台灣敢廢除死刑嗎？Will Taiwan dare to abolish the Death Penalty?

The recent posthumous acquittal of Chiang Kuo-ching 江國慶, a soldier who was wrongly executed 14 years ago for the rape and murder of a young girl brings back the question of the death penalty in Taiwan.

 Executed soldier found innocent in posthumous trial
(click on cc icon for English subtitles) 

With Hong Kong as the only exception where the death penalty was abolished just a few years before its return to China, all other Asian countries have the death penalty on their statutes.

Taiwan often boasts of being a democracy with human values and respect for its citizens. Chiang's condemnation based on a forced confession by military intelligence officers show that some of them still suffer from a White Terror syndrome.
In many countries where the death penalty has been abolished, this was done against the wishes of the majority. Should Taiwan's politicians of all hues and creed have the courage to face up to their electorate and abolish the death penalty, they would send a message to other nations that would be hard to ignore. What better way would there be to send a message of independence to its neighbours?

In this respect, the European Union, a former nest of imperialism, has shown the way by imposing the removal of the death penalty as a condition for membership. Taiwan is one the Asian countries that has been most influenced by European culture and ideals, this without relinquishing its own soul and culture.
The recent enormous success of Seedig Bale where former colonists, the Japanese, and oppressed Aborigines are shown fighting each other without any room for concession is indicative of Taiwan's modernity. The director, Wei Te-Sheng's 魏德聖 made the decision to present fully the Seediq's merciless killing of Japanese women and children in the 1930 Wushe incident and show both the Japanese and the Seediq for what they really are: a part of our humanity, however imperfect.
Dignity is restored to the Seediq. Surely a Taiwan free of the ultimate punishment would be the logical continuity of this humanity.

Asia, along with a Taiwan's inspired leadership, must follow the EU's example. Reconciliation between former warring nations is necessary if the continent wants to be one of the centres for human development, not only economic but also spiritual. The death penalty's removal is a necessary part of the healing process in Asia. If former arch-enemies, such as France and Germany, have managed to become not only partners but friends, at all levels of society, Asian nations can also throw forever their past demons to the dustbin of history.
Could this be up for debate between Ma Jing-jeou 馬英九 and Tsai Ying-wen 蔡英文 before the next presidential election, could both agree to abolish the death penalty and turn this question into a non-issue?
It would help Taiwan to stand up proud among the chorus of nations.

溫州車事故，報紙抗命 Wenzhou Railcrash, no Let-up in Media and Public Outrage

Is this a watershed? Chinese Media fight Censorship Orders

RFI International Report 浙江溫州警方監視抗議者路透社7月27日照片

It could well be that this time public opinion won't be muzzled. In the past, Chinese authorities, local or central, have been able to muzzle opinion after ordinary citizens reacted to scandals, such as badly constructed schools resulting in children's deaths from earthquakes. This time, it's the relatively well off "upper middle class" that has been affected by the railroad disaster. Only relatively affluent Chinese can afford to take the high speed trains that are being built all over China. In the past this affluent class has been fairly uncritical of the regime since it had been reaping the benefits from the expansion of the economy.
Middle class affluent citizens have seldom been in the first line of revolts of fundamental changes in a country's political structure, unless they feel directly affected by events; as in the case of the railroad crash.
The fairly high sums paid to ten families are a proof of that concern. On the other hand many families are demanding higher financial compensation, claiming that, in a country with no social protection, the loss of someone has to be calculated against what that person represents in terms of "insurance" for retirement.

What is remarkable is not that the government has ordered the press to muzzle itself but that the orders have come out in the open in such details: Directives from the Ministry of Truth: Wenzhou High-speed Train Crash.

Unless the authorities move to ban half the words from Chinese dictionaries on Weibo, the Chinese twitter, it seems that this time, putting a few executives in jail and awarding huge sums of money to grieved relatives won't be enough to erase analysis of the lack of accountability embedded in the Chinese system of government.

It could well the tipping point towards fundamental changes in the way the Chinese view their government and how they should be governed or rather govern themselves. Responsibility rests not only with the Chinese government but Chinese citizens who have to overcome their own apathy or mistaken feeling of helplessness.

