tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42733016912132561732024-02-19T15:36:25.159+08:00Hungry GhostsThe online portfolio of Jonathan Daniel AdamsJonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.comBlogger350125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-59942584468491368692012-01-05T11:37:00.009+08:002012-01-05T12:01:12.122+08:00Betel nut brouhaha<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrFiTAkVOKVyM4kmWmUs_cW1wRG4hQlX3Anj2xpv-vBre-E2npMm4KHSoZhZ3COFJiLL1IANSsZv6xc9t6y14P51PNPD42Cq4qcXh6YFMSOWu7wYzs-V14g4d6zrFgxnQEMVluGYj1K0U/s1600/A+Taiwan+betel+nut+beauty+waits+for+customers.+She+said+her+tattoo+cost+her+%25242%252C500.+PHOTO+BY+TOBIE+OPENSHAW..jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrFiTAkVOKVyM4kmWmUs_cW1wRG4hQlX3Anj2xpv-vBre-E2npMm4KHSoZhZ3COFJiLL1IANSsZv6xc9t6y14P51PNPD42Cq4qcXh6YFMSOWu7wYzs-V14g4d6zrFgxnQEMVluGYj1K0U/s400/A+Taiwan+betel+nut+beauty+waits+for+customers.+She+said+her+tattoo+cost+her+%25242%252C500.+PHOTO+BY+TOBIE+OPENSHAW..jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693987043569500114" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">HSINCHU, Taiwan —</span> A magazine here is catching flak for touting scantily clad betel nut vendors as a tourist attraction. The minor flap has renewed debate over a unique but controversial part of Taiwan's pop culture. Betel nut, a mild stimulant, is enjoyed across Asia. But only in Taiwan is the nut sold by fetching young women in outrageous outfits, perched in neon-lit, see-through roadside stands. <a href="http://athanadams.blogspot.com/2010/02/betel-nut-girl-brouhaha.html">FULL STORY.</a>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-81463899346125387992012-01-05T11:37:00.008+08:002012-01-05T11:55:32.965+08:00Double Jeopardy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq0b4JryzanpnYdWL48rLH4xn4GUkUhv42h-gDVAqMluTsfq5UgG0TFipG0Hz7x56TUcq2DIgt8RJ-WfWRg5QeAw7DeriAP-7_v0kaaJd1CCWUmSK1AVagH3B7T8ddQU4Ov78LCk1Dca8/s1600/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Five.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq0b4JryzanpnYdWL48rLH4xn4GUkUhv42h-gDVAqMluTsfq5UgG0TFipG0Hz7x56TUcq2DIgt8RJ-WfWRg5QeAw7DeriAP-7_v0kaaJd1CCWUmSK1AVagH3B7T8ddQU4Ov78LCk1Dca8/s400/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Five.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693986956662240610" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> Japan hangs them. China puts a bullet in their head. Taiwan makes them lie face down on a blanket, then shoots them in the back or skull. Asia has had few qualms about capital punishment. It put more people to death in 2009 than the rest of the world combined, according to Amnesty International, with “the vast majority” of those executions in China. But now, movements are afoot to abolish the death penalty. <a href="http://athanadams.blogspot.com/2011/09/double-jeopardy-death-penalty-in-asia.html">FULL STORY. </a>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-24082202923806747142012-01-05T11:36:00.008+08:002012-01-05T11:56:40.820+08:00Love Motel 2.0<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAht25kukdrv8A8TyAq03DoK_9AxCbk1rEg47IxTRGgbq7i16aUcp5e8AUlFoNXJh7A0j4nQaOt19GNP8o3-H25mzE2wzLRZOGx3afyNyOfB0l2GuvVxPrz35CKtL_40wJdpVO0SuUJfs/s1600/Eden+Motel%2527s+%2527Batman%2527+room.+%2528Photo+courtesy+of+Eden+Motel%2529..jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAht25kukdrv8A8TyAq03DoK_9AxCbk1rEg47IxTRGgbq7i16aUcp5e8AUlFoNXJh7A0j4nQaOt19GNP8o3-H25mzE2wzLRZOGx3afyNyOfB0l2GuvVxPrz35CKtL_40wJdpVO0SuUJfs/s400/Eden+Motel%2527s+%2527Batman%2527+room.+%2528Photo+courtesy+of+Eden+Motel%2529..jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693986865474360450" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">TAIPEI, Taiwan — </span>Gone are the days of scuzzy "rest" hotels, rented by the hour to furtive lovers. The latest generation of Taiwan love hotels are over-the-top pleasure dens, kitted out with full karaoke sound systems, massive jacuzzis and high-tech privacy protection. <a href="http://athanadams.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-motel-20.html">FULL STORY</a>.Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-22211601935814838072012-01-05T11:36:00.007+08:002012-01-05T11:56:14.773+08:00Japan: Just-in-time workers<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2OH6uDx7JLGAPHQ8C5ztBaUMSwNR3OtdIQNJMVWJbRq5A1IEZIuGAs2VZmessX9CVCLNlaXA0TkHjOAio_OtsCDzoB7M5W3lfjc6j_oxJWQaXaD5xN7I-TrpHCO4dWnY0FmMSIEoi7s/s1600/1291448403.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2OH6uDx7JLGAPHQ8C5ztBaUMSwNR3OtdIQNJMVWJbRq5A1IEZIuGAs2VZmessX9CVCLNlaXA0TkHjOAio_OtsCDzoB7M5W3lfjc6j_oxJWQaXaD5xN7I-TrpHCO4dWnY0FmMSIEoi7s/s400/1291448403.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693986731565923042" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">NAGOYA, Japan —</span> For decades, Japan's big firms were famous for their deal with employees: The corporation was a big family that looked after its workers for life. In return it expected total dedication. That was the Japanese way, and part of the popular 1980s American media narrative on the rise of Japan, Inc. It's no longer true. Instead, more than 17 million people in the world's second largest economy are now "irregular" workers, or temps, according to <a href="http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/lngindex.htm">government statistics</a>. <a href="http://athanadams.blogspot.com/2011/01/temps-strike-back-i_20.html">FULL STORY.<br /></a>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-50116730826816868712012-01-05T11:22:00.005+08:002012-01-05T11:57:24.116+08:00Red light fight<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1mztA29LGn3-bmY5Y14x8V1bElvp_O-T7ZfqQy7lFcyIt_BHCykLILFVhcLhCNEyUNvnKwYwlgg2Ga1nEjZZlvBEwmAk-NY7fGn2CTnTxLjvg1khMznQOFv_GOGUHN3UJqCTzFXo-pA/s1600/%2527Nadia%2527%252C+a+Taipei+sex+worker%252C+in+the+hallway+of+a+former+brothel.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1mztA29LGn3-bmY5Y14x8V1bElvp_O-T7ZfqQy7lFcyIt_BHCykLILFVhcLhCNEyUNvnKwYwlgg2Ga1nEjZZlvBEwmAk-NY7fGn2CTnTxLjvg1khMznQOFv_GOGUHN3UJqCTzFXo-pA/s400/%2527Nadia%2527%252C+a+Taipei+sex+worker%252C+in+the+hallway+of+a+former+brothel.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693983379745571010" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> Massive debts pushed her into prostitution. Now, after several false starts, she's pocketing $3,000 in a good month, turning tricks as a self-employed Taipei street-walker.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> The money's good, she says, but there's just one problem: the cops. Prostitution is illegal in Taiwan, and the cops have several times hauled her in for three days in jail, or a fine up to $1,000.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> If sex work is legalized in a year's time as now planned, though, she says her working conditions will improve.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> <a href="http://athanadams.blogspot.com/2011/09/red-light-fight.html">FULL STORY.</a><br /></span>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-57398081346410488212011-09-06T05:42:00.003+08:002011-09-06T05:47:37.167+08:00Taiwan's China envy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJa-wor1Hc1-N2HFKOfanGhdNmKT9xERHlSVodamGX9MPvtaChs8Iz2p0hgRipZ0BXU2KdUBm08sW91Icx-TNmATP_WkiyG3lkRBHXT3BO80lsEme0EEBAsWrFYKWNM_h0oZkuxJpg5TM/s1600/taiwan-Chen-Guangbiao-2011-01-28.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJa-wor1Hc1-N2HFKOfanGhdNmKT9xERHlSVodamGX9MPvtaChs8Iz2p0hgRipZ0BXU2KdUBm08sW91Icx-TNmATP_WkiyG3lkRBHXT3BO80lsEme0EEBAsWrFYKWNM_h0oZkuxJpg5TM/s400/taiwan-Chen-Guangbiao-2011-01-28.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648995047152816658" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Controversial Chinese philanthropist visits Taiwan, highlighting wealth gap and "new poor."</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Global Post, Jan. 30, 2011</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> You might think Taiwan would welcome a wealthy visitor who wants to pass out money to the poor. But you’d be wrong. <p> The island was abuzz last week over the visit of one of China's top philanthropists, Chen Guangbiao, who is well-known for his flashy style. The controversy highlights the still awkward relations across the Taiwan Strait, as well as the growing rich-poor gap on both sides.</p> <p> Chen insists he merely wants to return the generosity of Taiwanese who have helped China, for example with huge donations after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. But several objections have emerged from Taiwan's rowdy political and media arena.</p> <p> Some think he's tasteless and disrespects the poor by making such a show of his charity. (In China last week, he ostentatiously passed out banknotes after erecting a massive, $2.3 million <a href="http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/7270598.html">"wall of cash."</a>) One Taiwan county head rejected his visit on those grounds, promptly igniting a backlash from angry constituents who were hoping for a payola.</p> <p> Others in the pro-independence opposition see him as a Trojan Horse, spreading a pro-unification message under the cover of traditional, Chinese New Year generosity. (China claims Taiwan as its territory; Taiwan insists it's an independent state.)</p> <p> Such critics pointed to his itinerary, which avoids the pro-independence south to focus on several counties in the more China-friendly north. And then there's the inscription on the 50,000 "red envelopes" he's using to distribute cash, which according to Taiwan media reports reads in part <a href="http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2011/01/26/2003494437">"the Chinese race is one family."</a></p> <p> <a href="http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2011/01/28/2003494610">Chen denied any political motive</a>, telling reporters, according to the Taipei Times: "I don’t know anything about propaganda for Chinese reunification. I only know about charity and environmental work. I just want to do good.”<br /></p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dgppPbUqdJI" allowfullscreen="" width="399" frameborder="0" height="300"></iframe><br /><br />Beneath the moral and political indignation, though, there's a palpable unease with the symbolism of Chen's visit. Taiwan's development once far outpaced China's. But as China's wealth booms and Taiwan's stagnates, the island is losing its sense of economic superiority. <p> Taiwan's per-person wealth may still be far higher than China's, at around $18,500 compared to some $4,300. But growth rates have sagged in Taiwan while soaring to double or high single digits in China. And in the last few decades, the island has seen a growing income gap. (Measured by the Gini coefficient, inequality rose from 0.28 in 1980 to 0.34 in 2006.)</p> <p> Like other advanced economies, manufacturing jobs have shrunk as factories move to China and elsewhere. Lower-paying, non-unionized service sector jobs have taken their place. The service sector is now nearly 70 percent of the economy, compared to 50 percent 20 years ago. And since the global downturn, Taiwan firms have been increasingly relying on <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/commerce/100510/japan-economy-temporary-workers">"dispatch" or temp workers</a>, like Japan and South Korea.</p> <p> The result has been a new legion of "working poor" or "new poor," as they're called here. They may not show up on unemployment statistics. But they struggle to make ends meet with two or even three low-paying jobs, but no job security.</p> <p> "Those people cannot get help because they're not ill, or victims of a disaster, and they're not poor by the government's standards," said Taiwan sociologist Chiu Hei-yuan. "So they are just helpless — and they hope to get some unexpected help from people like Mr. Chen."</p><p> Twelve percent of the workforce now earns less than $700 per month, and average <a href="http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aSOC&ID=201101270017">monthly wages are at 1998 levels</a>, according to labor groups.</p> <p> Meanwhile, highly-skilled workers in the technology and other sectors pull in ever-fatter paychecks, sharpening inequality between the haves and have-nots. "Taiwan's social welfare system cannot solve the problem of the gap between the rich and the poor — especially the 'new poor,'" said Chiu.</p> <p> For its part, China is seeing a burst of newly-minted millionaires and even billionaires, as a lucky few strike it rich amid the rising power's go-go economy. There, too, inequality has spiked sharply, with the most noticeable chasm between the urban elite and the vast ranks of the rural poor. The top 10 percent now earns 23 times what the bottom 10 percent makes, compared to just a seven-fold gap in 1998. <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-05/12/content_9837073.htm">The Gini coefficient is now 0.47</a>.</p> <p> "In China now, some people can get very rich in a very short time because of China's growing, but unbalanced economy," said Chiu. "The large cities are developing so fast — they can accumulate wealth quickly."</p> <p> One of those lucky few is Chen, who made his fortune recycling material from the construction industry after growing up poor in the boonies, according to a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11429141">BBC profile</a>. (In that interview, he also confirmed that he had vowed never again to give money to his sister, who works as a hotel dishwasher, or his brother, who works as a security guard, because they squandered his money in the past.)</p> <p> He's exactly the type of swaggering, nouveau riche Chinese businessman who rubs some Taiwanese the wrong way. For others, though, all the criticism over Chen's visit is just sniping. One 67-year-old woman waited all night outside his Taipei hotel after he arrived, then hit the jackpot by nabbing Chen's first red envelope.</p> <p> Amid a swarm of Taiwanese TV cameras, the woman explained that she wanted to take care of her 88-year-old mother, who has lost her eye-sight.</p> <p> “I’ve never touched so much money in all my life," she told reporters after receiving about $2,300 from Chen. “I’m very thankful. He is a very generous man."</p><p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110128/taiwan-economy-chen-guangbiao">Original site</a><br /></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-61341683630217510082011-09-06T05:36:00.005+08:002011-09-07T11:18:14.107+08:00Asia's unsung flower power<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieAmrLzv7064J3ZwSac7KSPb7tdKxNszzPEhLrte0i4d-lpK-xOOzOOUP7SjWzbcDmuOvnp2vOdgq6PJh7kJu9HYuesL9mRH_SIs_uJAUMue17BqVj1E918G70qd2WxrV7AKBB9eW72Fc/s1600/A+worker+tends+to++butterfuly+orchids+grown+for+export+to+Japan+at+Tai-Ling+Biotech%2527s+greenhouse.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieAmrLzv7064J3ZwSac7KSPb7tdKxNszzPEhLrte0i4d-lpK-xOOzOOUP7SjWzbcDmuOvnp2vOdgq6PJh7kJu9HYuesL9mRH_SIs_uJAUMue17BqVj1E918G70qd2WxrV7AKBB9eW72Fc/s400/A+worker+tends+to++butterfuly+orchids+grown+for+export+to+Japan+at+Tai-Ling+Biotech%2527s+greenhouse.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649451265431044050" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">In the last decade, Taiwan has quietly become the world's No. 1 exporter of orchids.</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Jan. 25, 2011</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />TAINAN COUNTY, Taiwan —</span> In a massive greenhouse in balmy southern Taiwan, workers pack boxes of 2-year-old white butterfly orchids. <p> Around them stretch row after row of the flowers, a hothouse battalion prepared for customers in Japan. There, the flowers fetch about $12 each, earning producer Tai-Ling Biotech a more than 30 percent profit margin, according to managing director Peter Liu.</p> <p> Tai-Ling exports 7,000 to 8,000 flowers to Japan per month with a 185-strong workforce. And growing demand boosted the firm's sales to $10 million in 2010 from $7 million in 2009. "I need to expand into more greenhouses," said Liu, as workers scurried behind him.</p> <p> Taiwan may be famous as a high-tech manufacturing giant. But in the last decade, the island of just 23 million has also quietly become one of the world's top flower exporters, and the world's No. 1 exporter of orchids. Taiwanese know-how has also powered China's own emerging flower industry.</p> <p> Flower and flower-seed exports have nearly tripled in value in the last decade, from $48 million in 1999 to $111 million in 2009, according to statistics from the Taiwan Floriculture Exports Association. Those numbers show how Taiwan has successfully married its agricultural past with cutting-edge technology for breeding and mass-producing flowers.</p> <p> Much of the boom has been in orchids. $87 million of last year's exports were orchids, up from $40 million in 2004, according to government statistics. Orchids account for just 20 percent of Taiwan's flower exports by quantity, but 80 percent of export value, according to the orchid growers' association.</p> <p> In 2005, Taiwan became the world's top orchid exporting country, replacing Thailand — a spot the island still holds, according to the association.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe23MUwoPsDBPZ9bkfkc2zhnkDANSJlwcgJcbRPy8R17Jk_3kvYIBVVkJgG0KqJe7_s_qAF7WQs3i1E1_FrLxMeO_UHcYOWGw86r9zQvhEFhYIaavfD26gjoahQqecqoNyniaPT7OvSBA/s1600/taiwan-flower-2011-01-19-EDIT3.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 269px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe23MUwoPsDBPZ9bkfkc2zhnkDANSJlwcgJcbRPy8R17Jk_3kvYIBVVkJgG0KqJe7_s_qAF7WQs3i1E1_FrLxMeO_UHcYOWGw86r9zQvhEFhYIaavfD26gjoahQqecqoNyniaPT7OvSBA/s400/taiwan-flower-2011-01-19-EDIT3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648993903266947522" border="0" /></a></p> <p> "Butterfly" orchids, also known by their scientific name phalaenopsis, have been a star export. Exports of butterfly orchids earned Taiwan $62 million last year.</p> <p> Taiwan firms have also played a key role in the birth of mainland China's mass-produced flower business. Beginning in the early 1990s, Taiwan firms moved across the Strait, especially to the area around Kunming, in southwest Yunnan Province, which has an ideal climate for horticulture.</p><p> Taiwan firms typically produce for the Chinese domestic market, and serve as middlemen between Chinese growers and foreign breeders.</p> <p> Tai-Ling serves the China market from a branch in Shanghai that employs 70 to 80 Chinese workers. Production costs are half what they are in Taiwan, but managing director Liu says Taiwanese workers are far better — one of them can do the job of two typical Chinese workers, he says, erasing the mainland's cost advantage. And Japan remains his most important market by far, he says, because Chinese still don't have regular buying patterns.</p> <p> "They don't have the habit of buying flowers, except during Chinese New Year or National Day," said Liu. "At other times sales are very small."</p> <p> That could change soon. Flower consumption is rising 20 percent to 30 percent per year in China, says Liu Bang-shein, managing director of the Dahan Group, a Taiwanese pioneer in China's flower market. That's a contrast with nearby markets like Japan, where consumption is stable or even decreasing slightly. According to a <a href="http://english.cntv.cn/program/newmoney/20101003/101177.shtml">recent documentary</a> that aired on China's state-run CCTV, China's flower market is already estimated at some $10 billion.<br /><br /></p><div id="forApple"><embed id="v_player_cctv" flashvars="videoId=20101003101177&filePath=/flvxml/2009/10/03/&isAutoPlay=true&url=http://english.cntv.cn/program/newmoney/20101003/101177.shtml&tai=english&configPath=http://js.player.cntv.cn/xml/english_config.xml&widgetsConfig=http://english.cntv.cn/player/widgetsConfig.xml&languageConfig=http://js.player.cntv.cn/xml/english/main.xml&hour24DataURL=&outsideChannelId=channelBugu&videoCenterId=6514d7e7c900432b826e42aef2d7100d" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" menu="false" quality="best" bgcolor="#000000" name="v_player_cctv" src="http://player.cntv.cn/standard/cntvOutSidePlayer.swf?v=0.171.5.8.8.5" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" lk_mediaid="lk_juiceapp_mediaPopup_1257416656250" lk_media="yes" width="399" height="300"></embed><script language="javascript" src="http://js.player.cntv.cn/creator/swfobject.js"></script><script language="javascript" src="http://js.player.cntv.cn/creator/forApple.js"></script><script>createApplePlayer("flashPlayer",561,346,"6514d7e7c900432b826e42aef2d7100d");</script></div><br /><br /><p> Dahan is now Asia's largest company for poinsettias, producing 4 million cuttings a year — 20 percent of China's overall production, and 65 percent of "legal" production, that is, plants produced under license, with royalties paid to breeders.</p> <p> Amid all the success, though, Taiwan already has its eye on the rear-view mirror. New Taiwanese firms have crowded into the market, increasing competition and lowering profit margins. The Dutch are planning large-scale greenhouses in the United States, which could give them an edge in that key market.</p> <p> China doesn't export much yet, because of problems with breeders' rights — the right to grow and sell specific flower varieties. Exports without the proper paperwork and licenses are banned from key markets like Europe and the U.S.</p> <p> "Our plant variety protection is better than theirs [China's]," said Chang Su-san, from Taiwan's Council of Agriculture. "They focus more on food crops, we focus more on horticulture."</p> <p> But eventually, homegrown Chinese firms could compete in key flower markets. So Taiwan firms are looking to move up the value chain, in search of better margins and an edge.</p> <p> "We need to keep increasing our varieties and efficiency," said Chang. Some Taiwan producers hope to set up a cross-strait production line, with the first stages of production in lower-cost China and final production, branding, and packaging in Taiwan for export to world markets.</p><p> Dutch flower exporters use a similar model, with plantations in Africa or other cheaper locations. But at the moment, cross-strait trade barriers make that business model impossible. Some flower imports from China are banned; others face a 35 percent import tariff, said Parker Wu, a veteran of the orchid business at Orchis Floriculturing.</p> <p> Wu thinks the Taiwan government should set up an export zone and an auction, similar to the one in Yunnan province or in Holland, to better connect Taiwan's producers with global buyers.</p> <p> Another focus will be on developing brands. Up until now, many of the island's flower firms have been akin to "contract" manufacturers in that they export small plants or cuttings to the U.S., where U.S. brands shepherd them through the final stages of production, market and sell them. That means Taiwan firms earn only a small slice of the profits.</p> <p> Branding would expand Taiwan's slice. "In the end, your brand is the most important thing," said Richard Lin, of the Taiwan Orchid Growers Association. "There's still a lot we have to learn and improve."</p><p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110119/taiwan-orchids-international-flowers">Original site</a></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOvjwNAbAyzWGYSnkLUrkcCMq2gjnJsk2uU4_1WykwKBIAAbhZhRak3cy4ze9h6ONrtAfFj0SM7yb64IapRTpEKxsn6XfCqd5AzbTES8MyITrdjOdeXPeESfzO_3JbIWaDQSt5Y8kmqa0/s1600/Butterfly+orchids+for+export+to+Japan%252C+in+a+Tai-Ling+Biotech+greenhouse.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS..JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOvjwNAbAyzWGYSnkLUrkcCMq2gjnJsk2uU4_1WykwKBIAAbhZhRak3cy4ze9h6ONrtAfFj0SM7yb64IapRTpEKxsn6XfCqd5AzbTES8MyITrdjOdeXPeESfzO_3JbIWaDQSt5Y8kmqa0/s400/Butterfly+orchids+for+export+to+Japan%252C+in+a+Tai-Ling+Biotech+greenhouse.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS..JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649451393043809970" border="0" /></a></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-72930767587648608822011-09-06T05:29:00.004+08:002011-10-16T09:50:11.689+08:00Double jeopardy: Asia's death penalty debate<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyrJLhiBBn_q1Z4c4KyjWpxF5xQ4Lqwc36vFgUldN9-oQECtQjRLwnVislLLLthnOmp-Hnkwuh5vNbzBjF2xlroOns6daTtRVMdwuQUipvRgNOKGjCZCa4PceCWQb3ST4OYh_lkCu9-cA/s1600/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-PART-ONE-EMBED.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 367px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyrJLhiBBn_q1Z4c4KyjWpxF5xQ4Lqwc36vFgUldN9-oQECtQjRLwnVislLLLthnOmp-Hnkwuh5vNbzBjF2xlroOns6daTtRVMdwuQUipvRgNOKGjCZCa4PceCWQb3ST4OYh_lkCu9-cA/s400/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-PART-ONE-EMBED.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648991803841399682" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Part I: A murder trial in Taiwan puts the spotlight on Asia's death penalty debate.</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Feb. 10, 2011</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> Japan hangs them. China puts a bullet in their head. Taiwan makes them lie face down on a blanket, then shoots them in the back or skull. <p> Asia has had few qualms about capital punishment. It put more people to death in 2009 than the rest of the world combined, according to Amnesty International, with “the vast majority” of those executions in China.</p> <p> But now, movements are afoot to abolish the death penalty. Taiwan and South Korea put unofficial moratoriums on executions, at least until Taiwan put to death four convicts in June last year after an outcry from crime victims’ relatives. Japan has also reduced executions.</p> <p> Majorities in Asian countries support the death penalty, as is the case in the United States. But several high-profile cases have given people pause. In Japan last year, <a href="http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090605a1.html">DNA evidence proved the innocence</a> of a man who had been jailed for 17 years for murder. There are doubts, too, on the guilt of the country’s <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090922/death-row-japanese-style">longest-serving death row inmate</a>.</p> <p> In Taiwan, the case of the "Hsichih Three" is cited by rights groups as a disturbing example of how police and the courts can get it wrong.</p> <p> Once hours away from the execution chamber, the three men were found innocent last November in the grisly double murder of a couple in 1991. The only evidence against them were confessions they later recanted, saying they were obtained through torture.</p> <p> "The case of the Hsichih Trio has raised public awareness of the weaknesses of the criminal justice system and begun to raise the <a href="http://www.fidh.org/Abolishing-the-Death-Penalty-Time-for-action">death penalty as a question</a> for public debate," said a report by the International Federation for Human Rights.</p> <p> From April to November last year, GlobalPost followed the re-trial of the Hsichih Three, attending hearings and interviewing the key figures in the case. Their story is one of high drama. It highlights how the global debate over whether the state should have the power to take a life is playing out in Asia.</p><p> And it shows why Taiwan, for all its problems, is considered to be in the vanguard of human rights in Asia — and an example to its giant neighbor across the Taiwan Strait. While Taiwan is moving fitfully toward scrapping the death penalty, China executes thousands per year behind a shroud of secrecy.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeKl5lQXjWeRBe6d7cVaARFnSJ16DJAC4KAOOFbPojxTnkYV3CjWkIjQKtazJ1mchdkHRkgR1de_FMzTa6XnmHWUyod7mZwblDkYiGoDGw-zceKuKSPnPx2vrUme3hVg0ACU2pGt_gd0/s1600/1.+Part+of+a+police+photo+from+the+crime+scene+hours+after+the+murders%252C+showing+a+bloody+footprint+at+bottom+right.+The+female+victim%2527s+body+has+been+cropped+out..jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 346px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeKl5lQXjWeRBe6d7cVaARFnSJ16DJAC4KAOOFbPojxTnkYV3CjWkIjQKtazJ1mchdkHRkgR1de_FMzTa6XnmHWUyod7mZwblDkYiGoDGw-zceKuKSPnPx2vrUme3hVg0ACU2pGt_gd0/s400/1.+Part+of+a+police+photo+from+the+crime+scene+hours+after+the+murders%252C+showing+a+bloody+footprint+at+bottom+right.+The+female+victim%2527s+body+has+been+cropped+out..jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5663901241428482514" border="0" /></a><p> <strong>An abominable crime</strong></p> <p> What happened in that room was evil.</p> <p> In the dead of night on March 24, 1991, Wu Ming-han and Yeh Ying-lan were in bed, in their small apartment in a working-class Taipei suburb. In another room, their 7- and 8-year-old children slept.</p> <p> At around 4 in the morning, one or more intruders crept into the couple's tiny bedroom. The couple awoke. A violent struggle erupted.</p> <p> A crime scene reconstruction catalogued the results in emotionless detail, like a spreadsheet of horror. Wu was hacked 42 times; Yeh 37. Her wounds included 12 cuts on the face, 18 cuts on the left occipital, wounds to the left chest, right scapula, right hand, wrists and both arms. His left pinkie was broken and his wedding ring cut off.</p> <p> Grainy police photos of the crime scene show two bodies sprawled on the floor like tossed-away rag dolls, each a bundle of mauled clothing and gore. Blood runs red down dressers, bedspreads and walls.</p>Police arrested the couple's 22-year-old neighbor Wang Wen-hsiao, a marine conscript on home leave with a drug habit, divorced parents and gambling debts of at least $1,500. He confessed to the crime, describing a burglary gone horribly wrong. Military courts tried and executed him. <p> Under intense public pressure, local police also rounded up Wang's brother and three local teens he identified, on the belief that one person couldn't have committed such a brutal double murder alone. All four confessed to involvement in the crime, and Wang identified them as accomplices. They all later recanted, saying they had been tortured by police.</p> <p> Only Wang’s fingerprints were found at the crime scene, along with two sets of bloody footprints (one of those believed to be a cop's), and one murder weapon — a meat cleaver. To this day, not a single piece of physical evidence ties the three to the scene of the crime.</p> <p> Wang’s brother served a light jail sentence for testifying against the others, and was released. The Hsichih Three were found guilty and sent to death row. Their lives were spared when the minister of justice — now Taiwan's president — refused to sign their execution orders, citing irregularities in the case.</p> <p> In 2003, a court overturned the convictions and freed them. Prosecutors appealed, and the three were found guilty again in 2007. Yet another retrial was ordered. And that's where things stood in April 2010.</p> <p> <strong>Read more from Double jeopardy:</strong></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-two">Part II: victims' families seek justice</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-three">Part III: trend toward abolition</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-four">Part IV: presumed guilty</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-five">Part V: matter of "face"</a></em></p><p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-one">Original site</a><br /><em></em></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-38025742769845160722011-09-06T05:23:00.005+08:002011-09-06T05:34:52.990+08:00Double jeopardy: victims' families seek justice<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtF3lvdH0VYn0FHqUa3s9ZKx1pbUIBWXLrJUWyL-PXp986sq3SWAhlYG3J-Su8M_FO4wrZJpRM8aRbfAGFGcziljfNOkcSdUIQw5cOu68yF0p1mHPJHojLSRbAQxL2mXgQAviQ_hZtCs/s1600/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Two1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtF3lvdH0VYn0FHqUa3s9ZKx1pbUIBWXLrJUWyL-PXp986sq3SWAhlYG3J-Su8M_FO4wrZJpRM8aRbfAGFGcziljfNOkcSdUIQw5cOu68yF0p1mHPJHojLSRbAQxL2mXgQAviQ_hZtCs/s400/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Two1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648990303884885266" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Part II: Have anti-death-penalty activists gone too far?</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Feb. 10, 2011</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> The prosecutors in black-and-purple robes yawned, fidgeted, even dozed through many of the High Court hearings. <p> But throughout the trial, a 60-year-old man with thinning hair, wearing red-framed glasses and a plain jacket, listened intently from the row behind them. It was Wu Tang-jie, older brother of the male victim.</p> <p> In an interview at his lawyer's office in Taipei in June, Wu said he had attended every hearing he could in the case's 19-year course. A counselor at a Taipei prison, he used his vacation days to represent the family in court.</p> <p> He insisted that all the evidence pointed “obviously” to the guilt of the Hsichih Three.</p> <p> How could one person with one weapon have inflicted so much gore? How could the victims’ 7- and 8-year-old children have slept through the horror, unless two or more assailants covered the victims' mouths to stop their screams?</p> <p> In the middle of the interview, Wu pulled from a folder two large, double-sided laminated photos and placed them on the table. Garish red jumped out first. Then a closer look: a mutilated head and blood-matted hair, in gruesome close-up. It was Wu's brother and his brother’s wife, both 37 at the time of death, in blown-up police photos from the crime scene.</p> <p> "If people who oppose the death penalty could see these pictures, I think they would change their minds," he said softly. "People who want to abolish the death penalty don't have family who were killed like this, so they don't have sympathy."</p> <p> "The victims’ feelings, before they die — nobody can know that," he said, peering over the photos. "No one can write it down."</p><p> Wu said he thought the death penalty could deter serious crimes. "You will consider that you could be put to death before you commit a crime," he said. "If there was no death penalty, people would do whatever they want."</p> <p> He said there should be a law to better take care of victims’ families, saying the two children of the murdered couple had “no help.”</p> <p> He was clearly bitter at how the Hsichih Three had become a cause celebre for human rights and anti-death-penalty groups, while his family has suffered with little support. “We think we are a minority — nobody cares about us,” he said.</p> <p> "Everybody speaks for people who are still alive," he said. "But what about the rights of the dead? My brother and his wife can't return from the dead. The law should give them justice."</p> <p> <strong>Wave of sympathy</strong></p> <p> Last March a candlelight vigil was held to show solidarity with relatives of victims of heinous crimes, like Wu. It was timed as a rebuke to the justice minister, who had vowed not to execute anyone on her watch (the minister later resigned amid the backlash.) One of the vigil’s organizers was 35-year-old Chu Hsueh-heng.</p> <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/x1oprLQjFzo" allowfullscreen="" width="399" frameborder="0" height="300"></iframe><br /><br />Chu became interested in the death penalty while working on a government-commissioned research project that involved online polling on social issues. He started contacting victims' families, digging into archives, and researching the issue. <p> He said the anti-death-penalty movement had good intentions, and was "brave" in its initial opposition to political executions in the last days of martial law (1949-1987). Civil society efforts eventually bore fruit: Taiwan paid out some $650 million in compensation for more than 7,000 wrongful verdicts during the martial law era, including nearly 900 executions, according to Taiwan’s Humanistic Education Foundation.</p> <p> But activists had gone too far, said Chu. "In the past three to five years, almost all the people they are defending are not innocent." He said activists and the government should be doing more to give legal help and a support system to victims' families.</p>Worse, he accused the government of keeping victims' families in the dark, by starting a de facto moratorium on the death penalty without public debate on the issue. Chu called that policy "immoral." <p> "The government was doing something behind our backs," said Chu. "They were using a loophole as a way to delay the process, and didn't tell the public."</p> <p> Victims' families "thought we would provide support," said Chu. "But our government didn't do the job well, so they feel cheated."</p> <p> "Most of the victims' families support the death penalty," he said. "Maybe it's not right by high moral standards. But it’s like closure for them.” Long, drawn-out cases with no result, like the Hsichih Three case, were “like a torture” for victims’ relatives said Chu, and they “want to stop the torture.”</p> <p> "'Where is the justice society promised me?' they say. 'When I get it, I'll be able to sleep at night, and I can start to forget. Then I can start to forgive.'"</p> <p> <strong>Read the rest of Double jeopardy:</strong></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-one">Part I: a look at the death penalty in Asia</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-three">Part III: trend toward abolition</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-four">Part IV: presumed guilty</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-five">Part V: matter of "face"</a></em></p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-two">Original site</a>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-62883562677396633662011-09-06T05:18:00.004+08:002011-09-06T05:35:15.251+08:00Double jeopardy: trend toward abolition<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEJmz7PAwFy_JLeEtpwWGBGW3_Ac90s1pnBVdmJgOi1fjbnJMO7dfZwaPLzlwCo1HTDSGmVGIdCX-297Kvmv-sZ6V57VpJFqxO-TOC_OLp2qx65zq4Dy5GBzD4tyvcaqqG25WiNptM3U/s1600/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Two.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEJmz7PAwFy_JLeEtpwWGBGW3_Ac90s1pnBVdmJgOi1fjbnJMO7dfZwaPLzlwCo1HTDSGmVGIdCX-297Kvmv-sZ6V57VpJFqxO-TOC_OLp2qx65zq4Dy5GBzD4tyvcaqqG25WiNptM3U/s400/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Two.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648989119039137842" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Part III: The majority of Taiwanese and Japanese support the death penalty.</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Feb. 10, 2011</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> Worldwide, the <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/100402/death-penalty-decreasing-trend">death penalty is on the decline</a>. <p> In 2009, only <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty">one-third (58) of the world’s countries</a> kept the death penalty on the books, according to Amnesty International; only 18 of those carried it out. For the first time in history Europe had zero executions; in the Americas, only the United States carried out the death penalty.</p> <p> Asia is a holdout. It leads the world in executions, thanks to China. Beijing refuses to divulge numbers on how many it puts to death; Amnesty estimates “thousands” per year, including political criminals. Vietnam was a distant runner-up in 2009 with more than nine executed.</p> <p> Elsewhere in Asia, though, capital punishment is on the wane. The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006. India executed just one person from 1999 to 2008.</p> <p> South Korea, which like Taiwan has moved from dictatorship to democracy, hasn’t executed anyone since 1997, although it recently <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/south-korea-death-penalty-abolition-set-back-constitutional-court-ruling-2010-02-25">upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty</a>.</p> <p> <a href="http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101220a5.html">Activists in Japan</a> are pushing for abolition. The center-left government has only put two to death since taking power in the fall of 2009. In those cases, the justice minister allowed the media into the execution chamber for the first time, and <a href="http://mydd.com/2010/8/28/japan-opens">called for public debate</a>.</p> <p> <strong>Popular support</strong></p> <p> Despite those trends, a majority of Taiwanese — 70 to 80 percent, depending on the poll — still supports the death penalty. In Japan it’s 85 percent.</p><p> In a 2006 report, the International Federation of Human Rights (IFHR) found that most Taiwanese explained their support in terms of a <a href="http://www.fidh.org/Abolishing-the-Death-Penalty-Time-for-action">"cultural belief in retribution.”</a></p> <p> "There is a belief that human nature can be fundamentally evil and irredeemable, that serious criminals should pay for their crimes with their lives and that extreme punishment is needed to curb behavior," the IFHR found. "There is a fear that if the death penalty is removed, the social order will disintegrate."</p> <p> The IFHR report noted, though, that some 50 percent polled also think life sentences without possibility of parole could be substituted for the death penalty.</p> <p> Taiwan sociologist and death penalty opponent Chiu Hei-yuan said Taiwan’s capital punishment was rooted in universal ideas of vengeance, but took Chinese forms. Interestingly, Taiwan's Austronesian aborigines had no tradition of the death penalty, he said, but the Chinese who settled Taiwan did.</p> <p> "In Chinese culture, the death penalty is a very important institution for maintaining social order and the ruling government's power,” he said.</p> <p> Chinese history is packed with gruesome punishments, such as execution to the “ninth degree” — wiping out an entire clan for one man’s treason against the imperial family. Condemned men were often paraded in public before being killed, and peasants would jostle to dip buns of bread in the fresh blood of the executed, said Chiu. "They thought it was good for your health, and for curing illness.”</p> <p> Paul Katz, a historian at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, said Chinese judicial tradition often featured a presumption of guilt. "The idea has always been that if you were brought into court, it was a shameful indication that something was wrong — mediation had failed," he said. "The burden of proof was always on the person being accused."</p> <p> That was true also under martial law in Taiwan, said Katz, when the Kuomintang’s totalitarian spy and security apparatus operated with impunity. "If you were caught up in the state's web, you must have done something wrong and it was up to you to prove that you were innocent."</p>Torture to extract confessions from suspected political enemies was routine. Kangaroo courts sent thousands before firing squads. <p> In that context, the treatment of the Hsichih Three by cops and prosecutors was a reflexive habit of an authoritarian regime in its dying days.</p> <p> Since democratization in the late '80s and early '90s, Taiwan has cast away much of that troubling legacy. Part of that is reducing the number of people it puts to death.</p> <p> Executions declined from 32 in 1998 to just three in 2005, according to the 2006 IFHR report.</p> <p> <strong>A thirst for vengeance</strong></p> <p> In 2005 Taiwan quietly put a moratorium on capital punishment. It wasn’t abolished, but no one was put to death, either.</p> <p> But last year, public debate was reignited when the justice minister, under legislative questioning, vowed that no one would be executed on her watch. Two prominent murder victims' relatives — including a TV celebrity — took to the airwaves with emotional protests. They quickly attracted a groundswell of public support.</p> <p> "This was an irrational movement; crowd behavior to ask the government to kill these criminals,” said Chiu, the sociologist.</p> <p> The crowd got what it wanted. The justice minister resigned in March. Two months later, four death row inmates were shot to death, with the new justice minister saying their cases were extreme ones that had, by a Chinese saying, "made the gods and man alike tremble with rage."</p> <p> The executions came despite what Amnesty described as “assurances” from the current president Ma Ying-jeou in June 2008 that <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/open-letter-death-penalty-taiwan-2010-03-18">Taiwan’s moratorium would continue</a>.</p> <p> Forty men remain on death row, according to rights groups, including 15 who had no lawyers at their final trials.</p> <p> Still, Taiwan is moving toward abolition. A task force has met to chart the way forward on scrapping the death penalty. One human rights alliance has challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty in Taiwan, on behalf of most of the condemned men (a few refused to be part of the suit, saying they wanted to die.)</p> <p> Pro-death-penalty groups say that until the laws are changed, executions should continue as legally mandated.</p> <p> But rights groups make the reverse argument, saying Taiwan shouldn't put anyone to death until there's a ruling on the penalty's constitutionality.</p> <p> "People who are against the abolition of the death penalty misunderstand," said Chiu. "They think if a guy's not killed, that means he's not guilty. They say, only if we kill him can we get justice. We don't think so."</p> <p> <strong>Read more from Double jeopardy:</strong></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-one">Part I: a look at the death penalty in Asia</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-two">Part II: victims' families seek justice</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-four">Part IV: presumed guilty</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-five">Part V: matter of "face"</a></em></p><p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-three">Original site</a><br /><em></em></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-9446463876645455202011-09-06T02:36:00.006+08:002011-09-06T05:35:25.663+08:00Double jeopardy: Presumed guilty<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi637yjldvPY_gMdYliXXw1JLW_K3b-jAJN8W2ojFOy-hPWyw5vYd0zggcHzsc0gHuNbeS4cmLh04KwiVD-PpFI5yxk_o84Lw7H3a4rTZwyGMCeyHWIsMkbFhl3gxxHtTakI2whj4ALUxs/s1600/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-PART-FOUR.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi637yjldvPY_gMdYliXXw1JLW_K3b-jAJN8W2ojFOy-hPWyw5vYd0zggcHzsc0gHuNbeS4cmLh04KwiVD-PpFI5yxk_o84Lw7H3a4rTZwyGMCeyHWIsMkbFhl3gxxHtTakI2whj4ALUxs/s400/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-PART-FOUR.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648947112201764322" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Part IV: The most outspoken of the Hsichih Three, Su Chien-ho, describes torture in detention.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Feb. 10, 2011</span> <p><span style="font-weight: bold;"> TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> "They poured water on my face to make me afraid, like I was drowning," he recalled in a flat voice.</p> <p> "They put water on a towel and put the towel on my face. They used an electric prod on my body, including my genitals. They slapped me and kicked me, and beat me with a stick, on the bottom of my feet."</p> <p> The torture and questioning by police continued for more than 30 hours, he said. "I couldn't take it anymore, so I confessed.”</p> <p> In an interview at the office of a human rights group in Taipei, Su Chien-ho, the most outspoken of the “Hsichih Three,” re-told the story he's been telling for nearly 20 years of his adult life.</p> <p> He’s been whipsawed by Taiwan’s courts; found guilty and nearly executed, found innocent, then found guilty again.</p> <p> Su is a lanky, rail-thin man, with unruly hair flopping over his glasses and a slight chin. His emaciated appearance suggests a man who has been physically wasted by his two-decade ordeal.</p> <p> Eight witnesses support the Hsichih Three's alibis, he said, proving they were not at the crime scene at the time of the murders.</p> <p> But when they hauled him in on Aug. 15, 1991, police at the local Hsichih police station weren't in any mood to listen to alibis. Lacking any physical evidence, they were under intense pressure to extract verbal confessions, said Su.</p><p> After police tortured him, prosecutors arrived at the station to take Su’s statement, he said. At one hearing in April, the court listened to a scratchy 19-year-old recording of that encounter. Over and over again, Su's weak, scared voice pleaded, sobbed, saying, "I didn't do anything, I didn’t do it. You must believe me.”</p> <p> Finally he did sign a statement, though. "They said if I didn't sign it, I couldn't leave the station."</p> <p> Su and a member of the defense team said the Hsichih police station chief and deputy station chief on duty in August 1991 have since been promoted to high-ranking jobs; they don’t know the whereabouts of the lower-ranking cop who carried out most of the alleged torture.</p> <p> To this day, none of the cops involved have been punished. Prosecutors refused to charge them when Su tried to bring a lawsuit, despite Su's insistence that there was photographic evidence of his wounds from an exam before he left the police station in August 1991.</p> <p> All of the cops involved in the case deny torture.</p> <p> <strong>Waiting to die</strong></p> <p> Su spent the next nine years in detention. First he was alone in a 72-square-foot room, wearing five-pound shackles around his ankles for 24 hours a day. Inmates got 20 minutes a day outside.</p> <p> "Most of the inmates developed mental illnesses," said Su. "I kept reading — otherwise I would have gone crazy."</p> <p> After his first year, he got a roommate. Several inmates had committed suicide at his detention center, so authorities decided not to leave them isolated.</p> <p> His final sentence — the death penalty — came down on Feb. 9, 1995.</p> <p> From that point until his first retrial in 2000, the psychological pressure was intense. "Six to 10 days after you receive the final sentencing, it's random, you can't predict when they will come for you," said Su. "I faced the fear and pressure that it would be me, next, every day."</p> <p> Some death row inmates prepared empty "red envelopes" (hong bao), used to give gift money in Chinese culture, to pass out to other inmates once their final sentence came down. Su once got one from a condemned man with a terse message of encouragement: "You will win your case." But inmates who insisted they were innocent or didn't deserve to die wouldn't give out red envelopes.</p> <p> Such was the case when Su's final sentence came down, leaving him a week to live.</p> <p> "I didn't want to" give out red envelopes "because that would be a sign that I had given in to the situation, and could never escape," he said. His parents came to see him. "They told me they had visited many temples and prayed to God, and they told me to keep the faith, there might still be a chance for me to get out," he said.</p><p> Typically, Taiwan death row inmates are taken from their cells without notice in mid-evening. ("It used to be in the morning, but nearby residents said it was too terrifying, so they changed the schedule," said Lin Hsin-yi, of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty.) Some cops burn incense to the god of the underworld at small altars near the execution sites, to notify him another soul is on the way.</p> <p> The condemned are given a last meal and asked for their last words. Then they’re injected with a powerful anesthetic, so strong it sometimes kills them, according to Lin. They're made to lie face-down on a blanket, then shot in the back, through the heart. If they've agreed to donate an organ, they're shot in the head.</p> <p> Superstitious cops treat the spent execution bullets as amulets, believing they can repel demons, according to Taiwan media reports.</p> <p> While waiting, Su wrote goodbye letters to his family, to his supporters, to his attorney.</p> <p> "I believe there is a spirit, a God above this world, but I don't believe in any particular religion," said Su. "But I thought, if I get out I will devote most of my time to human rights causes. This was sort of my negotiation with God."</p> <p> On Feb. 20, Taiwan’s top prosecutor, under pressure from rights groups, filed a rare, 11th-hour appeal to halt the execution. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal. Two more appeals were filed; both failed. By mid-August, Su’s options were exhausted. Only the justice minister’s signature stood between him and the execution chamber.</p> <p> That minister — now Taiwan’s president — refused to sign the orders. So did his successors. And so Su got an indefinite reprieve.</p> <p> For all of that, Su has a surprisingly unemotional take on capital punishment. "Any innocent person could find themselves in my position one day," said Su calmly. “They could be declared a criminal, like me.”</p> <p> "So I support the abolition of the death penalty because it's a very problematic system. That's pretty much it."</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhcXO02ILiHUd6oVas6dekEDhyjvbXeQ4sxdq3qobi-XsWTwRsiW2qzr7GKVHb-LbV0ATfyojvReKtq8inPUbcYp9SbK9k-e81s91ZpyhV5JaYBwUzB0H15tsBpLtLYCdZmw9Cvi2-9I/s1600/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-PART-FOUR-EMBED.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 287px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhcXO02ILiHUd6oVas6dekEDhyjvbXeQ4sxdq3qobi-XsWTwRsiW2qzr7GKVHb-LbV0ATfyojvReKtq8inPUbcYp9SbK9k-e81s91ZpyhV5JaYBwUzB0H15tsBpLtLYCdZmw9Cvi2-9I/s400/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-PART-FOUR-EMBED.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648947150653178034" border="0" /></a></p> <p> <strong>Contradictory opinions</strong></p> <p> Lin, of the anti-death-penalty alliance, said public opinion polls paint a confusing picture. Although a majority backs capital punishment, 80 percent of Taiwanese also don't trust their judicial system, and think it must make mistakes.</p> <p> To explain that apparent contradiction, she said many Taiwanese believe it's worth killing one innocent person if it will help save many others' lives. Most people never believe they'll be the one falsely accused. "They think, I won't be one of the people to pay this price," said Lin.</p> <p> If they have money, they're probably right, she said. "Rich people, or those with social status, they don't worry, because if they get in this situation, they can afford a good lawyer."</p><p> She noted that the <a href="http://www.innocenceproject.org/">Innocence Project</a> and others have documented wrongful convictions in the United States. (Since 1973, 138 people have been released from death row in the United States because of evidence they were innocent, according to the <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty">Death Penalty Information Center</a>.) "But in Taiwan, we don't have this kind of information. Our legal system doesn't recognize that we even have these kinds of cases."</p> <p> Lin said support for the death penalty had also been high in countries like France, Germany and Canada. But after the death penalty was abolished, support rates plunged.</p> <p> What's more, 53 percent of Taiwanese are willing to accept a life sentence without the possibility of parole as a substitute for the death penalty, she said.</p> <p> “The death penalty is often imposed after a grossly unfair trial,” wrote Amnesty International. “But even when trials respect international standards of fairness, the risk of executing the innocent can never be fully eliminated — the death penalty will inevitably claim innocent victims.”</p> <p> In short, says Amnesty and other rights groups, the death penalty too often compounds the suffering of the original crime with the horror of executing an innocent man. That’s not justice, they say. It’s human sacrifice.</p> <p> <strong>Read more from Double jeopardy:</strong></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-one">Part I: a look at the death penalty in Asia</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-two">Part II: victims' families seek justice</a></em></p> <p> <em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-three">Part III: trend toward abolition</a></em></p><p><em></em><em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-five">Part V: matter of "face"</a></em></p><p><em>(<a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-four">Original site</a>) </em><br /><em></em></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-50556043408666632902011-09-06T02:29:00.005+08:002011-09-06T05:35:50.550+08:00Double jeopardy: A matter of 'face'<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkMDWH9lUMbcqF7VXAj5389Ly06dOwpnbfPqENYQH3mvE7aQBV77Lk4Yf6ITdsTZ-1przzysXew-lEvQYxhlT9GfhB6qWxgg1xisKYXbwDPmaPDzZ3JSRTPN30r0DEpVAXfeW6FXQlXU/s1600/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Five.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkMDWH9lUMbcqF7VXAj5389Ly06dOwpnbfPqENYQH3mvE7aQBV77Lk4Yf6ITdsTZ-1przzysXew-lEvQYxhlT9GfhB6qWxgg1xisKYXbwDPmaPDzZ3JSRTPN30r0DEpVAXfeW6FXQlXU/s400/double-jeopardy-asia-death-penalty-2011-01-26-Part_Five.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648946260712780274" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Part V: Why did it take the court 19 years to change its mind on the Hsichih Three?</span></span><p style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Global Post, Feb. 10, 2011<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> One Friday in late April last year, Wang Wen-chong, the brother of the marine convicted and executed for the murders, took the witness stand. He had named the Hsichih Three as accomplices in the murder in 1991, identifying them to police by their nicknames.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> As such he was partly responsible for putting them on death row.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> He described being hit in the head by police at the station, how they threatened to haul in his mother if he didn't confess, how he saw Su Chien-ho tied up, heard him scream in pain from another room.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> He said he denied involvement in the murders, but police didn't write that down. "I told them I didn't do this, but they didn't believe me," he told the court. He remembered how cops told him the murders couldn't have been the work of just one man, "there must have been more people involved."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> He described being beaten bloody, until he “couldn’t tell who were prosecutors and who were police.” At one point they stopped recording his testimony “because I said I didn’t do it.” Every time he denied involvement, they hit him again.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> He finally confessed to acting as a “lookout,” as his brother and the Hsichih Three committed the crime.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> He said he'd seen his brother doing drugs, smoking something off aluminum foil (probably amphetamines), but not on the night of the murders. “I didn't know it was serious,” he said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> The photos of six policemen from the Hsichih station were projected on the courtroom wall. Wang Wen-chong said he couldn’t identify the ones who had hit him. “I can’t speak carelessly,” he told the court, after glancing quickly at the wall.</span></p><p> <strong>Marshaling evidence</strong></p> <p> In most criminal trials in the United States, juries are instructed that the burden is on prosecutors to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” the guilt of the accused.</p> <p> In the Hsichih Three's retrial, before a panel of three judges, the burden of proof often seemed to lie with the defense. “From the start, there’s been no evidence in this case" to prove guilt, said Shau E-ming, a member of the defense team. “But they still sent them to death row. So we had to prove that these three men were innocent.”</p> <p> Wang’s recollections added weight to the accusations of police torture. The most crucial testimony, though, was that of the foreign expert — Taiwanese-American forensic scientist Henry Lee, famous from the O.J. Simpson trial. Lee was brought to Taiwan by the defense to do a crime scene reconstruction and appear in court.</p> <p> His forensic report concluded that the bedroom was so cramped as to make it unlikely that four assailants could have struggled violently against the two victims, in the poor visibility at the hour of the crime, without leaving more physical evidence.</p>Lee wrote that one strike with a meat cleaver could leave several different wounds on a body, making it possible for one attacker to have left 79 wounds on the couple in an explosion of violence. <p> "There is a high likelihood that Wang Wen-hsiao acted alone in committing this crime," Lee's report read. "It is highly improbable that four (4) suspects attacked two (2) victims simultaneously with the types of weapons [described by police] in such a confined space."</p> <p> In their closing arguments in September, defense lawyers leaned heavily on Lee’s testimony to sway the judges. They focused, too, on the testimony of police torture and the lack of physical evidence tying the Hsichih Three to the murders.</p> <p> "How is it possible that only Wang Wen-hsiao's physical evidence was left at the scene — but none from the other three?" one defense lawyer said. "Why didn't they find any hair, or blood beside Wang Wen-hsiao's? The prosecutors haven't met their responsibility for proof."</p> <p> Another defense lawyer railed against the very fact that the three were still defending themselves in court, two decades after the crime.</p> <p> "The case has already dragged on 19 years and they're still on trial — is this the way the legal system should work?" he said with clear disgust. "This is blackening our country's reputation."</p> <p> <strong>Catalyst for change</strong></p> <p> Why did the case drag on so long?</p> <p> "Face," one defense lawyer said simply, putting his hand to his cheek, in a conversation in the lawyers' lounge after one hearing. He and others said it boiled down to the judicial system's embarrassment over making a mistake. (The lead prosecutor declined GlobalPost’s request for an interview.)</p> <p> "One of the hardest things for the state to do is to admit that they screwed up," said Katz, the historian. The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty’s Lin agreed. When a second trial found the Hsichih Three innocent in 2003, "There was a lot of pressure from the victims' relatives, and the prosecutors lost face," said Lin.</p><p> Still, things have improved since the days when the Hsichih Three were first hauled in. This and other cases have spurred calls for reform. "The legal process is more open, police don't rough you up anymore," said Katz. "You can't get away with it anymore, like you could in the 1990s."</p> <p> Taiwan has adopted a law putting a time limit on cases like the Hsichih Three’s. No longer can prosecutors drag out a case indefinitely. Legal reform advocates are also pushing for changes to how judges are chosen and promoted, to shake up a hidebound hierarchy where junior judges are afraid to go against their elders.</p> <p> Taiwan now requires all police interrogations to be video-taped; that's still not the case in Japan, according to Shau, the member of the defense team, who also works for a human rights foundation. He said that neither Japan nor China had a historical idea of human rights, but that "Taiwan is different."</p> <p> Unlike China and more so than Japan, Taiwan has an independent media, independent businesses and a thriving civil society with active non-governmental organizations. "All these can influence the government to support human rights," he said.</p> <p> Taiwan is taking human rights concepts from the West and adapting them to what is "suitable" for Taiwan, he said.</p> <p> "Some people say, 'You are Asian,' or 'You are Chinese.' Why do they say that? I am myself. There's no such thing as 'Asian people' — we are only individuals," said Shau. "A lot of people in Taiwan have a new belief in individual rights."</p> <p> He called this a marked contrast to China, where the Communist Party government controls the justice system, sharply limits civil society and scorns human rights as a foreign annoyance. "In mainland China, if the government doesn't help you, no one can help you," he said. "In Taiwan, if the government can't help you, we are there to help. That's democracy."</p> <p> As flawed as the Hsichih Three case had been, it could be worse, he said. "Because they are in Taiwan, they are still alive," he said. "In China they would have been killed already."</p> <p> <strong>Mixed emotions</strong></p><p> None of the prosecutors showed up on Nov. 12, when the verdict was read. Only Wu, the older brother of one of the victims, sat quietly on their side of the courtroom, a lone figure facing a phalanx of black-and-white robed defense lawyers, and, to his left, the Hsichih Three.</p> <p> The spectators’ galley was packed, mostly with students and Hsichih Three supporters. The three judges took their places behind the raised desk, a tower of documents piled unsteadily in front of them among the tea cups.</p> <p> The court police ordered everyone to rise and then the head judge read out the verdict — not guilty. Gasps and murmurs came up from the crowd.</p>Wu left the courtroom quickly with a blank expression. Outside he told reporters that he would try to get prosecutors to appeal again. "The injustice against my younger brother and his wife ..." he said, his voice breaking. "I don't know when it can be made right." <p> In the courtroom, Su Chien-ho hugged his lawyer for a long time, holding on until the lawyer’s eyes turned puffy. Outside, the three defendants and their lawyers gave a press conference, surrounded by a mob of TV cameras, microphones and well-wishers.</p> <p> Their supporters started chanting "Justice, jiayou [an expression of encouragement]!,” "Taiwan, jiayou!"</p> <p> Su, stopped by a reporter on the sidewalk outside the court, made a few comments. Then he turned and quickly loped away down the street, leaving the chants, lawyers, students and cops behind. He was free again.</p> <p> <em>Huang Guo-rong and Yang Chia-nin assisted with this report.</em></p> <p> <strong>Read more from Double jeopardy:</strong></p> <p> <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-one"><em>Part I: a look at the death penalty in Asia</em></a></p> <p> <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-two"><em>Part II: victims' families seek justice</em></a></p> <p> <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-three"><em>Part III: trend toward abolition</em></a></p> <p> <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-four"><em>Part IV: presumed guilty</em></a></p>(<a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/taiwan-death-penalty-asia-hsichih-three-part-five">Original site</a>)Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-25046812753228037972011-09-06T02:23:00.002+08:002011-09-06T02:27:46.241+08:00Keep your 'frenemies' close<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">In Washington this week, US and China will be looking to stabilize troubled relationship.</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Jan. 17, 2011</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> Are the United States and China friends? Enemies? Partners? Rivals? <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's trip to the United States this week, observers are struggling to define a thorny relationship that increasingly defies characterization.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Taiwan-based Next Animation may have done best when it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGYAhiMwd5E&feature=player_embedded">dubbed the two countries "frenemies." </a>One blogger suggested the clunkier <a href="http://security.nationaljournal.com/2011/01/us-and-china-partners-or-rival.php">"parvals."</a> But even those fall short.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "I don't want to use simple words," said China-U.S. relations expert Shi Yinhong, when asked to define ties between the two countries. "The U.S. and China have a relationship which is complex. But compared to the past, I think the strategic rivalry is increasing."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Last year the two countries grappled with a long list of issues that bedeviled relations: How to deal with North Korea, the value of China's currency, a massive trade gap, the South China Sea, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, climate change and the Dalai Lama, just for starters.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Shi, from Beijing's Renmin University, said China's priority during the U.S. visit will be to "stabilize" relations after that turbulent period. But he doubted there will be any "historic breakthroughs" on the big problems.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> He downplayed talk of a joint statement or declaration to guide U.S.-China relations, as suggested by former <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/opinion/03brzezinski.html">U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski</a>.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "Dr. Brzezinski is very old and doesn't necessarily have a very strong influence on the U.S. government, so I don't think a joint statement is most important," said Shi. "Maybe they [the U.S. and China] will launch some statements, but they can only play a very limited role, because the substantial points are not being solved, or even dealt with."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> For Shi, Presidents Hu and Obama should take steps to improve Chinese public opinion toward the United States, which he said had soured in recent months. "Beginning last year, the Chinese public has had a bad opinion of the U.S.," he said. "The Chinese people feel that the U.S. has not treated China as a strategic power, it only sees China as a financial great power, who can lend money to the U.S."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Shi's comments seemed to clash with polls conducted last summer by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. That poll found that <a href="http://pewglobal.org/2010/06/17/obama-more-popular-abroad-than-at-home/">58 percent of Chinese had a favorable attitude toward the U.S.</a>, up from just 34 percent in 2007. Only 37 percent had an unfavorable view.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> But Shi dismissed those numbers, saying "I don't think such polls are very accurate." Others agreed.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Li Mingjiang, an expert on China-U.S. ties at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said that the poll was conducted before two major events: the war of words last summer over the South China Sea, and huge U.S. military deployments near Chinese waters.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Those two developments were "alarming" for China, he said. "If you did another survey now, the 'favorable' opinion would probably decline quite a lot."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Last summer, Washington said that the United States had a "national interest" in resolving territorial claims in the South China Sea. That was a response to China's description of its claim over nearly all of the <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/100625/south-china-sea-paracel-spratly-islands-military">disputed South China Sea</a> as a "core interest" on par with Taiwan and Tibet. It was the first time China had used that language. Later last year, the United States dispatched aircraft carriers and conducted massive military exercises near Chinese waters, in response to North Korea's provocations.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Li said China would likely press the United States for a statement of principles to stabilize bilateral relations. China was especially concerned about U.S. wooing of new "strategic partners" in Asia, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and India, he said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "China's decision-makers may have concluded that the U.S. is trying harder to encircle China," Li said. "Their concern is to forestall this from moving forward." He said China's wish-list included a U.S. statement that Washington would respect China's "core interests," but he thought that was unlikely to happen. "I doubt America would go that far."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Li also rejected any simple labels for the U.S. and China's hot-and-cold relations. "It's so complicated, there's really no single term or phrase to characterize this bilateral relationship," he said. "I use the term 'cooperative competitor.' There’s a lot of cooperation, a lot of collaboration, but also a lot of competition and rivalry."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> The American public seems to agree. In Pew's polling last year, it found that <a href="http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1855/china-poll-americans-want-closer-ties-but-tougher-trade-policy">49 percent of Americans had a favorable view of China</a>, with just 36 percent having an unfavorable view. And in a new Pew poll released last week, most Americans said China was a "serious problem, but not an adversary." They said the U.S. military was far more powerful than China's.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> But Americans wrongly dubbed China the world's top economic power (the U.S. economy is more than twice the size of China's), and called China the country representing the "greatest danger" to the United States (just ahead of North Korea).</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> In terms of priorities for policy toward China, Americans put "build a stronger relationship" at the top of their list, with "get tough with China on trade and economic issues" second. Human rights and environmental concerns were a distant third and fourth.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> The wisdom of the American people seems to be saying: Keep your friends close, but your frenemies closer.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110114/us-china-hu-jintao-barack-obama">Original site</a><br /></span></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-82338013605144527562011-09-06T02:12:00.004+08:002011-09-06T02:23:03.157+08:00China's military head games<span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="st">Rumors or no, news of China's military advances throws wrench in the works for US strategists.</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Jan 5, 2011</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Taipei, Taiwan --</span> China's recent military advances have launched a debate in security circles on whether the People's Liberation Army is more bark or bite.<br /><br />Much of the talk has focused on China's new anti-ship ballistic missile, which is now deployed, according to the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific. Not to mention today's news about a runway test for China's first radar-evading stealth fighter. State media called the news "rumors" and played down the aircraft's capabilities.<br /><br />But for one top Taiwanese security analyst, rumors of the runway test and China's other upgrades have already achieved their key objective: to mess with U.S. war planners' heads.<br /><br />"It's a very effective deterrent on the minds of strategic planners in Washington," said Lin Chong-Pin, a former Taiwan defense official who teaches strategy at Tamkang University. "The Chinese don’t have to do anything in the future. Their announcement has already thrown a monkey wrench in strategic planning for U.S. action in and around the Taiwan Strait."<br /><br />To be sure, no one is arguing that China could beat the United States in a full-out conflict. U.S. military spending, war-fighting experience and technology vastly outmatch China's. That would make any war between the world's sole superpower and its rising challenger a lopsided, if devastating, fight.<br /><br />But Lin and other experts say China's rapid military advances have exposed the vulnerabilities of one linchpin of U.S. military might: the aircraft carrier battle group. Now, they say, China has advanced just enough to deter or slow such a battle group from joining a fight in East Asia — thereby forcing U.S. strategists to rethink war plans, for example in a flare-up over Taiwan.<br /><br />China's so-called "carrier-killer" missile is just one of its recent advances. It has also demonstrated its prowess in anti-satellite warfare. And its fleet of attack submarines — now Asia's largest — continues to grow apace.<br /><br />Add to that the recent news that China's first aircraft carrier (a refurbished Soviet hand-me-down) may sail as early as next year, and that its advanced stealth fighter may be for real, and some are alarmed. "We are seeing the erection of a new Chinese wall in the western Pacific, for which the Obama administration has offered almost nothing in defensive response," security expert Richard Fisher told the Washington Times.<br /><br />Others downplay the threat. They stress that the anti-ship ballistic missile has not yet been fully tested, involves extremely complex technology and can be countered through various means, including attacks on China's military satellites that would be key to the missile's targeting.<br /><br />But Tamkang University's Lin said fundamental trends are "not favorable for the U.S. to maintain its dominance in East Asia, and even in space."<br /><br />"Currently the Chinese are far behind, of course, but one country [the U.S.] is going level or down, the other is going up fast," he said.<br /><br />For Lin, the real question is not whether the ballistic missile and China's other new equipment would turn the tide in an actual fight. The question is whether such advances can alter U.S. strategic thinking — and by that measure, the answer is already a "yes."<br /><br />Though U.S. officials may still talk tough, the reality is a gradual, U.S. military retreat from East Asia, Lin said. "The U.S. has economic, social and political problems at home, and defense budgets are on a downward trend," Lin said. "Washington may not change its rhetoric, but in their own minds planners are very clear — they won’t guarantee the capability of intervening in the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait."<br /><br />Lin said the Chinese military has consistently advanced faster than Americans thought it could. "This is a decades long phenomenon — Americans tend to underestimate the activities of the PLA," he said. That's not entirely surprising, he said, since "the PLA's strategic tradition is to conceal."<br /><br />He said U.S. analysts often misread China and the PLA due to cultural bias. "The Chinese are students of Sun Tzu's 'Art of War,' not students of Clausewitz," said Lin. "So they'll avoid using the military up front, and instead use the military as a backbone for Beijing's extra-military strategies."<br /><br />He predicts China will successfully challenge the U.S. without resorting to war, by manipulating U.S. perceptions through a broad range of means, with military being just one. Western analysts don't sufficiently "get" this more comprehensive Chinese strategy, he said.<br /><br />The result, he says, will be that China pushes the United States out of its Pacific backyard without firing a shot. "The U.S. will gradually withdraw without China fighting it," said Lin. "China will achieve that not by military means, but in economics, and diplomacy — this is Beijing's plan, and it's very shrewd."<br /><br />"By 2025, and probably even before 2020, they will have de facto dominance of East Asia, or at least the western Pacific."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/110104/china-military-peoples-liberation-army-ASBM">Original site</a><br /></span>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-42648125334948445422011-09-06T02:05:00.002+08:002011-09-06T02:12:20.291+08:00Asia and Wikileaks<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">WikiLeaks Asia: "There but for the grace of God"</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />East Asia's reaction to Cablegate is so far subdued. Some say the US may win sympathy.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Global Post, Dec. 1, 2010</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> A "visibly flustered" Chinese diplomat "temporarily lost the ability to speak Russian and <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/02/09BISHKEK135.html">began spluttering in Chinese</a>" when his U.S. counterpart sprang an allegation on him in Kyrgyzstan. North Korea's leaders are "psychopathic types, with a <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/06/09SINGAPORE529.html">'flabby old chap' for a leader</a> who prances around stadiums seeking adulation." And China's point man for six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program is "an arrogant, <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/02/10SEOUL272.html">Marx-spouting former Red Guard</a> who 'knows nothing about North Korea, nothing about nonproliferation and is hard to communicate with because he doesn’t speak English.'" <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Those are some of the juicy bits from the U.S. diplomatic dispatches from Asia posted to the web by <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/">WikiLeaks</a>. But while some observers are calling the massive cable dump a diplomatic catastrophe, most Asia-based experts have a lower-decibel reaction.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> They say the cables mostly confirm what people already knew or guessed, though there's some surprise over lax U.S. security measures. The fiasco may even generate sympathy for the U.S., some said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "It proves diplomats are flesh and blood — they're not as cold and boring as they look," Taiwanese commentator Antonio Chiang wrote in the Apple Daily. "This could actually <a href="http://tw.nextmedia.com/applenews/article/art_id/33002732/IssueID/20101201">help their image</a>."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Brian Bridges, an expert on East Asian politics at Hong Kong's Lingnan University, said most of the cables he'd seen "confirmed things that I would have expected," but he was struck by two cables relating to North Korea and a post-collapse scenario.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> The first reports a South Korean diplomat arguing that <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/02/10SEOUL272.html">China could live with a re-unified Korea</a> under South Korean control, though <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64873204/">Bridges and other experts</a> caution that this view may not be reliable or as widespread in China as the Korean official believes. "We have to be a little careful about that one."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> The second surprise was indications in a cable from January that several <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/01/10SEOUL62.html">North Korean diplomats have quietly defected</a> while posted overseas, said Bridges — defections that had not been made public.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "The fact that they took the step of defecting implies that within the North Korean elite, there are serious doubts about the sustainability of the North Korean system," said Bridges. "If you haven’t got your family with you, it can be extremely tough for family members left behind in North Korea, so in order to make that decision, people will think twice or three times about that step."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Others were also struck by the cables' illumination of the China-Pyongyang-Seoul dysfunctional triangle, and by diplomats' extensive study and preparation for a unified Korea and what it would mean for China and the region.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Meanwhile, in Japan, the public is too absorbed with tensions on the Korean peninsula to pay much attention to Cablegate, said Koji Murata, an international relations expert at Kyoto's Doshisha University. But he said he and others were surprised at the massive cyber-security breach. "Some Japanese may feel that the American security system for protecting secrets is so fragile and weak."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Murata said U.S. cables may fuel arguments that Japan bows too much to U.S. pressure, particularly in relation to Tokyo's recent moves to relax a ban on exporting its military technology. "Many Japanese feel that this policy change may have been done under American influence or pressure," said Murata. "Some may feel this is evidence that Japan is too dependent on the U.S."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Chinese commentators had a mostly <a href="http://world.globaltimes.cn/americas/2010-11/597516_2.html">low-key reaction</a>. With the exception of <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/10/09BEIJING2965.html">some choice remarks</a> by Chinese officials about "spoiled child" North Korea, many of the cables from China released so far have been pedestrian (says China's top diplomat to U.S. visitors about China-U.S. cooperation: “If we expand the pie for the common interest, the pie will be larger and more delicious.”)</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> But Chiang, the Taiwanese commentator, said in a phone interview that Beijing is likely fretting, since information control is "vital for the survival of their regime" and authoritarian governments like China's are a stated WikiLeaks target. "They must be very alarmed," said Chiang. "There must be a lot of emergency meetings."</span></p> <p> <span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Cablesbyorigin/CablesbyOrigin">Taiwan, for its part, is bracing</a> for the publication of nearly 3,500 cables that WikiLeaks claims to have from the American Institute in Taiwan, America's de facto embassy in the absence of formal ties, and one of its most sensitive diplomatic posts. But Chiang said he doubts anything "surprising" will emerge, since Taiwan's rowdy talk shows and manic 24-hour-media has already chewed through most everything involving U.S.-Taiwan relations.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> One possibility, said Chiang, was cables that could "confirm Beijing's suspicions" about former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian (nickname "Ah-Bian"), now jailed on corruption charges. Last decade Beijing and Washington accused Chen of stirring up tensions by pushing the envelope on independence; AIT cables could further tarnish Chen's image. "It will be the nail in Ah-Bian's coffin," said Chiang.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Chiang noted that we'd only seen the "tip of the iceberg," since just 300 out of some 250,000 cables have been posted. But so far, he and others say the massive leak hasn't appeared to have done as much damage as some feared, at least in East Asia.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Lingnan University's Bridges said "people are going to be a bit more wary about what they say to American diplomats," but that their Asian counterparts will probably sympathize.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "I think there will be a sort of 'there but for the grace of God go I' kind of view — the Americans have been caught out and this is very embarrassing, but it could have been them."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/101201/wikileaks-east-asia">Original site</a><br /></span></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-6997012330167408802011-09-06T01:52:00.007+08:002011-09-08T10:18:21.594+08:00Red light fight<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNpmtIgSKLmZKD4VXkKtz0YxdpIoZnwuJPFdAYKD5J9J8a67b-n2WOXK0ZU1OWWQ_7MRkUpFCa8y4iJz9Xz293K5FJvrlHV4-8OaH7jZGudx_A6uhEV9M5TW4jKQqhv2fBgAGCRfqce0/s1600/%2527Nadia%2527%252C+a+Taipei+sex+worker%252C+in+the+hallway+of+a+former+brothel.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNpmtIgSKLmZKD4VXkKtz0YxdpIoZnwuJPFdAYKD5J9J8a67b-n2WOXK0ZU1OWWQ_7MRkUpFCa8y4iJz9Xz293K5FJvrlHV4-8OaH7jZGudx_A6uhEV9M5TW4jKQqhv2fBgAGCRfqce0/s400/%2527Nadia%2527%252C+a+Taipei+sex+worker%252C+in+the+hallway+of+a+former+brothel.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649806256303279698" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Plan to legalize prostitution sparks debate between women's and worker's rights groups.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Global Post, Nov. 29, 2010</span><br /><p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> Massive debts pushed her into prostitution. Now, after several false starts, she's pocketing $3,000 in a good month, turning tricks as a self-employed Taipei street-walker.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> The money's good, she says, but there's just one problem: the cops. Prostitution is illegal in Taiwan, and the cops have several times hauled her in for three days in jail, or a fine up to $1,000.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> If sex work is legalized in a year's time as now planned, though, she says her working conditions will improve.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "I can be more relaxed at work," said the sex worker, who gave only the name "Nadia," in an interview in Taipei. "I won't have worry so much about the cops; worry that they'll come and catch me. I won't be afraid of anyone bullying me."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Nadia is one of an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 sex workers in Taiwan, including hostesses that offer services short of intercourse in clubs and karaoke halls. They're at the center of a debate over whether prostitution should be legalized as planned next year, and if so in what form.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Taiwan's decisions could have implications for countries in Asia and beyond that are struggling to balance demands for social order with the protection of sex workers' rights.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Prostitution is legal in more than 70 countries worldwide, illegal in more than 100, and restricted in others. (See map from <a href="http://chartsbin.com/view/snb">Chartsbin.com</a>.) In Asia, Thailand and the Philippines are well-known sex tourism destinations, despite a legal ban on prostitution in both countries. China legally bans prostitution but lurches between looking the other way and harsh crackdowns, such as the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/asia/28china.html">public shaming of prostitutes</a> and their Johns. Japan legally permits sex services short of intercourse, and hosts a thriving sex trade.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> In Taiwan, the legalization debate has pitted women's rights groups against workers' rights groups. The former say the <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/thailand/091027/economic-crisis-the-sex-trade-and-children">sex trade exploits women</a>, is plagued with trafficking and ensnares under-age girls.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> "We don't think it's just a question of workers' rights," said Wang Yueh-hao, from the Garden of Hope Foundation. "The sex trade does big damage to both sex workers and their families."</span></p><p> But sex workers rights' groups say the sex trade isn't going anyway anytime soon, that bans are counterproductive, and that prostitutes deserve dignity and good working conditions as much as any other laborers.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2C-ObORtAgVKQ0eMlvWZVSevX23gIit7KXkimLUP_Kvq2N_r-MvJaHjvo9FOWKHrxT1zoXdjzKEWwwAXAcPiFpi_t-bhH0LfbgrNnboVBJs5613plU9uY8uMZCNt03saAhN-j0gy60Jw/s1600/Sex+worker+%2527White+orchid%2527+waits+for+customers+in+Taipei.++Photo+by+Lin+Bor-Liang.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 277px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2C-ObORtAgVKQ0eMlvWZVSevX23gIit7KXkimLUP_Kvq2N_r-MvJaHjvo9FOWKHrxT1zoXdjzKEWwwAXAcPiFpi_t-bhH0LfbgrNnboVBJs5613plU9uY8uMZCNt03saAhN-j0gy60Jw/s400/Sex+worker+%2527White+orchid%2527+waits+for+customers+in+Taipei.++Photo+by+Lin+Bor-Liang.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649806479382867218" border="0" /></a></p> <p> "They contribute to society, but society gives them the lowest status," said the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters' (COSWAS) Chien Chia-ying. "That's the most unacceptable part." Sex worker rights <a href="http://forum.globaltimes.cn/forum/showthread.php?p=43713">activists in many other countries agree</a>.</p> <p> Part of the problem in Taiwan is that the laws don't make much sense. For decades prostitution was legal here. But since the 1990s, prostitutes have been punished under the Social Order Maintenance Act, COSWAS says. Pimps, middlemen and traffickers are dealt with under the criminal code, slapped with up to five years in jail or $3,300 fines. Johns aren't penalized at all.</p> <p> That means it's perfectly legal to pay for sex, but illegal to sell it. <a href="http://www.judicial.gov.tw/CONSTITUTIONALCOURT/EN/p03_01_printpage.asp?expno=666">Taiwan's courts found that arrangement unconstitutional</a> in 2009, and demanded a change by November next year. So the government plans to scrap the penalty on prostitutes, and has mooted the option of legal "sex zones" in Taipei, or letting small brothels of five or six prostitutes run their own small business out of apartments anywhere in the city.</p> <p> Women's groups take a dim view of either scenario. The Garden of Hope's Wang said that since 90 percent of sex workers are female, "We think it's an issue of gender inequality." They want the laws to remain as they are, at the very least, and ideally to make it illegal to pay for sex, too.</p> <p> They say the government should do more to help prostitutes find a way out of the trade. "We need to give them other choices, so they don't think they have to sell their body to resolve their household problems," said Wang. And they say society has an obligation to curb a destructive trade as much as possible. "You can't improve their lifestyle and rights by legalizing prostitution," said Wang. "They will still face discrimination and be under gangsters' control."</p> <p> Meanwhile, COSWAS is trying to improve sex workers' public image. Their ideal is a fully legal and open sex trade in which empowered prostitutes could hire third-party services to help them market their wares, and keep more of the profits. For that reason, they say the government's plans don't go far enough -- pimping and other third-party services need to be legalized, too.</p>"You need to completely decriminalize the sex industry in order to protect sex workers' safety," insisted COSWAS' Wang Fang-ping. "If middlemen are still illegal, you will still have a lot of problems." <p> They say prostitutes kept 70 or 80 percent of the money when the trade was legal (giving the rest to pimps or other middlemen) — now it's more like 60 percent.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4EOxW9EGDZTYjoDfIDztHu8LDV7tTfSWCbZkWCBxTugEguTLHk5G1E2oGdtL8Y4_5027l1idOY_M3MPV-y85NfoVIVbbIheRqdbgRig-6J3b8WYOa_aF3x3zXgOReM1NB1PAkjB-i2j4/s1600/A+Taiwanese+sex+worker+at+the+%2527Spring+Phoenix%2527+brothel%252C+now+closed.++Photo+by+Lin+Bor-Liang.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4EOxW9EGDZTYjoDfIDztHu8LDV7tTfSWCbZkWCBxTugEguTLHk5G1E2oGdtL8Y4_5027l1idOY_M3MPV-y85NfoVIVbbIheRqdbgRig-6J3b8WYOa_aF3x3zXgOReM1NB1PAkjB-i2j4/s400/A+Taiwanese+sex+worker+at+the+%2527Spring+Phoenix%2527+brothel%252C+now+closed.++Photo+by+Lin+Bor-Liang.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649806631364648866" border="0" /></a> <p> In an interview arranged by COSWAS, GlobalPost interviewed Nadia to find out the reality on the streets.</p><p> The interview took place in a former brothel dating back to the 1950s. It's tucked into a narrow street fragrant with incense curling out of a next-door temple, in one of Taipei's jumbled, old commercial districts. The building is now used for legal health and counseling services. Inside there's peeling wallpaper, claustrophobic rooms, bead curtains. Dim yellow lighting bathes the hallway. Photos of one-time madames dot the walls, scraps of the brothel's long-past heyday.</p> <p> There are still seven or eight small, illegal brothels nearby, said Wang, but "you have to know where they are."</p> <p> In the decades following World War II, this and other Taipei brothels and clubs did brisk business, helped in part by a steady supply of U.S. military men. Taiwan hosted huge U.S. bases before formal ties were broken in 1979, and the island was an <a href="http://ustdc.blogspot.com/2009/09/rest-and-recreation-r-part-2.html">R&R destination during the Vietnam War</a>. Taipei still boasts a now down-on-its-luck bar district dubbed the "Combat Zone" by U.S. servicemen.</p> <p> But in the 1990s, a Taipei mayor, inspired by New York City's Rudy Giuliani, backed an anti-smut drive as a way to gain support from conservative middle- and upper-class voters, according to Wang. Outside Taipei, only 20 to 30 legal brothels remain, still open under a loophole.</p> <p> Wearing a bright pink, puffy winter jacket, Nadia took a seat in a small office, two gold rings circling bony fingers. She appeared to be in her 30s ("Why don't you guess my age," said the rail-thin sex worker, when asked).</p> <p> Nadia's story doesn't easily lend itself to either side of the legalization debate. She rejected the womens' rights groups arguments, at least for self-employed sex workers like herself ("We are absolutely not exploited," she said. "We don't have bosses.") But she told a depressing tale that hardly speaks of empowerment.</p> <p> Asked how she had started in the sex trade, Nadia's wary expression crumbled into choked-back grief. She said her husband left her in 2006, abandoning also a son, now 7. Saddled with huge debts (she didn't want to go into why), she turned to prostitution. But her initial attempts failed. "This work isn't as simple as it looks," she said.</p> <p> First she joined a "Thai shower" joint, where customers picked girls out of a line and paid about $65 for an hour's shower, massage and sex. She only kept about $35 per customer, giving the rest to her bosses. The money wasn't enough, so she left after four days.</p> <p> Then she worked at a secret "spa" with a private elevator requiring a key. There the terms were even worse: $150 a trick, of which she kept only $50. After a month, she switched to a sex "studio," where she kept $65 out of $100 per customer. "No matter which place it was, my cut wasn't fair, and there was the problem of where to get customers," she said.</p><p> So she began walking the streets. Now at least she can choose her customers, and reject any who seem too shady. She charges about $35 per 15 minutes and can clear up to $2,800 a month after paying her rent and all other expenses — although $1,500 to $1,650 per month has been more typical lately, she said.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9OcZ8TlQM2e4OoAyPUgewfLNPaBKYreeCXHtSa_XI6ezbGzum9QVRS9psePXHnAcxS4GFaREzCdtGWe3_FO9hjE1xZbkTNyR7EzhAWbw20rkJT1q6qYECQUcF8lgWjJwgubjqk4H1oJs/s1600/%2527Nadia%2527%252C+a+former+Taipei+sex+worker%252C+says+legalizing+prostitution+would+improve+her+working+conditions.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9OcZ8TlQM2e4OoAyPUgewfLNPaBKYreeCXHtSa_XI6ezbGzum9QVRS9psePXHnAcxS4GFaREzCdtGWe3_FO9hjE1xZbkTNyR7EzhAWbw20rkJT1q6qYECQUcF8lgWjJwgubjqk4H1oJs/s400/%2527Nadia%2527%252C+a+former+Taipei+sex+worker%252C+says+legalizing+prostitution+would+improve+her+working+conditions.+PHOTO+BY+JONATHAN+ADAMS.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649806363161600002" border="0" /></a></p> <p> She works 60-hour weeks, takes only one day off per week, and lives in a building with more than 50 other sex workers. Despite what women's rights groups say, she says she has no contact with gangsters, and said the only reason some sex workers sometimes have to get gangsters' help is that the trade is illegal.</p> <p> Sitting beside her, COSWAS' Chien said "I can't say there's no exploitation, but I think [sex workers] are exploited a lot less than most workers are." Chien added that do-gooder plans to switch prostitutes into other work typically offer them salaries a fraction of what they can make selling their bodies. Said Nadia: "I would like to change jobs, but I don't have the ability to do other work."</p> <p> Now, Nadia's top concern isn't gangsters or pimps, but police stings. She and COSWAS allege that Taipei cops routinely set up prostitutes for arrest by arranging for friends or a paid third party to approach them. Once a sex worker negotiates a price, she can be busted; meanwhile the customer is considered a "witness" to the infraction but is not fined or held. </p> <p> COSWAS led protests against such set-ups last year, drawing a pledge from the mayor to end them. But with new regulations on the sex trade still in limbo, the group — and Nadia — say not much has changed.</p> <p> "I'm afraid of the cops, not my customers," said Nadia.</p><p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/101124/taiwan-sex-work">Original site</a><br /></p><p></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-55493873890924424752011-09-04T11:54:00.004+08:002011-09-04T12:05:54.380+08:00Who'd down with TPP?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5efQNADNKxgk1smTYughoROPpHcRMiEacULsV7swZL8D5x2uyUNs0SGo1b3UotqlmOZXebRlnh6DA-ISCRHFrLMpirg-4esq3HeH1ppseiPtUhi6NfTAcQyDwXoc_yOA5fzxnjXU8GMY/s1600/commerce-10-18-11-TPP.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5efQNADNKxgk1smTYughoROPpHcRMiEacULsV7swZL8D5x2uyUNs0SGo1b3UotqlmOZXebRlnh6DA-ISCRHFrLMpirg-4esq3HeH1ppseiPtUhi6NfTAcQyDwXoc_yOA5fzxnjXU8GMY/s400/commerce-10-18-11-TPP.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648350761257349714" border="0" /></a>
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Obama is betting on a new free trade bloc to help the US economy. Here's what you need to</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">know.</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">
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<br />Global Post, November 21, 2010</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">
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<br />TAIPEI, Taiwan —</span> New Zealand's down with it. Singapore's down with it. Now the United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam and Malaysia are getting down with it, too.
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<br />Still waiting for word on whether Japan's down with it or not.
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<br />There's a new trade bloc on the block, and it's called TPP — short for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Just a few years ago it was an obscure deal between the "P4," which sounds like an Asian boy-band but actually refers to four small, free-trade loving countries on the Pacific rim: New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei and Chile.
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<br />But since the Obama administration publicly embraced it last year as a way to help revive America's zombie-like economy, TPP has shot to stardom. And joined a long list of mind-numbing acronyms.
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<br />TPP was a hot topic at the recent APEC meeting in Yokohama, and has been widely lauded as a possible stepping stone to a FTAAP.
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<br />That last one may sound like something Bill the Cat would have spat out in the 1980' comic strip Bloom County. But it stands for a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, a "Mother of All Free Trade Deals" that would include the world's top three economies — the U.S, China and Japan — and APEC's 18 other members in one king-sized trade block spanning the Pacific.
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<br />Too bad it's not likely to happen in our lifetimes.
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<br />"The FTAAP is a hopeless dream at this point," Deborah Elms, a trade expert with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, wrote in an email. "I don't see the political will to launch talks on this scale. And, practically, to get the entire 21 member economies to agree to talks on liberalizing trade with one another is just not in the cards."
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">It's the politics, stupid</span>
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<br />Even TPP's prospects are dubious, some analysts say. The problem, as usual, is politics. Domestic politics, to be more specific — in the U.S. and Japan, for starters.
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<br />With TPP, Obama's team is headed into a bruising fight to get Americans down with another ambitious trade deal. Republicans are typically more free-trade-minded and likely to support such deals, so you'd think a Republican-controlled House could help.
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<br />But Obama's recent failure to re-negotiate a free trade deal with South Korea doesn't bode well. In that case, U.S. auto companies and beef exporters couldn't swallow the terms of the original 2007 deal and pressed for a better one. But so far Seoul isn't biting.
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<br />With TPP, it's the U.S. dairy lobby that's gearing up for battle. It threw down a gauntlet in March by marshaling 30 senators from both parties in a show of force against TPP. The reason, the senators said in a letter: Cheap dairy imports from New Zealand threaten U.S. dairy farmers livelihoods.
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<br />Elms, the trade expert, says objections are also likely from U.S. beef and sugar producers, and textile producers who would face cheap competition from Vietnam. She thinks these objections won't be as much of a hurdle as U.S. automakers' concerns over the South Korea deal. But the politics of TPP have others betting against Obama already.
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<br />"The net benefits to the U.S. economy are likely to be minimal and the political costs, imposed by dairy exports from New Zealand, substantial," said John Ravenhill, an expert on global trade at Australian National University. "So I would not be optimistic about its chances."
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<br />"The TPP at the moment has no significant economy involved with which the U.S. does not already have a trade agreement," said Ravenhill, with the possible exception of Vietnam. If Tokyo gets on board, TPP would become far more important, he said.
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<br />But Japan's inclusion would also sharply raise the political stakes — almost certainly sparking a fierce debate in America that would make the 1990s NAFTA fight look like a playground scuffle.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Land of the rising "no"</span>
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<br />Which brings us to Japanese politics. Tokyo's center-left government has only expressed vague interest in joining TPP talks [4], and it's already ignited a firestorm of debate and brought 3,000 farmers onto the streets in protest. Japan's rice and vegetable farmers have long been protected by tariffs as high as 600 to 800 percent, and they like that arrangement just fine, thank you very much.
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<br />Prime Minister Naoto Kan has an urban support base that's more likely to back free trade. But the opposition — and some in Kan's own coalition — draw support from rural farming areas. And amid Japan's musical-chairs political leadership, Kan is considered weak.
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<br />At his excellent "Observing Japan [5]" blog, Tobias Harris rounds up the politics of TPP in Japan, and says Kan needs to show leadership on the issue. Instead, Tokyo kicked the can down the road, saying it won't make any decision on TPP until next June. "By proceeding cautiously now, did the government simply give its opponents time to mobilize and thus ensure that once again the issue will be postponed?" wrote Harris.
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<br />If the politics of TPP look thorny, they're nothing compared to the politics of a wider trans-Pacific deal. Protected agricultural sectors have so far helped prevent a Korea-China deal, a Japan-Korea deal, or an expansion of the ASEAN-China deal to include Korea and Japan.
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<br />And any ambitious regional deal will face the same issues that have seen the the current "Doha Round" of global trade talks grind to a halt, said Ravenhill.
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<br />"What you have is essentially the same divide as exists in the Doha round, except with a couple of key players missing — the EU and Brazil," said Ravenhill. "But otherwise you've got the same players with the same attitudes and the same entrenched interests facing off against each other."
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<br />In other words, the politics are just as tough. "For economists, the puzzle is why states would ever do anything other than free trade," Harris wrote in his post on TPP, paraphrasing political economist Helen Milner. "For political scientists the puzzle is why states would ever practice anything but protectionism."
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Getting back in the game"</span>
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<br />If the politics of these deals are so daunting, why all the rosy talk in Yokohama?
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<br />TPP is partly about showing that the U.S. is "back" in Asia. There's a perception that while Asia has been busy inking deals and integrating its economies, Washington's been asleep at the switch.
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<br />Now Washington is determined to be a player on economic as well as security issues. TPP "is a bid by the U.S. to keep at bay Asia-initiated economic integration in the region and maintain influence over Asia," Moon Gwang-lip wrote recently in South Korea's Joong Ang Daily. The deal is "being driven primarily by strategic calculations on what is necessary to get back in the game" in Asia, added Ravenhill.
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<br />Elms said the TPP drive began at the administration of George W. Bush over worries that Washington was being "locked out" of Asian markets and left out of preferential deals. "Many officials in the U.S. were increasingly concerned about the proliferation of trade agreements at all levels that would have left the United States on the outside," Elms said.
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<br />The next TPP talks are in December in New Zealand, and Obama wants big progress by next year's APEC summit in Hawaii. But if he can't sort out the politics, TPP — not to mention FTAAP — may well be DOA.
