No change to arms policy: US officials
　

US-TAIWAN TIES: In separate talks, a senior National Security Council official and State Department official both said that Washington’s commitment under the TRA was clear
　

By William Lowther
STAFF REPORTER , WASHINGTON
Sunday, Nov 08, 2009, Page 1

Two senior members of US President Barack Obama’s administration spelled out aspects of White House policy toward Taiwan on Friday and made it very clear that despite Chinese objections arms sales would continue.

Jeffrey Bader, senior director for East Asian Affairs in the National Security Council, and US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg were speaking at separate briefings on Obama’s eight-day Asian trip, which starts this week and includes talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).

Bader, in a keynote address at the Brookings Institution, said that Obama intended to follow the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and to ensure the defense of Taiwan.

He said that the improvement of cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan was one of the world’s “good news stories” because the Taiwan Strait was “the potentially most explosive issue” in US-China relations.

“We think that Presidents Hu and Ma [Ying-jeou (馬英九)] have done an excellent job in reaching out to each other and building a framework that we hope will be durable and that will lead to the resolution of differences,” Bader said.

“Our policy on arms sales to Taiwan has not changed. And that will be evident over the course of our administration,” he said.

Bader said that US policy on Taiwan’s status was based on the three US-China joint communiques and the TRA.

“That framework is unalterable — we are not going to touch it — and there will be nothing we say or do on this upcoming trip that will go in a different direction,” he said.

“There are some areas where it is good not to innovate. And this is an area where we have a tried and true basis for a stable relationship and we are not going to tamper with it,” he said.

Steinberg, speaking soon afterwards at the Center for American Progress, another think tank, said that US commitment to Taiwan was very clear under the TRA and that the Obama administration would continue to respect the act.

“That means we are committed to make appropriate arms sales to meet Taiwan’s security needs. There is no question that Beijing doesn’t like it, and there is no question that it is our responsibility. And not just because of the TRA, although we obviously have a legal obligation under the TRA. But because we actually think it is the right thing to do,” he said.

Steinberg said that US policy toward Taiwan was “appropriate” and that the US’ defense and security support for Taiwan contributed to cross-strait security.

“Each sale [of arms] needs to be evaluated in terms of Taiwan’s specific needs. We take that responsibility very seriously and we will continue to proceed on that basis,” he said.

During his talks in China, Obama will try to find ways to address policy differences without actually changing the policies, Steinberg said.

“If a country is convinced, as we are convinced in respect to arms sales to Taiwan, it should be prepared to have a serious conversation about it and to listen to the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] concerns about it,” he said.

“We will try to explain why we believe that it is consistent with the interests of both countries. In this case, with arms sales, we believe that it enhances stability by giving Taiwan the confidence to enter into dialogue with the PRC,” he said.

Another difficult issue to be addressed during Obama’s trip was Chinese military modernization, he said.

“We don’t exclude the legitimacy of modernization, but there are aspects of it that concern us and we would like to understand it better and hear a strong case from the Chinese about particular elements of their modernization. That’s the kind of dialogue that needs to take place if we are going to develop a strong relationship of trust and confidence,” Steinberg said.

Siraya spirit flourishing with Arit Ritual
　

By Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Nov 08, 2009, Page 2

“We believe that we can communicate with the ‘arit’ — ancestral spirits — through water, and that the forces of the ‘arit’ are contained in water.”— Tuan Hung-kun, a researcher on Siraya culture and history

Donghe Village (東河) in Dongshan Township (東山), Tainan County, looks almost the same as any other rural village in Taiwan. Walk into one of its temples, however, and they may seem surprisingly empty.

Six village temples stand empty apart from ceramic jars and vases filled with water and branches. The water-filled vases indicate that this is a Siraya village.

Temples in a village of the Siraya Aboriginal tribe are not just places of worship, but also meeting places. The temples are known as kuwa in Siraya, or konkai (公界 or 公廨) in Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese).

The Siraya are one of the pingpu (平埔), or “plains,” Aboriginal tribes that once inhabited large swathes of Taiwan’s coastal regions.

Over the past few centuries, the pingpu tribes gradually disappeared as they assimilated with the dominant Han culture and adopted the Hoklo language.

