Keith Richburg, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong, and former Africa Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, will give a lecture, “Dragon Among the Lions: What Does China Really Want From Africa?” in Taipei on Sept. 9. The lecture will be moderated by Lung Yingtai (龍應台), writer and former Taiwan Minister of Culture. China has surpassed the US as Africa’s largest trading partner, investing some US$7 billion each year in infrastructure projects around the continent. Is China really looking for a long-term relationship of “equality and mutual respect,” or does it want to be merely a “friend with benefits,” like so many of the Western colonial powers that came before? How much do ordinary Africans really benefit from China’s economic largesse? Richburg will discuss his perspective on China-Africa relations, their economic partnership and the geopolitical implications of the country and continent drawing ever closer.
■ Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance (台灣金融研訓院), 2F, 62 Roosevelt Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路三段62號2樓)
■ Sunday from 2pm to 3:30pm; free admission, but those wanting to attend must pre-register at www.civictaipei.org/registration.php (English and Chinese). For more information, call Yuan Ti at (02) 3322-4907, Ext. 14. The lecture will be held in English.
Photo courtesy of Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
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