台灣開放中國客自由行 台灣柔術戰略 | Chinese Tourists Travelling to Taiwan: The Jujutsu Strategy

The number of Chinese tourists, nearly all of them on organized tours, visiting Taiwan has recently overtaken the figures for Japanese coming for vacation to the Island state. Individual Chinese visitors, allowed for the first time  (6月28日, 2011 | June 28, 2011), will certainly boost these figures to unprecedented heights. While keen to emphasize the fact that individual travel for Chinese citizens will boost the economy, the Taiwanese government and many tourist businesses do concede that there are other fringe benefits.

Winston F.C. Shen, chief executive officer of Hotel Royal Group, declared recently that "Taiwan can 'drive China to change' by welcoming independent tourists."  This is the reverse strategy employed by China on the world stage. China's economic clout has forced its government to deal with its newly found power. It has reluctantly realized that with power come new responsibilities that it cannot shirk anymore. Its recent reversal of attitude in some African countries, such as Libya and Sudan, shows that China can no longer pretend to have a neutral position on the excuse that it won't interfere in other nations' sovereignty.
Its relationship with Taiwan has undergone a major shift in the last two years. China has come to realize that brutal force and threat towards Taiwan, far from changing the opinion of Taiwan’s citizens, have in fact made them more hostile than ever towards China.

The Jujutsu Strategy

Taiwan, not being able to use the same force to advance its own interests, is using a Jujutsu strategy. As explained on Wikipedia: "Jujutsu" can be translated to mean "art" or "technique" and represents manipulating the opponent's force against himself rather than confronting it with one's own force.

Taiwanese governments and people, no matter what side or origin, have learned from their own history that they have to forge their own place as a small nation within Asia and be accepted on a different basis from China. China has based its growing strength and formidable economic power on the sheer energy coming from its huge population base. China's economic structure does not have to be an efficient one. Its continuous ability to be able to keep on drawing from a cheap home labour force, the Mingong 民工, has relieved it of the obligation to develop an efficient and organized economy akin to the German model. China has created the illusion of being a strong economy. It is, rather, a huge economy depending on cheap labour and whose expertise, for mass production, depends greatly on foreign knowledge. China is able to create high-end science and technology but it's not able yet, in spite of recent efforts, to produce this high technology in strength and depth. To continue expanding, incredibly enough for its own self-esteem, it depends on foreign powers: the most important one being Taiwan.

Taiwan is China's number one investor. When a recent fire broke out in one of Foxconn / Apple's iPad cases factories in China, it affected mainly share prices in Taiwan and the United States. Recent noises from China's generals that, contrary to US intelligence sources, they had practically no missiles pointed at Taiwan are prompted as much by the realization that China needs to appease Taiwan's public opinion before next year's presidential election as by a realistic assessment of Taiwan's importance to China's economy.Consequently, knowing that time works in its favour and that China is very much like a giant discovering its newly gained strength and clumsily trying to flex its muscles, Taiwan is finally giving an outlet to China’s untamed energy. Opening its borders to individual travel from China is a momentous historic change for the Taiwanese.

Already members of the Legislative Yuan are proposing to open its floor to Chinese tourists to let them see democracy, Chinese-language democracy, in action. As reported in the Sacramento Bee: "Taiwanese tour operators say many Chinese tourists - used to the propaganda programs on state TV - have asked to stay in their hotels to watch the freewheeling TV political talk shows on Taiwan."The Taiwanese government, KMT, DPP or otherwise, would be foolish to discard a certain paranoia towards China. No matter what type of government is in place in China, democratic, autocratic or dictatorial, China will always be a formidable and difficult neighbour. An island nation of 23 million lying an hour's flight from a country of more than 1.3 billion citizens is well advised to be wary of such untamed power.

The sheer numbers of Chinese who will come to visit Taiwan is Taiwan's biggest defence against China. The more individual tourists come to Taiwan, meet Taiwanese on their own mutual terms and engage in friendly discourse, the more Taiwan's independence, a word that yet remains to be defined, will become a fact. Taiwan will be able to send back to China its message: that Taiwan has turned into a peaceful and democratic country with all the usual imperfections found in other democracies in Europe and North America.
All these tourists will add to Taiwan's Jujutsu Strategy: Letting so many individual Chinese tourists in is a typical jujutsu manoeuvre. This will not be an invasion. These individual tourists, hopefully, will go home and be a force in China itself to convince their fellow citizens that Taiwan, although Chinese-speaking, has become something they should not try to assimilate but rather respect. The jujutsu move will have then fully come round.