The Siraya in Tainan, as well as Siaolin Village (小林) in Kaohsiung County’s Jiasian Township (甲仙), are among the few communities that keep some Siraya traditions alive.
　

“We believe that we can communicate with the arit — ancestral spirits — through water, and that the forces of the arit are contained in water,” said Tuan Hung-kun (段洪坤), a researcher on Siraya culture and history and the convener of the Alliance of Siraya Communities.

“Some people say that we worship the jars, but that’s not correct. We only use the jars to hold water,” he said.

There are six konkai in Donghe: the Grand Konkai is dedicated to Anzu (案祖), the supreme spirit in Siraya culture, and two arit, while the other five konkai are spread out along the outer rim of the village, each dedicated to an arit that protects the village from evil spirits.

On the night of Oct. 21, villagers poured into the Grand Konkai to take part in the village’s biggest annual event, the Arit Ritual.

“The annual Arit Ritual is held to express our appreciation for the arit’s blessing for the year, and to ask the arit to bless us for the coming year,” Tuan said. “In the past, there were festivities all day and then religious activities after nightfall. Today only the religious part has been retained.”

Long before the ritual began at 11pm, villagers began arriving at the Grand Konkai to pray to the arit.

They brought offerings of pork, chicken, fish, small cakes made of rice called ban (粄), rice wine, betel nuts and the “five gifts” in red envelopes.

“The [five] gifts are iron from a plough, mung beans, rice grains, nails and coins. We put them in red envelopes and present them [to the arit] to ask for a good harvest, newborn children and prosperity in the coming year,” Lee Chu-lung (李朱龍), a village elder, told visitors outside the Grand Konkai.

“When you present sacrifices to the arit, the head of the chicken and the thicker part of a portion of pork must face the arit, but with the fish, it’s the tail that must face the arit,” Lee said.

No one knows why this is, he said, adding that it was a tradition handed down over thousands of years.

After arranging their offerings, villagers placed betel nuts on a small table in front of the arit jar, prayed, took a sip of rice wine and spit it over the jar.

Each villager then threw the two halves of a betel nut to the ground. If one half lands facing up and the other facing down, it means the spirit is happy; if not, the villagers may repeat the rite or consult the priest about why the spirit is not pleased.

“Our arit ritual is less influenced by Han culture, so we don’t burn incense or ghost money — there are other Siraya villages that have adopted such practices,” Lee said.

Those who prayed for something specific at the previous year’s Arit Ritual were back this year with whole pigs and other sacrifices as well as the five gifts to show their appreciation.

During the ritual, the priest chanted a spell to summon the ancestral spirit. Under his guidance, villagers who brought pigs arranged them in front of the Grand Konkai and covered them with white cloth.

“We do that because the arit likes everything neat and clean. It’s also a signal to other spirits who may be around that the pigs have already been dedicated to the arit and they may not touch them,” Siraya priest Chang Ming-hai (張明海) said.

Those who brought pigs then dripped rice wine into five goblets arranged in front of each pig, and repeated the action five times, with 20 minute intervals.

“Five” is an auspicious number in the Siraya culture, Tuan said.

It was well past 1:30am when the wine ritual ended, but there was more to come.

After seeking the arit’s approval, the pigs were removed to make way for qianqu (牽曲), the singing of ancient Siraya songs.

Around 20 women held hands in a circle as the priest placed jars with water at the center.

He invited ancestral spirits into the circle and the women began slowly to dance and sing.

“They’re singing two things: One is a song taught [to the tribe] by the arit to pray for rain after the Siraya suffered a severe drought a long, long time ago, so they sing it to remember that,” Tuan said. “They also sing another song to thank the arit for blessings over the past year.”

There’s no rule for how long the dance should last; that depends on when the ancestral spirit is satisfied.

“We ask the ancestral spirit whether it is pleased by throwing down a halved betel nut,” Tuan said. “One year the dance continued until 5am and we were all exhausted by the time it finished.”

This year the dancing lasted until 3am and the villagers were able to go home relatively early — but not to rest.

“Don’t think that’s the end of it. Those who brought whole pigs must cook the pig’s organs and head when they get home and bring the cooked pork back after dawn and before noon to finish their ritual of thanksgiving,” he said.