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<br /><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/commerce/101118/free-trade-global-economy-tpp">Original site</a>
<br />Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-20855756030177021072011-08-29T10:18:00.005+08:002012-02-07T11:58:08.829+08:00Taipei After Hours<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGM1RFu5VU77XRPY02g2RiYimP9sRhNlWOP6r0ZJV506_Hib4blZiFfsCVC1u6rj8RA7GI_IF8ZIWTnDjo4pI-WJITyo6Dkm02VtNIk5l8jfw9zQehmKWLdfrcDVFf_yQDqEMbA_g7Nw/s1600/PB214042.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGM1RFu5VU77XRPY02g2RiYimP9sRhNlWOP6r0ZJV506_Hib4blZiFfsCVC1u6rj8RA7GI_IF8ZIWTnDjo4pI-WJITyo6Dkm02VtNIk5l8jfw9zQehmKWLdfrcDVFf_yQDqEMbA_g7Nw/s400/PB214042.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5706237175998242594" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2010</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Taipei, TAIWAN --</span> Taipei is more an eating city than a drinking city. You won't find here the raucous public drunkenness of Tokyo, the hip watering holes of Beijing's restored hutongs, or the alcohol-fueled debauchery of Bangkok.<br /><br />What you will find is a culture in love with food, and the pursuit of food -- in all kinds, shapes and sizes, but especially snacks (<span style="font-style: italic;">xiao chi</span>). Drinks are often an afterthought.<br /><br />That's not to say there's no booze culture. For wealthy male Taiwanese movers and shakers, serious drinking is tucked away in private, high-priced clubs and karaoke halls packed with nubile staff. Linsen North Road, though hard-hit by the economic downturn and an expat exodus, still caters to the thirsty -- carving out a strip of Japanese-style hostess and piano bars south of Nanjing West Road, and Filipina-staffed hostess bars in the former U.S. military's R&R "Combat Zone" further north.<br /><br />Western-style lounge bars and cookie-cutter hip-hop clubs have sprung up in recent years, too, especially in the sleek new Xinyi shopping district in eastern Taipei that's clustered around the landmark Taipei 101 skyscraper. Taiwanese are justifiably proud to boast all the same luxury brands as Tokyo, Paris and New York, and Xinyi is where Taipei flaunts how far it's come -- from a garbage-strewn developing-world town with nightmarish traffic to a clean, neon-washed and brand-savvy metropolis.<br /><br />But at night, the city's soul is still in its crowded night markets; its narrow, dark side alleys; its corner fruit stands; and its incense-choked temples, where the clacking of wood divination blocks<br />mixes with cell-phone rings. So when the lights go down, to discover the real Taipei, give Xinyi a pass and head west, to the old city.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6:30pm: Wanhua (Monga)</span><br /><br />Taipei has vaulted headlong into the 21st century -- but someone forgot to tell Wanhua.<br /><br />This is the heart of old Taipei, still barely beating -- a commercial hub dating back to the early Qing dynasty that's far past its prime. It's an old person's neighborhood, a slice of the Taiwan of<br />yesteryear, full of crumbling beauty and earthy Taiwanese culture but faintly embarrassing to well-educated, upper class Taiwanese. Wanhua is the polyester-clad Taiwanese great-aunt who spits in public, never learned how to use the Internet, and tells you you're fat to your face.<br /><br />The neighborhood got a boost recently from a coming-of-age gangster movie titled "Monga," <span class="il">after</span> the old name for Wanhua. Now, the seedy charms of this former thieves' bazaar, turned second-hand market, is luring more tourists -- both foreign and domestic.<br /><br />Start at the Longshan Temple subway stop. Turn right <span class="il">after</span> coming up the escalator, walk a few meters, and it's like traveling 30 years back in time. The park and underground shopping mall are worthy of Fellini: groups of gnarled old men playing Chinese chess, middle-aged women in motorized wheelchairs belt out hackneyed karaoke with a Taiwanese twang, fortune tellers show off photos of celebrity customers and birds ready to peck out your fate (they pick slips of paper with their beaks), 'nakashi' bands entertain drunk retirees, a down-at-the-heels septuagenarian tries to grasp a Hello Kitty doll with a mechanical pincer at a glowing grabber machine.<br /><br />Check out Longshan temple, then exit and take a left and then another immediate left to cut through pungent Herb Alley. Cross the street to the temple of the King of Hell. On the other side of the temple, you'll come to the newly restored, historic street of Bopiliao. It's Taiwan's answer to the hip, restored hutongs of Beiijing; a fragrant lane dedicated to the wood-and-paper-lantern nostalgia of small-town 1960s and 1970s Taiwan.<br /><br />Now it's time to get down to the serious business of eating. Retrace your steps to the narrow markets, especially the Guangzhou Street night market. The idea here is to graze; moving from stall to stall, while chewing on your latest plastic-bag-wrapped treat with the help of a wooden skewer. Try the<span style="font-style: italic;"> ren bing</span> (NT$50), a Taiwanese-style jumbo spring roll, packed with dried tofu strips, radish, carrots, crushed peanuts and sprouts.<br /><br />Dart down Snake Alley (the covered Huaxi Night Market), perpendicular to Guangzhou Street, for the snake-gutting shows, and -- if you dare -- to down a snake blood-and-sorghum liquor cocktail (it's supposed to be good for men, especially). Also on offer: "three-cups" field rat, turtle, and snake soup -- as well as sex toy shops and several stores offering foot massages so excruciating they've been known to make grown men cry.<br /><br />Make sure you stop for a mango ice (NT$100) at the popular Lungdu Ice and Juice Shop, on Guangzhou Street near the entrance to the night market.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8pm: Changan Road, central Taipei</span><br /><br />If you're scared of street-stalls or just prefer a sit-down meal, beat a retreat to central Taipei. Head to the standby Shin Yeh, which serves Taiwanese favorites like <span style="font-style: italic;">oajian </span>(oyster pancake, NT$280) and sauteed sea clams with ginger (NT$295) in a lively setting not far from the Linsen North Road "Combat Zone." Efficient staff whisk dishes from the kitchen, and the noise reaches a dull roar as the alcohol flows.<br /><br />Another excellent and quieter option is Jiu Fan Ken, where you'll find down-home Taiwanese cooking in a classy, old-Taiwan atmosphere of wooden antique furniture and slow-turning ceiling fans. The small joint, an old favorite of Japanese tourists and pro-independence politicians, closed briefly <span class="il">after</span> its previous owner passed away last year, but has reopened by popular demand, with a slightly different look.<br /><br />Try the <span style="font-style: italic;">fong rou</span> (NT$350), a chunk of fatty pork slow-cooked to an almost custard-like consistency, and topped with a cilantro garnish. Other favorites here are the five-flavored-fish (<span style="font-style: italic;">wu wei yu</span>, NT$480) -- a fried fish in a sweet red sauce -- and duck strips.<br /><br />At Jiu Fan Ken you can also sample the island's sudsy pride, Taiwan Beer, served out of blue-and-white bowls. Or if you prefer more company, head to the Taiwan Beer bar, just ten minutes' walk away. It's a vast beer hall in a converted warehouse, where large groups of<br />Taiwanese revelers imbibe and celebrate with signature green mini-kegs of Taiwan Beer at picnic tables.<br /><br />Also not far from here, and well worth checking out, is the 1914 Huashan Culture Park. It's a sprawling former winery complex that's been tastefully converted into an artsy, dimly-lit complex of cafes, boutiques, art galleries, the live music hall Legacy, and classy pizza and pasta joints.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> 9:30pm: Zhongxiao East Road, Dunhua road intersection</span><br /><br />Hop in a cab or take the MRT's blue line a couple stops to this throbbing center of Taipei nightlife. It's a prime destination for the beloved Taiwanese pastime of "<span style="font-style: italic;">guangjie</span>" -- slow-paced strolling, window-shopping and snacking. This nameless 'hood is the haunt of stylish twenty- and thirty-somethings, older scenesters who wish they were still that age, dandies, hip-hop kids in trucker hats, camouflage or Bathing Ape-wear, and <span style="font-style: italic;">la mei</span> ("spicy girls") in body-hugging dresses and stiletto heels.<br /><br />Check out the eye-candy from a good people-watching vantage point, visit a Taiwan-style teahouse in the strip on Lane 181, Alley 7, sample some pomelo or other locally-grown fruit at a corner stand, or try one of the hip lounge bars like 2046. It sports wicker furniture on an outside patio; glass bead curtains, plush chairs and moody lighting within, and serves up cool cocktails like the Honey Paradise (fresh apple juice, Southern Comfort and honey, NT$300).<br /><br />To find out where Taiwanese flock at night instead of bars, walk a few blocks south and check out the 24-hour Eslite bookstore on Dunhua South Road, a favorite haunt of night-crawlers, book-lovers and Hong Kong tourists. Most nights the aisles and marble tables are packed with young Taiwanese soaking in the latest business fad, thumbing through travel magazines or devouring American and European bestsellers in translation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> 10:30 pm: Anhe Road.</span> Serious drinkers will want to retire now to Anhe Road, Taipei's premier lounge bar and wine bar strip, with a saloon, club and a few quirky watering holes thrown in for good measure. One of the first clubs here, and walkable from the Eslite bookstore, is the elegant Champagne, which serves up a cool champagne-and-lychee liqueur cocktail in a classy, glittering setting; it also does a super-sweet lychee Mojito (NT$300).<br /><br />Further south and just off of Anhe Road (a 15-20 minute walk, or brief cab ride), pop in to China White to sample a truly diabolical concoction: the Tai Ji (NT$350). It's a stomach-battering blend of Kahlua, triple sec, Korean soju and 80-proof vodka, garnished with cinnamon and set alight along with a flaming absinthe garnish. Also popular here are Lemon Drops, served with a lime wedge.<br /><br />Midnight, take your pick: Serious club-hoppers can head back to Zhongxiao East Road to hit Luxy, a standby of Taipei nightlife that's still going strong, with a steady diet of electronica, hip-hop, special shows by gyrating "Luxy dancers" and bottle-juggling bartenders, and cavernous dance floors with plenty of elbow room. Other nightclub options like Barcode, Primo and Room 18 are located further east in the Xinyi district.<br /><br />But for pure dumb fun, Carnegie's -- just across from China White -- still can't be beat. Some long-time expats will groan and recoil at the name, as the Taipei incarnation of this pub chain is a notorious meat market with rowdy, drunken revelers spilling into Anhe Road late at night. But on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, it's hard to find a better, more expat-friendly party, though definitely one geared toward those a bit long in the tooth.<br /><br />On a good night, Carnie's, as expats call it, continues Wanhua's Fellini-esque theme with amateur dancing on its long, brass-railed bar, in front of a towering wall of booze. Sip your drink and feast<br />your eyes, if you dare, on the 50-something woman gyrating on the bartop in lingerie; the elderly gay queen shaking his booty, a group of Malaysian stewardesses attempting a pole-dance without the pole, and a pot-bellied, balding and be-spectacled European businessmen, well into his seventh Corona, working off his jetlag with jerking, a-rhythmic motions that at times resemble dance moves. By this stage, you might be ready to join them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Late night, Fuxing South Road:</span> To end your night like in true Taiwanese style, it's imperative to eat. An early-<span class="il">hours</span> snack, if administered correctly, can help blot out the shameful memory of whatever happened at Carnegies, soak up alcohol and stave off a crushing hangover (that goes double if you've had the Tai Ji at China White).<br /><br />Try one of Taipei's signature congee joints on Fuxing North Road, such as No Name Congee Snacks, open until 6 a.m. Select a few small plates like bamboo shoots (NT$50), sliced beef with yellow chives (NT$60), and cucumber with red pepper (NT$35), served with a bowl of congee<br />(the Chinese answer to oatmeal) with sweet potato chunks. Some like to dip bites of food in their congee; others dump everything in their bowl, mix and slurp away.<br /><br />Now you're ready for the Sandman -- and if you're a true Taiwanese, you're already thinking about where to get breakfast.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mentioned in this article:</span><br /><br />Lungdu Ice and Juice: Guangzhou Street #168, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2308-3223" value="+886223083223" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2308-3223</a><br /><br />Shin Yeh: ShuangCheng Street #34-1, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2596-3255" value="+886225963255" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2596-3255</a><br /><br />Jiu Fan Keng: Changan East Road Section 2, #172-1, 2F, +886<br />(0)2-2775-3317, <a href="http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/ninefankan" target="_blank">tw.myblog.yahoo.<span>com</span>/ninefankan</a>, <a href="mailto:amyanty@yahoo.com.tw" target="_blank">amyanty@yahoo.<span>com</span>.tw</a><br /><br />Taiwan Beer Bar: Bade Road Section 2, #85, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2771-9131" value="+886227719131" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2771-9131</a><br /><br />1914 Huashan Culture Park, Bade Road Section 1, #1,<br /><a href="http://www.huashan1914.com/" target="_blank">www.huashan1914.<span>com</span></a> (Includes Legacy, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2741-7065" value="+886227417065" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2741-7065</a>,<br /><a href="http://www.legacy.com.tw/" target="_blank">www.legacy.<span>com</span>.tw</a>)<br /><br />2046: Zhongxiao East Road Section 4, Lane 205 #24, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2711-5589" value="+886227115589" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2711-5589</a><br />(MRT stop: Zhongxiao Dunhua)<br /><br />Eslite Bookstore: Dunhua South Road Section 1, #245, 2F +886<br />(0)2-2775-5979, <a href="http://www.eslite.com/" target="_blank">http://www.eslite.<span>com</span>/</a> (MRT stop: Zhongxiao Dunhua)<br /><br />Champagne: Anhe Road, Section 1, #75, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2755-7976" value="+886227557976" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2755-7976</a><br /><br />China White: Dunhua South Road Section 2, #97-101, 2F (just off Anhe<br />Road in the Modern Mall), <a href="http://www.chinawhite.com.tw/" target="_blank">www.chinawhite.<span>com</span>.tw</a>,<br /><a href="mailto:info@chinawhite.com.tw" target="_blank">info@chinawhite.<span>com</span>.tw</a>, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2705-5119" value="+886227055119" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2705-5119</a><br /><br />Luxy: Zhongxiao East Road Section 4, #201, 5F, <a href="http://www.luxy-taipei.com/" target="_blank">www.luxy-taipei.<span>com</span></a>,<br /><a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%29955-904-600" value="+886955904600" target="_blank">+886 (0)955-904-600</a> (MRT stop: Zhongxiao Dunhua)<br /><br />Primo: Zhongxiao East Road Section 5, #297, <a href="http://www.club-primo.com/" target="_blank">www.club-primo.<span>com</span></a>, +886<br />(0)2-2760-5885 (MRT stop: Yongchun)<br /><br />Carnegies: Anhe Road Section 2, #100, <a href="http://www.carnegies.net/" target="_blank">www.carnegies.net</a>, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2325-4433" value="+886223254433" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2325-4433</a><br /><br />No Name Congee Snacks: Fuxing South Road Section 2, #130,<br /><a href="http://www.no-name.com.tw/" target="_blank">www.no-name.<span>com</span>.tw</a>, <a href="tel:%2B886%20%280%292-2784-6735" value="+886227846735" target="_blank">+886 (0)2-2784-6735</a><br /><br /><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703578104575397063530194800.html">Original site</a>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-13908528664862052722011-08-29T10:05:00.002+08:002011-08-29T10:09:12.146+08:00What's changed since Copenhagen?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiho14rRjn7w80oyJg9IM0H1ou5NPDzpsXqtnuKs75jDlf6N1zxopGc27kyRQW62pq9xryUJhOlTnOt7j0taR1c_HJhbaH0YzKXWyLX75WzEkoha3Pf1wECea3Gbn0C0tWkDQc7YLT0gAg/s1600/1005-CLIMATE-UN-CHINA_full_380.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 380px; height: 253px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiho14rRjn7w80oyJg9IM0H1ou5NPDzpsXqtnuKs75jDlf6N1zxopGc27kyRQW62pq9xryUJhOlTnOt7j0taR1c_HJhbaH0YzKXWyLX75WzEkoha3Pf1wECea3Gbn0C0tWkDQc7YLT0gAg/s400/1005-CLIMATE-UN-CHINA_full_380.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646094099494913122" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Few expect big breakthroughs at China's climate change talks this week. The real success will be in smoothing relations after the Copenhagen debacle and small side deals that are more realistic, observers say.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">
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<br />Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 5, 2010</span> <span class="sLoc"> <span style="font-weight: bold;">
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<br />Taipei, Taiwan --</span> </span><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+Nations" target="_self" class="inform_link">United Nations</a> climate officials say they hope to get talks for a new global deal on carbon cuts back on track after last year's climate talk debacle in <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Copenhagen" target="_self" class="inform_link">Copenhagen</a>. This week's climate change conference hosted by <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/China" target="_self" class="inform_link">China</a> in <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Tianjin" target="_self" class="inform_link">Tianjin</a> could give them just that opportunity.<p>But with mistrust still high and feelings raw, few expect any big breakthroughs in Tianjin, or at higher-level talks beginning in late November in <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Cancun" target="_self" class="inform_link">Cancún</a>, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Mexico" target="_self" class="inform_link">Mexico</a>. Instead, participants are focusing on smaller side deals that are more realistic, observers say, indicating that though a comprehensive deal might not get finalized here the real success of the conference will be in smoothing relations with small steps.</p><p>"Almost everybody is downplaying their expectations," said Yang Ailun, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Greenpeace+International" target="_self" class="inform_link">Greenpeace</a> China's head of climate and energy, in a phone interview from Tianjin. "People are talking more about specific issues they think they can make progress on, such as climate finance and forestry."</p><a name="eztoc8753385_1" id="eztoc8753385_1"></a><h2>Tough road ahead</h2><p>The Tianjin talks are a prelude to Cancún, when world leaders will again try to cobble together a global deal on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. The aim is to forge a consensus before the current <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Kyoto+Protocol" target="_self" class="inform_link">Kyoto Protocol</a> expires in 2012.</p><p>Hopes for a grand deal were dashed in <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2009/1118/p06s01-wogi.html" target="_blank">Copenhagen last December</a>, when talks broke down amid recriminations between rich and developing countries who couldn't agree on how to share the burden for deep emissions cuts, and how such cuts should be verified. </p><p>Much of the focus is on China and the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States" target="_self" class="inform_link">US</a>, now the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases. China insists the US and other developed countries should make more dramatic cuts and do more in funding and transferring technology to poorer countries for green energy efforts. </p><p>The US wants China and some other developing nations to bear more of the burden for cuts, and wants a mechanism for verifying such cuts – something <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Beijing" target="_self" class="inform_link">Beijing</a> has resisted.</p><p>And they're closely watching the attitude of<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0628/p12s01-wogi.html" target="_blank"> China, the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter</a>, as it hosts the conference for the first time in the 20-year history of United Nations global climate change talks.</p><p>Observers say there's no sign either side is prepared to budge much from those positions. From China's point of view, said Greenpeace China's Yang, the US is doing little domestically – climate change legislation is stalled in the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Congress" target="_self" class="inform_link">US Congress</a> – and isn't offering much at the negotiating table, either.</p><p>"China can't get any of the technology or climate finance it wants, so it feels like there's very little the US can offer," she said. "It's one reason why <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2009/1118/p06s01-wogi.html" target="_blank">negotiations have really stalled.</a>"</p><a name="eztoc8753385_2" id="eztoc8753385_2"></a><h2>Some progress</h2><p>Still, the view from Tianjin isn't all bleak. Of $30 billion pledged by developed nations in Copenhagen to help developing countries fight climate change, $28 billion is already lined up. Observers are optimistic the rest will be in place by Cancun, though there's skepticism that some of the funding is merely previously-committed money repackaged as "green" aid.</p><p>Yang said negotiators also appear to be closing in on a deal on fighting deforestation.</p><p>There are also signs that China is getting more serious about climate change, both domestically and on the global stage. The US and China have begun cooperating on clean energy research, and <a href="http://www.chinafaqs.org/blog-posts/reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions-china-closes-highly-polluting-plants" target="_blank">China is retooling coal plants in an effort to ease pollution.</a> </p><p>In Copenhagen, where China took much of the blame for the breakdown in talks, Beijing learned that it has new-found responsibilities as a major world player, said Yang.</p><p>"China came to understand that given the scale of the country, there's simply no way it can hide – you're either the leader or you will be blamed," Yang said. "By hosting this meeting, it sends a strong signal that China is thinking about how to play a more proactive role on the international stage."
<br /></p><p>Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Institute+of+Public+and+Environmental+Affairs" target="_self" class="inform_link">Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs</a>, said in a phone interview that China has a strong domestic motivation to curb emissions, especially from its coal plants, which still supply 80 percent of its electricity, according to the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/World+Resources+Institute" target="_self" class="inform_link">World Resources Institute</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/news/coal-ash-pollution%20%20" target="_blank">Greenpeace China</a> has estimated that there are more than 1,400 coal-fired power plants in China producing over 375 million tons of coal ash a year.</p><p>"We understand that if we don't change our current way of inefficient growth model, then China will sooner or later face a very severe energy security challenge," said Ma. "Our current way of growth also generates a massive amount of pollution, which we cannot afford."</p><p>Ma noted that China is now the world's leading investor in renewable energy, but said "it's not enough." He said better enforcement was needed to rein in emissions and curb construction of new coal-powered plants, and that the Chinese public needed to be better informed about "the true environmental and social cost of coal mining and coal burning." </p><a name="eztoc8753385_3" id="eztoc8753385_3"></a><h2>Alternatives to a deal</h2><p>Ma said many obstacles remained for a global deal, including America's failure to take a "proactive" stance on the issue. US greenhouse-gas emissions increased 16 percent from 1990 to 2006, according to a 2007 study by the <a href="http://www.pbl.nl/en/dossiers/COP13Bali/moreinfo/Industrialised-countries-will-collectively-meet-2010-Kyoto-target.html%20%20" target="_blank">Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency</a>.</p><p>Given such challenges, he said the world should explore alternatives to an elusive UN-backed global deal, which might not even prove effective. Worldwide emissions have ballooned 25 percent since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, according to a <a href="http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXTWDR2010/0,,menuPK:5287748%7EpagePK:64167702%7EpiPK:64167676%7EtheSitePK:5287741,00.html%20%20" target="_blank">World Bank report</a> last year.</p><p>One avenue some environmental groups are exploring, Ma said, was corporate carbon disclosure projects, which could allow consumers to apply economic pressure on big polluting businesses to cut carbon emissions throughout their supply chains. "That could serve as a kind of feasible alternative if we can't reach an intergovernmental agreement," said Ma.</p><p>China surpassed the US as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2007, and each country now produces about 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to <a href="http://www.chinafaqs.org/library/chinafaqs-key-frequently-asked-questions" target="_blank">the World Resources Institute</a>. </p><p>But China's per-person emissions are only about a quarter that of the US 70 percent of China's energy demand comes from the industrial sector, while private consumption accounts for most of the energy demand in the US, according to the Institute. Private energy demand is expected to skyrocket in China in the coming years as the middle class swells and car sales boom.</p><p>China is a major investor in hydro, wind, nuclear, solar, and other renewable power sources, and aims for 15 percent of its energy needs to come from such sources by 2020. The US has no such national goal, though some states like <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/California" target="_self" class="inform_link">California</a> have set their own targets. </p><p>China and other developing countries have pledged to curb the growth of their carbon emissions, rather than promise absolute cuts. Those targets "should be understood in the context of the development stage in China," where 150 million people still live in poverty, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Stanley+So" target="_self" class="inform_link">Stanley So</a>, manager of <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Oxfam+International" target="_self" class="inform_link">Oxfam Hong Kong</a>'s Economic Justice Campaign, wrote in an e-mail.</p><p>China's per-person GDP is $3,700, compared to more than $46,000 in the US.</p><p>"It is a compromise between development and the climate change challenge," Mr. So said, of China's target.</p><p><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/1005/China-s-climate-change-talks-What-s-changed-since-Copenhagen">Original site</a>
<br /></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-60614356266877584952011-08-29T09:58:00.002+08:002011-08-29T10:02:06.222+08:00Losing patience with Pyongyang<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICmvbuDnC0gkBaws2bZ4IA_6O6_0FBnCMrQZQHdydrhHvm3GuNj9aFyjJN7HClvQsnCJzQHHmJYltypOiQFc9a-jZ5chVKOSSnzf7DfKmckDmJqD_lrUk9n6FTyhO5enQ8dCMCR8m2ZQ/s1600/1291388270649.JPEG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICmvbuDnC0gkBaws2bZ4IA_6O6_0FBnCMrQZQHdydrhHvm3GuNj9aFyjJN7HClvQsnCJzQHHmJYltypOiQFc9a-jZ5chVKOSSnzf7DfKmckDmJqD_lrUk9n6FTyhO5enQ8dCMCR8m2ZQ/s400/1291388270649.JPEG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646092221806648962" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >WikiLeaks: China May Be Fed Up With North Korea</span>
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<br /><div class="postTop clrFx"><div class="artHeadline"> </div> <div style="font-weight: bold;" class="postTime"> <abbr class="published updated" title="2010-12-03T10:01:00-05:00">AOL News</abbr><span style="font-weight: bold;">
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<br /></span>TAIPEI, Taiwan (Dec. 3) --<span style="font-weight: normal;"> U.S. State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks appear to confirm what many suspected: China is just as fed up with North Korea as the U.S. and other countries, despite its reluctance to speak out publicly.</span> </div></div>
<br />Beijing is seen as the only government with influence over an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable regime in Pyongyang. It has come under sharp pressure from the U.S. to take a harder line, but so far has appeared reluctant to do so.