One can only hope that Tsai Ying-wen 蔡英文 realizes that the Jujutsu strategy is not only Taiwan's best plan against China's threats but that it has been part of Taiwan's culture and history for the last 400 years, right from Taiwan's first constitutional government established by the Dutch for 30 years in the 17th century, through the Japanese occupation in 1895 up to the 21st century leading Taiwan into a new era of self-confidence (With the exception of February 28th, 1947 revolt 二二八 against KMT’s rule and injustice). The Taiwanese have since then switched to more subtle methods of resistance, if not more determined, against China's unprecedented challenge.
Taiwan's development and expansion into China's economy, its development of democracy, with its inevitable by-product of sanctioned corruption, and recent realization that a social revolution for more equality still is in progress augur well for the future.But, please, don't repeat this, the Jujutsu Strategy is Taiwan's secret weapon and once it has been used, as all jujutsu experts know, it will be too late for opponents to resist its force.

纪念六四 二十二周年 1989 - 2011 － 22 Years ago on this Day - June 4th

台港書籍、媒體漸進地進入中國 China Opens up slowly to Taiwanese Media and Publishing

Many Chinese Language Taiwanese Newspapers however are still blocked in China

For a few years many Taiwanese students have been buying books from China, in particular cheaper translations of foreign technical textbooks. What started as a cheaper option for students eager to save money has turned into a normal part of book selling in Taiwan. Indeed, mainstream Eslite bookstore chain among others has a dedicated floor in many of its recently opened branches, emphatically called "books in simplified characters." Of course all of these books come from China but most bookstores shy away from emphasizing the geographical nature of these publications. One has to remember that only two decades ago, any book from China was totally banned and that it would have been enough to be found in possession of a Chinese book to be arrested under martial law. In practice many innocent foreigners having brought dictionaries from Mainland China never encountered any problem.
Recently, in a similar "Alice in Wonderland through the mirror view," some Chinese bookstores have started stocking up on books from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Wangfujing Bookstore has a dedicated section of such books.

Wanfujing Bookstore: Promoting Books from Hong Kong and Taiwan

Considering that the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (Order of the President No.37)" explicitly says in Chapter 1, article 1 that it "is enacted in accordance with the Constitution for the purpose of promoting the normalization and standardization of the standard spoken and written Chinese language" and that article 2 clearly states that normalization means the standardized characters (so-called simplified): "For purposes of this Law (...) the standardized Chinese characters." Articles 4 declares that authorities at various levels shall "take measures to popularize Putonghua and the standardized Chinese characters."
The Wangfujing bookstore being in the hands of Xinhua is, at least in spirit, breaching the law; not necessarily a bad thing. Naturally the selection of books, mainly from Taiwan, is still fairly limited. What is noticeable is that it is done with aplomb going to the point of producing promotion material. This has hardly been noticed in the Taiwanese media. a non-event.

Taiwanese Publishers in Force? (click on picture for larger resolution)

This comes at a time when Internet censorship on Chinese Language sites is intensifying. It is not clear what criteria are applied for blocking one site or another.
All English Language newspapers from Taiwan, including government sponsored sites, are freely accessible from Beijing; including the Taipei Times and the China Post. On the other hand many, but not all, Mandarin Chinese publications are blocked. Attempts to read the China Times 中國時報 or the Liberty Times 自由日報  are greeted with the notice that "the connection has been reset." At the same time on line papers such as Nownews did not provoke the ire of the censors. Many Wikipedia Chinese language pages could be accessed quite easily.

 There are dissenting views about whether there are two factions within the Chinese government, one being more liberal than the other. We can only speculate what brought about this timid liberalization on the printed word while more stringent controls are being enforced for electronic material.
In the meantime, many customers were clearly interested in the books being on offer.
One particular type of books was still missing: I could not see any travelling guide to Taiwan. Surely, with individual travel opening up for Beijing and Shanghai residents, this could have been a red-hot item.

艾未未失蹤：中共失面子 Ai Weiwei's missing: CCP Leaders Lose Face

China Internet observers have now taken to taking shots of articles on Chinese websites with the knowledge that articles routinely disappear. Ai Weiwei was arrested, disappeared for 48 hours before Chinese authorities reluctantly and indirectly admitted to his arrest.
They then proceeded to charge him with economic crimes. Maybe they thought that if they could not charge him with subversive arrests they could trump up charges that, so they thought, would be justified. They then could claim that he was a mere corrupt profiteer. The inventive charges must have come from watching too many Al Capone movies: if you can't prove Al Capone is a gangster, charge him with tax evasion. How naive! Ai Weiwei is not only innocent, but his activities and personality do not fit the crime.


AlJazeera: Chinese artist Ai held for 'economic crimes'

It's a new record: some faction of the Chinese leadership has managed to make two politically immature mistakes in only 72 hours.
First, they did not realize that the last person to arrest was Ai Weiwei. His disappearance brought immediate condemnation from many foreign governments, including the Taiwanese Mainland Affairs Commission and the DPP, albeit the MAC was a bit slow off the mark.
This brought into focus the spate of "disappearances" over the last two months. Many sites, which had published comprehensive lists, with location maps, of bloggers, journalists and writers who had been arrested and held incommunicado all over China as a probable knee jerk reaction to the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia, were linked to twitter messages. This has highlighted the increase in arrests since the revolution in Tunisia and the consequent paranoiac fear inside the Chinese government of similar events in China.
The second mistake was then to believe that economic charges would be believable and accepted at face value for his arrest.
It does appear that some soft-liners managed to convince the hard line faction that accusing Ai Weiwei would not stick and come out as a ridiculous and feeble attempt to smear an otherwise well considered and honest artist. They were right: unfortunately they did not stop to think that removing the articles would have a worse effect than leaving them untouched on web sites. Don't China's Internet Bamboo Wall know that Internet users know what to expect of Chinese authorities and are careful enough to take screen shots on a regular basis?
Some leaders are still in another time dimension and have a simplified view of the digital age. The electronic bamboo wall is increasing been torn down and all past activities can be recorded.
The Chinese leaders must have realized by now:  their primeval panic has brought upon them the worst punishment of all: they have made themselves lose face.
Possibly the most terrible thing that could happen to faceless bureaucrats; for they are bureaucrats not politicians, they have lost all sense of politics, good or bad.

艾未未48小時不見了 — Ai Weiwei has disappeared for 48 hours

Ai Weiwei holds some of his 100 million 'Sunflower Seeds'. Image from artlet-blog.com.

Ai Weiwei had disappeared for the last 48 hours after his arrest in full view in Beijing airport. The world media have been clamouring for his release along with many governments. Will they be listened? Fear of change often provokes political autism.
There obviously is a struggle between the hard liners in the Chinese Communist Party who have, too quickly, childishly even, pressed on the panic button and the softies who had been multiplying speeches on the necessity to look at concepts like democracy with optimism. Were these speeches just for international ears?
It appears that the hardliners are winning, for now. If change comes to China, it won't be in the same fashion as in Tunisia; but like Tunisia, it will be unexpected and from unforeseen quarters.
Repression hasn't managed to re-invent itself but dissent always finds new ways to come through. Similarly, the Great Internet Chinese Wall is becoming old and cracked. Many Chinese blog on twitter and even sign the petition asking for Ai Weiwei's release. If more and more Chinese manage to go through the cracks of the internet bamboo wall, it means that even China with its thousands of internet watchers will not be enough to stop popular demand for a new modern way to govern China.

