually mean it

The UDN complaints about assets only support my position that asset-cleaning claims are noises KMT politicians must make to sound centrist. Isn’t gonna happen.

Consider the matter of party democratization. The KMT has a rigid seniority system. It is rife with pro forma ritual. Worse, this seriously affects the internal exchange of views. It makes it hard for subordinates to express views to superiors.

The classic example of this is picking Sean Lien to run in Taipei. LOL. Before you start thinking of Chu as a pragmatic reformer, remember that he is a princeling, married to the daughter of a longtime KMT central standing member and quiet KMT heavyweight. Democratizing the party might be a problem for such a person. And again, the KMT’s style of rule, which separates the center from the factions on the periphery, stops democratization of the party by keeping out promising local politicians. If I were Chu, the first thing I’d do is institute mechanisms to wheel promising faction politicians up to the national level. That would attack the talent and democracy problems at the same time….

Four. Consider the matter of younger party members. The KMT has abundant resources. Yet it cannot attract young people. This is because the party’s manner of operation is too old fashioned.

The party’s lack of appeal to youth is not because its manner of operation is too old fashioned. So much of political participation rests on social identity. The problem for the KMT is that is has a Chinese identity and can no longer coerce/socialize the young into that identity via authoritarian control. Living in Taiwan, the young are developing a pro-Taiwan identity that ultimately is a denial of the KMT’s identity. KMT rule has always depended on divide-and-rule ethnic politics to build a rickety ethnic coalition against the Hoklo majority, but as the growing sense of “Taiwanese” identity steadily subsumes old identities like Hakka and Hoklo and mainlander and aborigine, the KMT’s ability to rule via ethnic division declines. Further, even where groups assert local identities, such as Hakka or Atayal or Paiwan, these identities are local and independent, and are more difficult to manipulate via traditional ethnic fear politics (“if the DPP wins the Hoklo will punish all the Hakka!”).

Over the years many have suggested that the KMT become a Taiwanese party. I suspect its ultimate resting place is as a pro-corporate center-right Taiwanese party, but because — again — the big boys at the top are all doing business with China — and pro-China credentials facilitate that — the KMT can’t come to rest in that spot.

Ironically, the services trade pact pointed to another problem the KMT has at the local level that has received little discussion because of the simple-minded media presentations. Recall that the Sunflowers occupied the legislature because the KMT committee head tried to do an end run around the review and the legislative vote and declare the services pact passed without a vote.

But why did he have to do that? Because the KMT’s own legislators wouldn’t vote for the services pact. It would have brought Chinese service firms into Taiwan and into direct competition with local service firms that support the KMT. No way are KMT legislators going to support the dissolution of their constituents’ businesses. Boom! Do the math, folks — this growing China pressure on local areas is also putting pressure on the links between the top and bottom of the KMT.

The run-up to the 2016 election is going to be a blast.

Meanwhile breath of fresh air Ko Wen-je, the new Taipei mayor, announced that he wouldn’t attend weddings and funerals like most politicians do (and waste their time). He’s really shaking things up — he also announced that he is going after illegal rooftop construction, a staple of Taiwanese life. Yowza! Liking him muchly, I am. And new Mayor Cheng in Taoyuan is also moving against the construction-industrial state, as Solidarity.tw lets us know. If you are at all interested in Taiwan, you should be following Solidarity.tw.

Ok, off to play Settlers of Catan again.
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Daily Links:

• Don’t miss my man Michal Thim’s piece at Thinking Taiwan on the navy’s new missile corvette.
• Sunflowers actually boosted the economy.
• Indicted prosecutor general Huang to retire
• Chinese woman in Taiwan illegally to coordinate annexation efforts with local Chinese nationalists. Gives public performances. Gov’t says it can’t find her. Just be an ordinary foreigner trying to give a performance in local bar without right visa….
• Foreigner studies tombs in Taiwan
• East Asia Forum: the sturdily Establishment EAF has a review piece by Sheryn Lee on the KMT loss, meaning that the China bogeyman is no longer as strong as it once was.

_______________________
[Taiwan] Don’t miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

The post Chen Shui-bian Out, Eric Chu In appeared first on The Nanfang.

Two Taiwanese suspects arrested by mainland police.

A Taiwan-born suspect who fled the island 16 years ago has been arrested by police in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China News reported on September 7.

The suspect, identified by his surname Guo, is accused of fraud involving RMB 36 million and has been on the Fujian Police Department’s wanted list since 1998, said the city’s Gongbei police at a press briefing on September 6.

Guo was also listed on China’s “Hunting Fox 2014”, a police operation that targets suspects of white collar crime on the run overseas. Guo was arrested on August 30 in one of the city’s residential areas. In addition, a Macau-born suspect hiding in China was also arrested on the same day in the city, the report said.

On the back of improved cross-strait relations, a 2009 extradition treaty signed between the Mainland and Taiwan has been extremely effective at helping coordinate police raids, extradite criminals, combat fraud, drug-smuggling and counterfeit currency, reported AFP. Since the signing of the agreement, nearly 6,000 suspects have been arrested, including the infamous Chang An-lo, also known as the “white tiger”, a gang leader who was extradited to Taiwan in 2013.

As a result of the treaty, Taiwan’s fraud cases have dropped 54.3 percent from 38,802 cases worth NT$10.27 billion in 2009 to 17,744 cases worth NT$3,77 billion last year, the news agency said.

photos: CRNTT.com

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