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By Paul Lin 林保華
The Sino-US relationship has undergone a change recently. Although US President Barack Obama adopted a low-key approach during his visit to China last November, he was humiliated by Beijing at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. This has forced Washington to take a tougher stance, and it has used the spat between Google and China as a point of departure. Both President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) transit stopovers in the US on his way to and from Latin America and the US announcement of the arms sales package to Taiwan involve what Beijing calls its core interests, and as a result, tension between China and the US has intensified.

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By Shen Chung-hua 沈中華
On Dec. 17, Vice President Vincent Siew’s (蕭萬長) financial advisory team said Taiwan, with its high-technology edge, should set up a high-tech funding center. On Dec. 22, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) gave the plan his stamp of approval. Central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南), however, has declared war on hot money on the grounds that the speculative flow of investment capital from country to country destabilizes exchange rates, which in turn causes problems for exporters.

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By Hong Chi-chang 洪奇昌
Speaking in a recent interview about the proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that if it were discovered in tariff discussions that reductions to certain types of products would not be beneficial to Taiwan, these tariffs would not be lowered. Such a move would be a serious breach of the WTO’s principle of universality.

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Retailing pressure and the emergence of the e-book are threatening the future of authors and their work
By Henry Porter
Last Monday at 8:30am I began to type the first lines of a new novel. These sentences are unlikely to see the light of day but they’re a start — I am out on the pitch swinging my arm in a fashion that convinces me at least, which is certainly an advance on the week spent inside the pavilion whitening my pads and tidying the locker.

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Given the scale of the looming catastrophe, the UN will have to use its unique position to overcome obstruction from big countries
By Michel Rocard
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By John Naughton
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