Ai Weiwei! Where are you? Why is the Taiwanese government silent?*

*Ai Weiwei was due to work on an exhibition in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

環球時報的消失葉 Disappearing Pages on the Global Times

Revising Reality: Erasing Memory

Liu Xiaobo's name has disappeared from the Global Times Website

It appears that the semi-official Chinese newspaper "Global Times" has erased all articles referring to Liu Xiaobo 劉曉波 from its website.
On Liang An San Di we have been mentioning the unreal opinion polls conducted to evaluate the Chinese citizens' reaction to Liu Xiaobo being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. While it is still possible to conduct searches in Google for articles published in the Global Times that mention Liu Xiaobo and then obtain numerous results, all links to such articles display the usual 404 error. The error is displayed not by a general server but by the newspaper itself.
Are criticisms of their contradictory, even fictional, reporting responsible for this? A change of strategy appears to be in place: after realizing that criticizing Liu Xiaobo in the country's media, including the prestigious and well watched CCTV's network daily news 新聞聯播，Chinese authorities slowly realized that this was possibly the worst approach in dealing with Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize.
Thanks to criticism by the State media many Chinese who had not heard of Liu Xiaobo or did not care about the Nobel Prize became then aware of his existence. Indeed, the Global Times reported that 9% the respondents polled were of the opinion that Liu should go to Norway to collect his prize. This was quite unprecented: an official press organ reporting that 9% of its population did not agree with the central authorities' decision in one of its own newspapers. Routine in many countries, but exceptional, and to be welcomed, in the Chinese media.
The Global Times then put in place a 1984 Orwell strategy: erase his name from the media. What they should have realized is that Google's search engine keeps a cache of its searches and that efforts to erase pages will even highlight the Global Times' knee-jerk reaction. And not all centrally controlled media seem to agree on this strange method of censorship. Articles published in other Government controlled media such as the China Daily that mention the Global Times's articles about Liu Xiaobo are still available on line.
This leads next to sustained speculation that there is a struggle at the top of the Chinese government about the directions to take concerning press freedom and freedom of speech in general. One side seems to defeat the other side's attempts at blocking unwelcomed reporting. Could the Global Times and the China Daily be representative of these different factions?
One thing is sure: Google will be blamed.

中國公共場所全面禁煙 Smoking Ban in China: a litmus test for the rule of law

The smoking ban to be introduced in China on May 1st is an important one in more than one respect.
Countries where smoking has been successful banned have been countries where the rule of law is at the highest level. Respect for the smoking ban will be a test on whether China, citizens and government authorities equally, is serious about the rule of law and whether the rule of law will have one day a power equal, if not separate, from the Communist Party. Citizenship will also be paramount for a successful ban because successful bans in other countries have always relied on citizens' general acceptance of such a ban.

Smokers are a difficult bunch to control and in essence are tobacco addicts. Addicts are totally dependent on their habit and will try everything to have a "right" to smoke. Will local party heads, local secretaries respect the new regulations? Will employees and policing authorities in charge of law or health enforcement feel endowed with enough authority to tell smokers to put out, no matter the power or the position?
Many observers will argue that China, being a very authoritarian regime, will find it easier to enforce the smoking ban. They are wrong. Smoking is a different beast. Authoritarian and dictatorial governments have not been successful at enforcing smoking bans. In dictatorships, not abiding by "small" regulations is a way for citizens to feel they are still in control of some private space. Smoking is felt to be one of the most private space and the most difficult to control. Addicts of any drug cannot be controlled unless the addicts make the decision themselves to quit or to accept that something else, their health or their family's well-being, is more important for their lives than the need to fulfill their addiction.

Every day in China, one sees drivers and pedestrians involved in serious accidents; mad drivers crashing by the side of highways. In fact, it is next to impossible to drive more than 30 miles without seeing a seriously crashed car by the side of a highway. This usually creates a long traffic jam leaving plenty of time for other drivers to have a good look at the wreck and possibly, only possibly, inciting them to drive more carefully.
This is in spite of an all present police force. On the other hand in Taiwan in big cities, more citizens regularly wait patiently for red lights to cross at junctions, this even when there is little traffic and to the delight of mosquitoes in the summer who bite the law abiding citizens. Not to say that Taiwanese are perfect drivers, far from it.

Sadly enough, it could well be the huge economic cost of close to four million Chinese dying of diseases induced by Tobacco smoking that might make this new health campaign successful in the long run.

薩伊德的遺產：東方主義與亞洲主義的矛盾 Edward Said's Legacy: The rise of Asianism over globalism - INSIDE Korea's JoongAng Daily

In view of Libya's battle and Korea's place in history, Korea JoongAng Daily has published a strong opinion article arguing that "We are qualified to play a key role in Asia with our progress in industrialization and democratization."

