So we’ve started talks on unification with the Chicoms. Economic unification talks, that is.
Twenty years from now, those of us Taiwanese who haven’t succumbed to swine flu, melamine poisoning or a degenerative brain-wasting virus picked up long ago in the Combat Zone may look back on this week as the beginning of the end.
It’s enough to make one contemplate self-immolation. But then — who would feed my dear mutt Punkspleen?
Taipei and Beijing have agreed to speed up negotiations for a trade and investment deal. They also agreed on a name for the pact — two names actually (did we taxpayers get our money’s worth or what?).
In English it’s still known as the “economic cooperation framework agreement” (ECFA).
In Chinese, it’s now the “cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement.”
In Neihu-ese, I call it the “economic Jesus-are-we-fucked-or-what? agreement.”
Towel sellers and ceramic tile peddlers, beware: Your jobs now have the approximate shelf life of a carton of Uni-President milk in July.
But good news, Formosa Petrochemical and auto parts makers! You’ll be raking in more profits to distribute to your already filthy-rich shareholders or to reinvest in toxic waste-spewing plants near our treasured wetlands.
Approximate chance that your average Taiwanese laobaixing (老百姓) will see tangible benefits from the ECFA: 0.0003%.
Approximate chance that Formosa Petrochemical’s campaign donations to President Marky Mark Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will rise sharply after ECFA: 95%.
The news about the ECFA talks got some unsurprising complaints from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) opposition, especially over one Mainland Affairs Council official’s description of China and Taiwan as two “areas.” My favorite English translation: “Naming Taiwan an area is self-castration, says DPP,” screamed the Taiwan News.
If that’s self-castration, what’s the DPP gonna call it when Taiwan actually signs the ECFA? National auto-erotic asphyxiation?
Not sure what they’re plopping in the tea over there at the Taiwan News, but they also ran an opinion piece, apparently translated from the Neihu News Network, with the title (seriously): “It’s you, Ma, stupid: Liberty Times.”
The anti-Ma opus included the following: “For deep-blue political commentators, they can deify anyone with recognition for their appeals, but also, the most strikingly, defame those at loggerheads with them at any costs.”
Kudos for using the cool-sounding “loggerheads,” but is that English? I mean I know it’s expensive for Taiwan News to hire big-nose copy editors, what with their constant demands for luxuries such as food, shelter and a living wage, but I can run Chinese-language editorials through “Google Translate” myself, thanks very much.
In other breaking news, the Central News Agency (CNA) interrupted its usual programming to announce this gem: “Hard to say when next cross-strait trade talks will be held: SEF.”
It actually took CNA three — count ’em, three — employees to craft that chiseled piece of journalistic magic.
With lines like the following, CNA is surely on track to enter the storied halls of political journalism fame: “As both sides need to calculate relevant statistics before further discussing figures or ratios within the trade pact, it is very difficult to say when the next meeting will be held, [Straits Exchange Foundation Vice Chairman] Kao [Koong-lian, 高孔廉] pointed out upon his return from Beijing at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.”
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