American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond Burghardt is in town this week on one of his periodic vacations from the rigors of life in Hawaii. While here he will also take time out to glad-hand the victors of last month’s election and catch up with what’s going on politically in post-election Taiwan.
Trouble is, Ray may have a hard time getting a complete view of what’s going down this time around, as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is still in a major hissy fit with the US over its perceived interference in the election.
Tsai has been anything but “Paal-y” with Burgy and has in fact totally blown him off, deciding instead to stay down south and leave him to meet with her foreign policy expert Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴)
Tsai’s behavior is odd, to say the least. Given that the DPP has been backed into a corner by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-Chicom alliance, one would think she and the DPP would need all the friends they could get.
Of course, the other major item on Burgy’s Taiwan menu is US beef, an issue that has been on the back burner longer than a Texas barbeque brisket.
Personally, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. After all, our American friends have been eating the stuff for years without much trouble, although I think maybe one or two of the Republican presidential candidates may be showing the first tell-tale signs of BSE.
Anyway, a source of mine who lunches with Burgy whenever he visits tells me that the beef issue remains the major thorn in the side of Taipei-Washington relations, bigger than anyone in Taiwan realizes. So Burgy was basically in town to bully about the beef.
And when Uncle Sam says jump, even the KMT will make an effort to lift both feet off the ground simultaneously — if only for a nanosecond — hence President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) announcement that his new Cabinet will “discuss” US beef exports next week.
There’s certainly no time like the present for Ma to act on the beef issue. If he has been reading Tsai’s copy of Politics for Dummies, then he would know that one’s political capital is highest immediately after an election and that now is the best time to push through unpopular measures.
I, for one, am not too concerned about the prospect of ractopamine-laced US ruminant flesh being allowed back onto our supermarket shelves. It is my belief that people should take responsibility for what they shove down their own throats. After all, the government and health authorities did a piss-poor job protecting the health of citizens when it came to plasticizers in drinks. That nasty stuff had been floating around in drinks for several years before anyone even noticed.
If people are really worried that they are going to start mooing like a horny heifer after consuming US beef, then just don’t buy beef. It’s that simple.
Ma’s trouble, however, is that last time around several KMT politicians — most notably food science expert and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) — made a big deal of encouraging the public to reject US beef.
One would think that having a PhD in food science would mean that Hau would take a fact-based view on the issue of mad cow disease, but I guess populism and the chance to demonize the US while currying favor with the KMT’s new-found Chinese friends was just too much to resist.
Either way, if Ma pushes the issue in the face of resistance, then certain people in the upper echelons of the KMT could look foolish and begin to push back.
And like imported US beef, Ma is not known for his backbone. Expect him to cave in to the pressure at the first available opportunity.
Joe Doufu is a Taipei-based satirist.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS