Tue, Jul 15, 2008 page8

• Ma appears as no more than a ‘one trick pony’

  • By Jerome Keating
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  While his Cabinet continues to make mistake after mistake, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) appears to be the proverbial one trick pony and has only one thing on his mind.

  Elected on promises that he would send Taiwan’s economy soaring, Ma’s only solution and hope is to keep repeating his mantra, “run to China.”

  Life however, is not that simple.

  When he was running for the presidency, Ma ignored the plight of the world’s economy and focused only on the fact that Taiwan’s growth did not match China’s inflated numbers. Ma’s simple answer was to blame it all on outgoing president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

  Things would be different once he was elected, he said. He would lead Taiwan to the Economic Promised Land and China was his solution.

  Now that he is president and the economy is worse, Ma’s answer is: “It’s a global problem, but we still need to go to China.”

  CHANGE

  As we’ve said, life is not so simple and maybe the one constant, is change. When voters elected Ma, they were calling for change. Ma should have had some sense of that, when, in hopes of progress, he filled his Cabinet with yesterday’s so-called experts.

  Unfortunately yesterday’s solutions do not necessarily fit today’s problems. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which has always controlled the legislature, had not held the presidency for the last eight years and in those eight years a lot had happened. Both Taiwan and the world had changed a lot.

  The KMT had always touted itself as the party that knew how to handle the economy. It was the reputed “A-Team” as far as Taiwan and the world was concerned. So enter Ma’s specialists of eight years ago.

  Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) boasted that now that they were in power, the TAIEX, which had reached 9,309 points when the KMT took office on May 20, would soon be breaking the 20,000-point mark. Not so — at last count the TAIEX was at 7,051 points and heading south.

  TOURISTS

  Not to worry, there were still the tourists from China to solve the problem and Ma rushed headlong to that “solution.” Taiwan was supposed to get 3,000 tourists a day, but China has only allowed 1,000 tourists a day. And for July 18, so far, there are far fewer advanced sales.

  Thus far, the only visible result of Ma’s action of opening Taiwan to Chinese tourists on July 4th is that three of them have jumped ship and one still remains at large. But Ma, the one trick pony, is not discouraged; he keeps insisting the only real solution is “run to China.”

  Taiwan has been one of the major investors in China, but focusing on more investment does not appear to be the panacea that Ma had hoped for.

  The rest of the world has already begun to discover the many pitfalls of dealing with China, its laws and copyright violations.

  Beyond that, China keeps producing tainted products — toys, toothpaste, pet food and so on — and is leading the world in the amount of pollution it produces.

  Too bad that Taiwan lies downwind.

  Still the one trick pony keeps saying “run to China,” for it is not Taiwan’s reputation that Ma is most concerned about but his own.

  Will China be Ma’s savior? It may be too early to tell, but never has a fly been more easily enticed into the spider’s parlor. Ma does not seem to have a Plan B.

  Jerome Keating is a Taiwan-based writer.
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