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<br />The leaked cables appear to show that part of China's strategy is to privately bemoan North Korea's behavior while publicly maintaining a studied neutrality. That has frustrated South Korean and U.S. officials, who want a stronger response to Pyongyang's provocations.
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<br />North Korea's recent shelling of a South Korean island near the maritime border shocked the international community, pushing tensions on the Korean peninsula to the brink of war. The attack <a target="_blank" href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/03/3084441.htm?section=justin">killed two civilians and two South Korean marines</a>. But Beijing only called for calm from both sides.
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<br />And earlier this year, China refused to join the U.S. and other nations in condemning North Korea for an attack on a South Korean navy vessel that killed 46 sailors. A multinational probe pinned the blame on Pyongyang, but China never accepted those findings. Beijing <a target="_blank" href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-30/china-blocks-un-action-against-north-korea-afp-reports.html">continues to block any action</a> against North Korea at the United Nations.
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<br />Experts have long said that China's paramount concern is <a target="_blank" href="http://csis.org/files/publication/100506_Glaser_RespondingtoChange_Web.pdf">stability on the Korean peninsula</a>, because it fears a flood of refugees in the event of a North Korean collapse, and also fears the prospect of a U.S.-allied unified Korea on its borders.
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<br />However, quotes from Chinese and South Korean diplomats and officials in recently leaked U.S. State Department cables suggest a more complicated picture: China is also growing exasperated with Pyongyang and has carefully studied the possibility of regime change and what a unified Korea might look like.
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<br />"Beijing has already set up a study group to look at the unification of Korea," said Antonio Chiang, a Taiwan-based commentator for that country's Apple Daily newspaper. "They are exploring all kinds of possibilities, because it [North Korean collapse] could come at any time. It's a very serious strategic dilemma, challenge and risk."
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<br /><div class="inContent" style="color: rgb(192, 0, 0);"><span>Sponsored Links</span></div> In one leaked cable, a Chinese official compares North Korea to a "<a target="_blank" href="http://www.economist.com/node/17632855?story_id=17632855&fsrc=rss">spoiled child</a>." And a cable from February this year reports a South Korean official saying, "The PRC [People's Republic of China] would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a 'benign alliance' -- as long as Korea was not hostile towards China," <a target="_blank" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article924116.ece">according to reports</a>.
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<br />Brian Bridges, an expert on East Asian politics at Hong Kong's Lingnan University, told AOL News that the leaked cables showed "the evident Chinese frustration with North Korea." That's something he and other observers had guessed was increasingly the case in the past few years. "The 'spoiled child' quote is a very nice one, and I shall be using it in my own writing, but it doesn't surprise me," Bridges said.
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<br />He said one of the most interesting details was the suggestion that some Chinese officials could live with a unified Korea under South Korean control. "If that is really the case, I find it a bit surprising," Bridges said. But he and others have cautioned that this was secondhand information (via a South Korean official) and not necessarily reliable.
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<br /><a href="http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/03/wikileaks-china-may-be-fed-up-with-north-korea-too/">Original site</a>
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<br />Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-48468420546495370882011-08-29T09:41:00.005+08:002011-08-29T10:03:13.710+08:00Meet China's dolphin tribe<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSDpYxwp336gzJleF2rf63pHHhJvfxQKThB2UtKofPYnJmOAu7K3G1IyUmNTL_z70ojMsECHLwCXLjdAVEDuYsg48iP0wGrGut9wQH44vQWxmm_cBND1wu-e-xdebsTmBSe9pjkOe0l4/s1600/taiwan-10-12-11-economy.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSDpYxwp336gzJleF2rf63pHHhJvfxQKThB2UtKofPYnJmOAu7K3G1IyUmNTL_z70ojMsECHLwCXLjdAVEDuYsg48iP0wGrGut9wQH44vQWxmm_cBND1wu-e-xdebsTmBSe9pjkOe0l4/s400/taiwan-10-12-11-economy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646092609745778594" border="0" /></a> <p style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Analysis: Inflation, hoarding, hot money — why the "currency wars" will only get worse. </span></p><div style="font-weight: bold;" class="views-field-field-subhead-value"> </div><p style="font-weight: bold;"> </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">TAIPEI, Taiwan </span>— They're called the "dolphin tribe," a pun on the Mandarin word for "hoarding."</p> <p> They're an example of how a weaker U.S. dollar is starting to affect everyday lives in China and across east Asia — and why, even as <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/commerce/101112/APEC-japan-G20">Asia-Pacific leaders meet in Yokohama</a> to hash out a free trade agreement, the "currency wars" have only just begun.</p> <p> "Dolphin tribe" (haitunzu) is one of the latest buzzwords on the Chinese-language internet, and it refers to Chinese who have begun hoarding everyday goods on expectations of more price hikes.</p> <p> Ms. Zhang, from the southern metropolis Guangzhou, told China's Southern Daily that <a href="http://www.want-daily.com/News/Content.aspx?id=0&yyyymmdd=20101027&k=17915aed7bb9a81196139f84ceafb832&h=c6f057b86584942e415435ffb1fa93d4&nid=K@20101027@N0023.001">hoarding had become an obsession</a>, and she's even snatching up makeup and towels. "I'm hoarding everything I use — I've become a 'dolphin'," she told the paper.</p> <p> It's not just hysteria. China just shocked analysts by posting 4.4 percent rate of inflation in October, far higher than expected — and some economists are now saying the rate could soon hit 6 percent. According to the Southern Daily, prices at Guangzhou supermarkets are soaring: cooking oil shot up 15 percent in late October; sugar, 13 percent, ditto garlic, ginger, apples and rice wine.</p> <p> Why the sharp rise in prices? One of the reasons, explains Taiwan finance expert Norman Yin, is the weak dollar. "When the U.S. dollar is going down, people holding U.S. dollars dump them to buy other things to secure value, so it pushes everything up," said Yin. "So the price of imported goods and all kinds of materials is soaring."</p> <p> Commodity prices are also sharply up in Taiwan, prompting the government to slash tariffs on key imports like corn flour, soybean flour and cane sugar to ease the burden on consumers.</p> <p> Now, central banks in both Beijing and Taipei are expected to hike interest rates as they pivot from stimulating the economy to taming inflation. Expectation of those hikes from China — possibly over the weekend — sent <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-12/commodities-worldwide-slide-on-china-rate-rise-concern-copper-oil-drop.html">commodities tumbling Friday</a>, a sign of markets' ultra-sensitivity.</p> <p> But hiking rates is likely to worsen another long-standing problem: hot money inflows. "Hot money" refers to short-term speculators looking to turn a quick buck on the currency or another craze du jour — be it New Taiwan dollars, South Korean won or Indonesian rupiah. Such investors are basically turning East Asian currency markets into casinos, pumping in funds by the billion only to dump the local currency when they think it has peaked.</p><p> According to one Chinese official, there's now $10 trillion — that's trillion with a 't' — in <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-08/china-says-fed-easing-may-flood-world-economy-with-hot-money-.html">"hot money" sloshing around</a> the globe, looking for easy returns. Buying in mass amounts creates self-fulfilling prophecies: whatever the hot money thinks will go up, usually does.</p> <p> But exporting countries don't want their currencies to climb too much, because that makes their goods pricier abroad, and so slows business, sags economies and kills jobs. To keep their currencies from spiking up and then cratering like Pets.com stock circa 2000, China's central banks and others engage in massive interventions. Basically, they're sopping up all the "hot money" to keep their currency stable.</p> <p> Now, the U.S. Federal Reserve has just made their job that much more difficult — turning the headache of "hot money" into a serious migraine. From East Asia's perspective, the <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/commerce/101110/qe2-global-economy">$600 billion "QE2"</a> injection plan has sent a tsunami of new "hot money" rolling toward their shores.</p> <p> "The U.S. is trying to boost domestic demand in America, but that money will go abroad instead of staying in the U.S.," said Yin. "So it causes problems. When it goes abroad, it just pushes the U.S. dollar's value further down, and then it triggers a currency war."</p> <p> Yin says Washington may not mean badly, it just don't "give a damn" about what QE2 will mean for China or other Asia exporters. "Americans aren't really taught to see this kind of thing as a concern," said Yin. "But for us, if there is such a large quantity of money flowing in in a very short period, then it really causes a lot of trouble, because most Asian countries have quite shallow financial markets."</p><p> "Hot money" inflows account for about 20 percent of China's accumulated reserves, says Yin; some economists say much more. And it's not just China; Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are also struggling to sponge up hot money inflows and hold down currency values. Yin said hot money began surging into Taiwan's currency market at $1 billion a day starting in mid-September when QE2 was first signaled, at least twice the typical daily flows before. It's coming in at $1.5 billion a day now.</p> <p> "The four central banks are very busy in dealing with hot money from abroad, and they'll use every means," said Yin.</p> <p> That means loading up their weapons of mass intervention. In Taiwan, sipping coffee with foreign bankers and hinting politely that maybe they should lay off the NT dollar didn't work so well (they called it "moral suasion.") So Taiwan's central bank is now selling massive amounts of Taiwan dollars toward the end of daily trading sessions to keep the currency down, adding steadily to its more than $380 billion pile of foreign exchange reserves — the world's fourth-largest reserves after China's, Japan's and Russia's.</p> <p> Taiwan and South Korea are also dabbling with capital controls; changing rules to discourage short-term speculators. Japan is ready to sell massive amounts of yen into the market to keep down its value.</p> <p> And China will continue to do the same with its own currency, the yuan. In fact, its intervention is only likely to increase, and its reserves balloon more (they're now a cool $2.65 trillion), as higher interest rates attract even more hot money.</p><p>That means despite what Obama and his "dogs" at the IMF may say (see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGYAhiMwd5E&feature=player_embedded">Next Media Animation rap below</a>), China's not likely to throw Washington a bone on the value of the yuan.</p>Economist Andy Xie is downright alarmist, writing in a recent commentary in China International Business that tit-for-tat attempts to drive down currency values are wreaking havoc on the global economy. <p> "If you print a trillion, I'll print a trillion. No change in exchange rate after a trillion? Let's do it again, QE2," writes Xie. "The world is <a href="http://www.cibmagazine.com.cn/Columnists/Andy_Xie.asp?id=1442&to_hell_through_qe.html">heading towards high inflation</a> and political instability. It's only a matter of time before there is another global crisis."</p> <p> Think we're in a currency war? The dolphin tribe's rise is a sign you ain't seen nothin' yet.</p><p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/IGYAhiMwd5E" allowfullscreen="" width="399" frameborder="0" height="300"></iframe>
<br /></p><p>Original site
<br /></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-71790781099625709412011-08-29T09:34:00.002+08:002011-08-29T09:39:57.195+08:00Underworld justice<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">A surprising number of Taiwanese still take disputes to the gods.</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">
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<br />Global Post, Nov. 18, 2010</span>
<br /><h2 style="font-weight: bold;" class="subhead"><div class="field field-type-text field-field-subhead"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"> </div> </div> </div> </h2><p style="font-weight: bold;"> </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">HSINCHUANG, Taiwan —</span> In his small, fluorescent-lit office, the portly temple scribe Lai Ming-hsien faces a middle-aged man in a dark blue jacket.</p> <p> Lai asks the man's name, age and address, then begins jotting Chinese characters with a ball-point pen on a fresh piece of bright yellow paper, as the man looks on intently.</p> <p> The matter that brought the man here is working its way through Taiwan's criminal justice system in nearby courts. But like many Taiwanese in such situations, he's also seeking an otherworldly remedy.</p> <p> Lai is writing out the man's formal complaint to deliver to the "Lord of the Hordes" (Da Zheng Ye), an underworld dispenser of justice in Chinese Daoist and folk belief. (The man did not want his name or the nature of his case published.)</p> <p> Here, in a side wing attached to Dizang Temple in a working-class Taipei suburb, Taiwanese come to air their grievances, at about $13 per complaint. Dizang is just one of scores of Taiwan temples offering such services, but it's among the most well-known.</p> <p> In fact, business has boomed in recent years, says the 53-year-old Lai, so much so that the temple now employs three full-time scribes, who record and transmit to the gods more than 100 petitions per day. That's double or triple the number just a few years ago, when Lai was a one-man show.</p> <p> Taiwan may have rapidly modernized and boosted educational levels in the past few decades, and its flagship high-tech industries embrace scientific rationalism. Yet many centuries-old, Chinese folk beliefs and practices show no signs of dying out.</p> <p> Some practices have merely taken new, urban forms as Taiwan's old rural ways fade. Others — like underworld petitions — have survived into the 21st century intact, and might even be more prevalent than before. Such appeals can also be made by the dead against the living, says Paul Katz, an expert on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Justice-Religion-Development-Academia/dp/0415443458/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3">Chinese religious and judicial traditions</a> at Taiwan's Academia Sinica, at a recent talk in Taipei.</p> <p> "There are people indicting people, ghosts indicting people, people indicting ghosts, and all sorts of other things." said Katz, who did field work at Dizang Temple. "This whole underworld indictment thing is busier than L.A. Law."</p><p> According to Katz, approximately 3,500 people file underworld petitions at the Dizang Temple every year.</p> <p> The Chinese custom of underworld indictments dates back to sometime after the emergence of religious Daoism around the 2nd century A.D., with its emphasis on the bureaucratic order of the underworld.</p> <p> "There's always been an idea that justice was being administered by officials in this world and the other world," Katz said.</p> <p> At the Dizang Temple, the custom persists in modern packaging. Just like in a Taipei bank or clinic, petitioners file into a lobby off to the side of the main temple, take a number from a machine and wait their turn on rows of plastic chairs. When an automated voice calls out their number and shows it on a red L.E.D. screen, they step into the scribe's office.</p> <p> Their complaints involve stolen vehicles, workplace troubles, extramarital affairs, even intellectual property rights disputes between technology firms.</p> <p> "If they have situations they can't resolve, they come to us," Lai said. "We consider ourselves a bridge to the gods."</p> <p> Katz' field work found only one change in the nature of such appeals from the late 1990s to 2006: An increase in missing pets cases. More recently, financial disputes have increased with Taiwan's high unemployment and recession-battered economy, Lai said.</p> <p> The scribes also handle appeals for good health, better karma and getting rid of troublesome ghosts. Such petitions are directed toward the Buddhist deity Ksitigarbha ("Dizang Wang Pu Sa," in Chinese), Lai said. Both Ksitigarbha and the Lord of the Hordes are worshipped side by side at the temple, a common practice in Taiwan's blend of Daoist, Buddhist and folk practices.</p><p> On a recent Monday morning, some 30 Taiwanese visited the scribes in the space of a couple hours, mostly couples or small groups of relatives. Some of the men chewed betel nut, the mild stimulant popular with Taiwan's working class; others toted babies.</p> <p> Wei, a 50-year-old man from the nearby city Shulin, padded in and out of Lai's office in old-fashioned wooden, thonged sandals, as a female companion waited outside. He said he came to ask the gods for relief from bad karma he believes he earned in a past life and is plaguing him in this one. It was his second visit; the first was three months ago for "another matter," he said, declining to elaborate.</p> <p> An elderly couple asked Lai to write down their appeal for a relative's cancer treatment to go smoothly. After Lai had done so, they each pressed their left thumbs on a red ink pad and put a print on the yellow paper, which Lai then folded neatly and gave to them.</p> <p> Every so often Lai refuses a case. One instance involved a third party in an adulterous love triangle, another, an inheritance dispute between brothers, he said. "You can't write just anything" and pass it on to the gods, said Lai. Sometimes he tells petitioners they should first go see a lawyer; sometimes lawyers send their clients to him.</p> <p> If he's uncertain about a case, he may use a delaying tactic, such as telling a petitioner to first directly approach the gods. If the petitioner tosses wood divination blocks in front of the god's altar and three times in a row get a "yes" answer, he'll take the case.</p> <p> Prices for a petition haven't gone up much — it cost $7.50 a pop when he began working as a scribe 32 years ago. But he works longer hours; he now gets only one day off a week and works eight or eight-and-a-half hour days with an hour's lunch break. Back when the temple paid him based on the number of petitions he wrote, he could earn better money than he does now (about $1,600 a month), but the income wasn't as stable, he said.</p> <p> He said he mainly taught himself how to write indictments in formal Chinese, and experience tells him when a petitioner is lying. He keeps an Asustek "Eee PC" netbook on his desk, but only to listen to music. "I'm used to writing" petitions by hand, he says, though the other two scribes now tap out theirs on computers.</p> <p> Katz said temple appeals have traditionally been made to win legitimacy for one's cause, or to prove one's innocence. That's an important move in a judicial culture where the burden of proof usually lies with the accused. Cops and lawyers have been known to make offerings to the gods, or even take suspects to the temple as a test of their honesty, he said.</p> <p> Scribes like Lai deal with situations the courts "can't or won't deal with," Katz said. Going to a temple scribe can also be a way to "put pressure on family and friends in cases where it's difficult to work within the legal system," or to cool off a dispute.</p><p> Many Taiwanese charge into the scribes' offices in an agitated, emotional state, said Katz. But Lai then calmly writes out their complaint in formal Chinese. "By the time these people leave the temple, their facial expression has totally changed — a lot of that anger is gone," Katz said. "So it's really a great safety valve."</p> <p> Taiwanese often appeal to the underworld at the same time as they pursue a case in court, Lai said. His services are especially valued since the island's judicial system is plagued by corruption, he said, citing recent <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/100719/taiwan-courts-corruption">high-profile cases of crooked judges</a>.</p> <p> "Judges can be bribed, but the gods cannot," Lai said.</p> <p> <em>Huang Guo-rong contributed to this report</em></p><p><em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/101104/taiwan-courts-religion"><span style="font-size:100%;">Original site</span></a>
<br /></em></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-50380419418450849442011-08-29T09:20:00.003+08:002011-08-29T09:34:45.565+08:00What cross-strait thaw?<h2 class="subhead"><span style="font-size:130%;">Famous Taiwanese actress Vivian Hsu was reduced to tears — and that's just the tip of the iceberg.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Global Post, Nov. 1, 2010<span style="font-weight: bold;">
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<br /></span>TAIPEI, Taiwan —<span style="font-weight: normal;"> In terms of international news, it was barely a blip.</span></span></h2> <p> But an ugly quarrel between delegations from China and Taiwan at a recent Tokyo film festival was the type of petty spat that has long characterized interactions between the two sides of the strait on the global stage.</p> <p> Such incidents help explain why most Taiwanese have a dim view of China's government, and no interest in unification.</p> <p> They also show how far apart the two sides remain politically, despite a historic warming of economic relations.</p> <p> It started innocently enough. A group of Taiwanese movie stars and starlets lined up to take a stroll down the "eco-friendly" green carpet at the 23rd International Tokyo Film Festival on Oct. 23. A group from China did the same.</p> <p> Then the head of China's delegation, Jiang Ping, decided to make a scene. After apparently noting that Taiwan's delegation was participating under the name "Taiwan," he demanded that this moniker be switched to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5mPIgrulYw&feature=related">"Chinese Taipei" or "Taiwan, China."</a></p> <p> Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China and is hypersensitive to any suggestion on the world stage that the island is actually something else — namely, a de facto sovereign and independent state. For that reason, Taiwan is only allowed to participate in the Olympics and other global sporting events as "Chinese Taipei" due to the high-decibel pressure China puts on organizers.</p> <p> The head of Taiwan's delegation refused his Chinese counterpart's request, saying "no concessions will be made this time around." Then, as cameras rolled, the two sides bickered.</p> <p> "The Taiwan area delegation is a part of China's delegation," Jiang angrily told news cameras. At one point he gave Japanese organizers 10 minutes to accept his demands.</p> <p> In the end, after more than two hours of heated discussions, neither delegation strolled the green carpet. China later withdrew from the event entirely after the Japanese hosts refused to enforce its demands.</p> <p> But what really added news value in Taiwan were the waterworks from <a href="http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/10/25/2003486837/1">Taiwanese celebrity Vivian Hsu</a>, one of the island's stars at the festival.</p> <p> A news clip of the actress crying in Tokyo was played and replayed in Taiwan's frantic media. Hsu told reporters that one Taiwanese actor had "torn off his tie" after being told they couldn't walk the carpet. Hsu herself had bought a more than $6,500 Zac Posen-designed dress for the occasion, only to be stymied by the Chinese, media reported. The head of Taiwan's delegation said he felt as if his daughter's wedding had been ruined.</p> <p> Soon the editorials poured forth and talk show discussions ensued. The island's internecine quarrels were put aside for a moment as politicians and commentators of all stripes lined up to condemn China's behavior and applaud Taiwan's delegation for standing up to China. The spat in Tokyo "proved to Taiwan's people that unification with China is absolutely not a good thing," wrote the Apple Daily. The presidential spokesman rebuked China, as did the premier, who said Jiang's behavior was "unreasonable and rude."</p> <p> Such a strong reaction to a tiff at a minor event may seem puzzling to outsiders. But it speaks to the petty humiliation Taiwan routinely endures from China at international events — treatment that dredges up deeply emotional issues of identity and respect. While the rest of the world is just now getting to know a more assertive China, Taiwanese have long been familiar with Beijing's sterner face.</p> <p> "We have to stand up to say we don't agree with that type of behavior," said George Tsai, a cross-strait relations expert at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. "We have our dignity and principles."</p>China has in the past two years allowed Taiwan to participate in some World Health Organization meetings as an observer. But it continues to block Taiwan's participation in other bodies. <p> One example, at the top of Taiwan's priority list, is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Membership would allow Taiwan to network on green energy issues and receive technical and financial support for such efforts; China continues to block the island's participation.</p> <p> Such snubs — hardly newsworthy outside Taiwan — have had a cumulative effect on Taiwanese. In the Taiwan government's latest opinion <a href="http://www.mac.gov.tw/public/Attachment/010131745347.pdf">poll on cross-strait relations</a> from September, 48 percent of those polled think China is "unfriendly" toward Taiwan's government, with 37 percent thinking China is "friendly," despite a dramatic warming in ties and the recent signing of a <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/100702/taiwan-trade-economy-ECFA">historic trade deal</a>.</p> <p> Just 10 percent of Taiwanese support <a href="http://www.mac.gov.tw/public/Attachment/010611155869.gif">unification with China</a>, with a scant 1.7 percent supporting unification "as soon as possible," according to the government's latest data.</p> <p> Well aware of this public sentiment, the Taiwan government has recently stressed that it has no timetable for political talks with China.</p> <p> Analysts say that President Ma Ying-jeou has accomplished much of his cross-strait economic agenda, and is likely to put any further, substantial cross-strait talks on hold indefinitely. That's because he's now returning to job No. 1 for any Taiwanese politician: winning elections.</p> <p> Local polls are coming up at the end of November. Those will soon be followed in Taiwan's hectic election schedule by a primary season, legislative elections and Ma's own re-election bid in March 2012.</p> <p> Under the circumstances, slamming China for its film festival tantrum was a political no-brainer. Tsai said that "domestic political considerations" helped explain the strong backlash to China's belittling behavior; it was an easy way to score points by defending Taiwan's dignity.</p> <p> Moreover, China has yet to meet Ma's longstanding condition for political talks; namely, that Beijing draw down its missile arsenal across from Taiwan, now estimated by the U.S. military at some 1,050 to 1,150 short-range ballistic missiles and scores of cruise missiles.</p><p> There are some signs this might change. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao caused a stir in September when he made vague comments suggesting the missile issue could eventually be addressed. Chinese Culture University's Tsai, who just returned from a trip to China, said Chinese academics told him Beijing is "seriously considering the possibility of re-deploying the missiles," but that it doesn't want to appear to do so under pressure.</p> <p> "So if we keep a low profile, it will be easier for them to do this," said Tsai, who was told there is "very high-ranking internal discussion" in China on re-deploying the missiles, and even an "inclination" to do so.</p> <p> But so far there haven't been any concrete steps. Even if there were, Tsai and other analysts say political talks are "out of the question." "It's not in the foreseeable future," said Tsai. "It's not in Ma Ying-jeou's interests, and it's not on his political agenda."</p> <p> Ma's own premier said conditions are "not yet ripe" for political talks.</p> <p> And if he needed any help making that point, what better than a fresh-faced Taiwanese actress, reduced to tears by China's bullying, at an event intended to celebrate cinema and the arts — not power politics.</p><p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/101029/taiwan-cross-strait-relations-vivian-hsu">Original site</a>
<br /></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-55605192029344418212011-08-29T09:13:00.003+08:002011-09-08T10:22:55.256+08:00Japan besieged north and south<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">China, Russia muscle in on Japan-claimed islands</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />AOL News</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />TAIPEI, Taiwan (Nov. 6) --</span> <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/tag/japan/" class="inlinked">Japan</a>, which for centuries relished the security of being an archipelago, is being challenged in separate territorial disputes over small islands.<br /><br />It's unclear whether the challenges -- from <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/tag/russia/" class="inlinked">Russia</a> in the north and <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/tag/china/" class="inlinked">China</a> in the south -- are in any way coordinated. But analysts say they represent a diplomatic baptism by fire for Japan's year-old, center-left government, which is <a target="_blank" href="http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T101102004777.htm">seen as inexperienced</a> in world affairs.<br /><br />Both rows are also seen testing the strength of the U.S.-Japan security alliance. That alliance has come under severe strain in the past year due to sharp disagreement over a relocation plan for a U.S. military base in Okinawa.<br /><br />In both territorial disputes, the U.S. has urged bilateral talks between Japan and the other claimant, but neither China nor Russia is disposed to listen to <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/tag/washington" class="inlinked">Washington</a>.<br /><br />"China and Russia do not trust the U.S. enough to accept it as an honest broker and would likely view such an offer as U.S. interference," James Manicom, an expert on East Asian maritime disputes at the University of Toronto, said in an e-mail exchange. "I'm skeptical that U.S. mediation will be accepted by parties to either dispute."<br /><br />China earlier this week <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-02/china-rejects-clinton-s-offer-to-mediate-with-japan-over-disputed-islands.html">rejected one U.S. offer</a> to mediate its dispute with Japan.<br /><br />Russia sparked a diplomatic spat Monday when President Dmitry Medvedev visited an island chain northeast of Japan's Hokkaido that has been controlled by Russia since World War II but is also claimed by Japan. Tokyo protested and recalled its ambassador to Moscow. (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T101101004499.htm">See a map here</a> and a video report on the flap from Russia Today below.)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wNbGTMrBek4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" width="399"></iframe><br /><br /><div class="enhLg centered noborder">Called the Southern Kuril Islands by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan, the islands have been contested since World War II, a dispute that has prevented the two countries from inking a formal peace treaty. Various offers and counteroffers have been made through the years, with little success.<br /></div><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T101102003964.htm">Japanese media attributed</a> Medvedev's provocative visit to his desire to burnish his nationalist credentials ahead of a power struggle with his rival and mentor, Vladimir Putin, for the presidency in 2012. The visit was also seen as a rebuke to Japanese foreign minister Seiji Maehara, who <a target="_blank" href="http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201011040270.html">said bluntly last year</a> that Russia was "illegally occupying" the islands.<br /><br />Kimie Hara of the University of Waterloo said the visit was an affirmation of Russia's ties with China, too. "The Russian president's visit to the disputed island was also prompted by his meeting with his Chinese counterpart in late September in Beijing, where they celebrated the 65th anniversary of the Soviet-Chinese alliance in the war against Japan (1936-45) and confirmed their solidarity," Hara wrote in an e-mail.<br /><br />A Chinese analyst suggested the same in <a target="_blank" href="http://china.globaltimes.cn/diplomacy/2010-11/588492.html">comments to Global Times</a>, saying "the strong message by Medvedev's visit to the island, to some extent, echoes China's firm stance on its dispute with Japan."<br /><br />The dispute over islets on Japan's southern flank is seen as being more explosive. The uninhabitable islets, called the Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, have been effectively controlled by Japan since 1972 but are also claimed by China and Taiwan.<br /><br />A collision between a Chinese fishing boat and Japanese coast guard vessels in September near the islets sparked the worst diplomatic tensions in at least five years between the two Asian powers. The collision triggered large-scale, tit-for-tat nationalist protests in both Japan and China.<br /><br />Now, Japan and China are both running regular, armed patrols near the islets. "The potential for miscalculation between such vessels is thus elevated," Manicom said.<br /><br />"The probability of something really bad happening is pretty modest, but the consequences are very bad," Richard Bush, an expert on China-Japan security relations at the Brookings Institution, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brookings.edu/events/2010/1018_china_japan.aspx">said at a recent forum</a> in Washington, D.C. "The chance of some kind of clash between marine forces of the two countries is increasing because of competing interests in the East China Sea."<br /><br />Bush warned that even a minor episode could spiral out of control because of poor crisis management capabilities on both sides.<br /><br />"Institutional factors at play suggest that just because the two governments have contained these episodes and don't want a crisis doesn't mean that they can contain incidents in the future," Bush said. "Neither side wants a true crisis, but each may be hard pressed to avoid one in the event of a really serious clash."<br /><br />In the northern dispute, by contrast, potential crises are seen as more manageable. Hara noted that a more serious incident occurred in the north in 2006, when a Japanese fisherman was shot dead by the Russian Coast Guard near the disputed islands.<br /><br />"But the situation was handled more skillfully," Hara said, sparking no protests in either Japan or Russia. In the south, "the tension escalated this time because the case was mishandled by the young [Democratic Party of Japan] government."<br /><br />Both disputes could potentially drag in the U.S. due to its treaty obligations. The U.S.-Japan <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-america/us/q&a/ref/1.html">defense pact</a> obligates Washington to respond in the event of an attack on any territory under Japan's administration.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/11/150252.htm">The U.S. said</a> it backs Japan's claim in the island dispute with Russia. But Washington has also said the defense treaty doesn't apply because Japan does not control the islands, <a target="_blank" href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-11/03/c_13588025.htm">according to a Xinhua news report</a>.<br /><br />In the south, the reverse is the case. The U.S. takes no position on the sovereignty of the disputed islets. But it says the islets fall within the scope of the U.S.-Japan defense pact because they are administered by Japan.<br /><br />On Monday, video of the Sept. 7 collision between the Chinese fishing boat and Japanese coast guard vessels was <a target="_blank" href="http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/world/T101101004511.htm">shown to</a> Japanese Diet members.<br /><br />Purported excerpts were later leaked and posted to YouTube (See links <a target="_blank" href="http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/11/05/senkaku-footage-leaked-on-to-internet-shows-chinese-trawler-ramming-japanese-patrol-boat/">at Japan Probe here</a>, and an Al-Jazeera report below.)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tmMUtNBY-2Q" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" width="399"></iframe><br /><br /><a href="http://www.aolnews.com/2010/11/06/japan-besieged-from-north-and-south-by-island-claims/">Original site<br /></a>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4273301691213256173.post-40127343090052504572011-08-29T09:07:00.002+08:002011-08-29T09:13:16.095+08:00Asian space race heats up <h2 class="subhead"> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The Asian space race is moving along slowly, but steadily – and China is in the lead, with technology that could give it a military advantage over the US.</span></p></h2><p class="sByline"> </p><p class="sByline">By <a class="ui-author" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/About/Contact-Us-Feedback">Jonathan Adams</a>, <span class="ui-staffline">Correspondent</span> / October 28, 2010 </p> <span class="sLoc">Taipei, Taiwan</span> <p><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/China" target="_self" class="inform_link">China</a> looks set to pull ahead in the Asian space race to the moon, putting a spacecraft into lunar orbit Oct. 6 in a preparatory mission for an unmanned moon landing in two or three years.</p><p>Chinese engineers will maneuver the craft into an extremely low orbit, 9.5 miles above the moon's surface, so it can take high-resolution photos of a possible landing site.</p><p>Basically, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Topics/China" target="_blank">China</a> is looking for a good "parking space" for a moon lander, in a less-known area of the moon known as the Bay of Rainbows.</p><p>The mission, called <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Chang%27e-2" target="_self" class="inform_link">Chang'e 2</a> after a heroine from Chinese folklore who goes to the moon with a rabbit, highlights China's rapidly growing technological prowess, as well as its keen desire for prestige on the world stage. If successful, it will put China a nose ahead of its Asian rivals with similar lunar ambitions – <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/India" target="_self" class="inform_link">India</a> and <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Japan" target="_self" class="inform_link">Japan</a> – and signal a challenge to the American post-cold-war domination in space.</p><a name="eztoc8816623_1" id="eztoc8816623_1"></a><h2>The Asian space race </h2><p>Compared with the American and Soviet mad dashes into space in the late 1950s and '60s, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Asia" target="_self" class="inform_link">Asia</a> is taking its time – running a marathon, not a sprint. "All of these countries witnessed the cold war, and what led to the destruction of the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.S.R." target="_self" class="inform_link">USSR</a>," says Ajey Lele, an expert on Asian space programs at the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Institute+for+Defense+Studies+and+Analysis" target="_self" class="inform_link">Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis</a> in <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/New+Delhi" target="_self" class="inform_link">New Delhi</a>, referring to the military and space spending that helped hasten the decline of the Soviet regime. "They understand the value of money and investment, and they are going as per the pace which they can go." But he acknowledged China's edge over India. "They started earlier, and they're ahead of us at this time," he says.</p><p>India put the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Chandrayaan-1" target="_self" class="inform_link">Chandrayaan 1</a> spacecraft into lunar orbit in 2008, a mission with a <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/NASA" target="_self" class="inform_link">NASA</a> payload that helped confirm the presence of water on the moon. It plans a moon landing in a few years' time, and a manned mission as early as 2020 – roughly the same timetable as China.</p><p>Japan is also mulling a moonshot, and has branched out into other space exploration, such as the recent Hayabusa mission to an asteroid. Its last lunar orbiter shared the moon with China's first in 2007.</p><p>Both Japan's and India's recent missions have been plagued by glitches and technical problems, however, while China's have gone relatively smoothly.</p><p>Mr. <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Ajey+Lele" target="_self" class="inform_link">Lele</a> said the most significant aspect of the Chang'e 2 mission was the attempt at a 9.5-mile-high orbit, a difficult feat. India's own lunar orbiter descended to about 60 miles in 2008, he said, but was forced to return to a more stable, 125-mile-high orbit.</p><p>A low orbit will allow for better scouting of future landing sites, said Lele. "They [the Chinese] will require huge amounts of data on landing grounds," said Lele. "A moon landing hasn't been attempted since the cold war."</p><p>During the famed 1969 Apollo 11 manned mission to the moon, astronaut <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Neil+Armstrong" target="_self" class="inform_link">Neil Armstrong</a> had to take control of the lander in the last moments of descent to avoid large moon boulders strewn around the landing site. China hopes to avoid any such last-minute surprises with better reconnaissance photos, which would allow them to see moon features such as rocks as small as one-meter across, according to Chinese media.</p><a name="eztoc8816623_2" id="eztoc8816623_2"></a><h2>Is China's space exploration a military strategy?</h2><p>Meanwhile, some have pointed out that China's moonshot, like all space programs, has valuable potential military offshoots. <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/China+National+Space+Administration" target="_self" class="inform_link">China's space program</a> is controlled by the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/People%27s+Liberation+Army" target="_self" class="inform_link">People's Liberation Army</a> (PLA), which is steadily gaining experience in remote communication and measurement, missile technology, and antisatellite warfare through missions like Chang'e 2.</p><p>The security implications of China's space program are not lost on India, Japan, or the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States" target="_self" class="inform_link">United States</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+Pentagon" target="_self" class="inform_link">The Pentagon</a> notes that China, through its space program, is exploring ways to exploit the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Armed+Forces" target="_self" class="inform_link">US military</a>'s dependence on space in a conflict scenario – for example, knocking out US satellites in the opening hours of a crisis over <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Taiwan" target="_self" class="inform_link">Taiwan</a>.</p><p>"China is developing the ability to attack an adversary's space assets, accelerating the militarization of space," the Pentagon said in its latest annual report to Congress on China's military power. "PLA writings emphasize the necessity of 'destroying, damaging, and interfering with the enemy's reconnaissance ... and communications satellites.' "</p><p>More broadly, some in the US see China's moon program as evidence that it has a long-range strategic view that's lacking in <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Washington%2c+DC" target="_self" class="inform_link">Washington</a>. The US has a reconnaissance satellite in lunar orbit now, but <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Barack+Obama" target="_self" class="inform_link">President Obama</a> appears to have put off the notion of a manned return to the moon.</p><p>With China slowly but surely laying the groundwork for a long-term lunar presence, some fear the US may one day find itself lapped –"like the tale of the tortoise and the hare," says <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Dean+Cheng" target="_self" class="inform_link">Dean Cheng</a>, an expert on China's space program at the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Heritage+Foundation" target="_self" class="inform_link">Heritage Foundation</a> in Washington. "I have to wonder whether the United States, concerned with far more terrestrial issues, and with its budget constraints, is going to decide to make similarly persistent investments to sustain its lead in space."</p><p><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/1028/China-is-on-path-to-militarization-of-space">Original site</a>
<br /></p>Jonathan Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06346227207679579175noreply@blogger.com0