Original Article: Ideology of the Past?

Joong Ang's Daily opinion pieces argues that Asians "are qualified to play a key role in Asia with our progress in industrialization and democratization."

The author, Kim Hwan-yung, refers to Edward's view that the West view's of the East, and especially the Middle East, have been nourished from the necessity of providing justification for an invasion of countries and territories in Africa and the Middle East. While the article provides a good basis for an alternate method for Asians to comprehend today's world, it is however deficient on three fronts:

First it conveniently fails to refer to Edward Said's second book, "Culture and Imperialism," published in 1993 that expanded his very notion of Orientalism to apply to any colonized country or region of the world.

Secondly, the author of the article by using Edward Said's concept of Orientalism, rightly and legitimately, to explain and criticize the West view's of the Middle East and Japan, fails however in trying to apply this concept to his own culture, Asian and Korean, and his own arguments and logic.

Thirdly, the notion of Orientalism  defined as an ideological approach used by nations to justify colonialism and assert that they are endowed with a superior civilization and culture is not an exclusive domain of European nations and the West in general. This "orientalist" approach is being used now by nations on five continents, including Asia, to give themselves the right to dictate and impose their will upon other peoples.

Concepts such as Orientalism were and are human visions of the world we live in. They are, therefore, not limited in time or geography. If they are human visions and concepts, they can't be limited to a particular culture.  Arguing, rightly, that Asian countries have suffered from the West's Orientalism whereby Western nations have felt superior to other countries, Kim Hwan-yung then falls short of saying that Asian nations are guilty of having used the same approach in their relations to fellow Asian nation. Kim himself fails to apply the same principles to his own analysis and proposals.

His proposal that Asians should create an "Asianism' based on Asian philosophical values and concepts because it will provide better solutions is flawed. Kim asserts that "The answer could instead be better found in the Asian context."
While it is difficult to disagree with his statement that "Both Orientalism and Eurocentrism have long become passe," it is noticeable that Kim's contradicts himself by writing that "Asianism can better explain and broaden our perception of the world and its events."

The mirror side of Orientalism and Eurocentrism is his so-called "Asianism." Both going into past territories.
The worst culprit of "Asianism" was Japan before 1945. This was the very justification that Japanese imperial armies used to invade Korea, China, Vietnam, Taiwan and most of South East Asia. Former Imperial Japan was using the justification that Asians had as much, and even more, than Europe to offer to the world. Japan, blinded by its own warped vision, then decided that only an Asian unified, in fact occupied and maimed, by Japan could accomplish this goal. Korea has been a victim and a successful survivor of "orientalism" from first China and then Japan. It is better placed than many nations to fully understand the shock and lasting effects of cultural and physical invasion from other empires.
More relevant to today's world is China's own views on its own ethnic minorities to whom China feels it is bringing progress, industrialization and who have no choice but to communicate with the rest of China and the world through a Chinese prism of Mandarin culture. Unfortunately, so-called supporters of the Tibetans can't help but being guilty themselves of seeing Tibet through the deforming lens of Orientalism leaving themselves open to criticism. "Modern" Tibetans have the greatest difficulties to escape from these two sides of Orientalism and find it next to impossible to bring their own vision or narrative of what they are and their desires for their nation.

Kim feels it necessary to explain that Koreans should be able to ask themselves when he writes: “Who am I?” we must be able to say, “I am Korean, a member of the global community, as well as an Asian.” Asianism can better explain and broaden our perception of the world and its events."
This goes without saying: Koreans are, like everyone on the planet, members of the global community. On the other hand, saying that Asianism can better explain the world is dangerous and borders on intolerance. The very fact that Kim needs to write such simplistic and banal truths is more a testimony that some part of Korean society has not yet fully absorbed its colonial past.

Kim's analysis is simplistic. To bring progress to, not only Asia, but also to the rest of the world, there can be no bargaining away notions of global humanity. Our humanity cannot rely on the concept that one region of the world knows better than another what is good for humanity.
This ideology of the past, expressed under the cover of Edward Said's profound and humanistic criticism of colonialism, had better remain what it is: a thing of the past.
Edward Said would having been very surprised to see his criticism of Orientalism used an ideological justification for a so-called Asianism