While the annual Arit Ritual ends with qianqu in most Siraya communities, in this village, a ritual called haohai (哮海) follows the next afternoon.

Like qianqu, haohai involves dancing in a circle and singing, but the priest performs another ritual, which lasts about an hour.

Haohai is Hoklo and could mean either remembering an incident at sea or remembering a person named A-hai.

“There are two legends on the origin of the ritual and we’re not sure which is true,” Tuan said.

One has it that the first of the Siraya ran into a storm while traveling at sea. When they finally reached shore on Taiwan, seven people were missing, and the haohai is a rite to remember them.

Another legend has it that when the Siraya arrived in the region, a man named A-hai helped them settle down, and the haohai is a ritual of thanks.

“Some say the Siraya have died out,” Tuan said. “They say we are an extinct tribe and have lost our culture.”

“Well, the fact that we still hold our nighttime Arit Ritual each year proves we are flourishing,” he said.

The Siraya hope the Arit Ritual and other traditions will never die, Tuan said. As for traditions and language already lost, Tuan said he hopes research can help the tribe explore its roots.

Dalai Lama in India-China border row

THE GUARDIAN AND AP, BEIJING, NEW DEHLI AND TAWANG, INDIA
Sunday, Nov 08, 2009, Page 5

The Indian government denied permits for foreign journalists to cover the Dalai Lama’s imminent visit to a northeast Indian state that China claims as its own after weeks of verbal jousting between the two countries.

Four passes to Arunachal Pradesh, previously given to foreign reporters, have been revoked. All other news organizations that applied for permits have been turned down.

“We are incredibly surprised and disappointed to learn that reporters’ visas to Arunachal Pradesh have been canceled ahead of the Dalai Lama’s visit,” said Heather Timmons, president of the Delhi-based Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

Indian journalists will be allowed to travel, but some Tibetans raised concerns that Delhi was kowtowing to China over the Dalai Lama. Tsewang Rigzin, of the Tibetan Youth Congress, said it was “disappointing that in a democracy as big as India’s foreign reporters cannot follow His Holiness on this trip.”

The Himalayan neighbors have a prickly relationship, with both seeking a bigger role on the world stage. Media reports of alleged incursions by Chinese soldiers have caused uproar in recent weeks. The chief of India’s army staff, General Deepak Kapoor, has appealed to the media not to overplay the issue. Last month the government announced it would launch a legal case against two Indian reporters after a report appeared claiming two Indian border police were injured after being fired at from the Tibetan-Chinese side.

Despite the claims of misreporting, there is no doubt India and China have sparred in recent weeks over a number of sensitive issues around Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing calls Southern Tibet or Outer Tibet. Relations reached a new low last month when Beijing described the Indian prime minister’s visit to the state before elections as “provocative and dangerous.”

Arunachal Pradesh has been slowly integrated into the Indian state since Delhi sent troops in 1950 carrying papers signed by the Tibetan government in Lhasa, which transferred 91,000km² of the Himalayas to India. Beijing rejects Delhi’s claim, pointing out that no official from China signed the treaty.

Last week the Dalai Lama said China was “over-politicizing” his travels and said his decisions on where to go were spiritual in nature, not political.

Fu Xiaoqiang (傅小強), an expert on south Asia at the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said: “The visit will make Sino-Indian relations more complicated and increase the difficulties of solving the border problem ... [which] must be solved before they can further develop their relationship.”

The neighbors have not agreed on the border. The 4,000km demarcation is known as the Line of Actual Control and is a source of continuing tension.

One remote town in the Himalayan foothills spruced up its monasteries to prepare for the Dalai Lama’s arrival today.

Residents in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang prepared excitedly on Friday for the Dalai Lama’s arrival — his first visit since 2003. Buddhist monks hung flags and banners with the Dalai Lama’s image, and decorative arches were erected across the town. A tent camp was set up for an expected influx of pilgrims to the town.

“This is a religious event for us. It is specially auspicious to have the Dalai Lama in our midst,” said Tulku Rinpoche, the head of the sprawling Tawang monastery.

But the visit to Tawang is especially galling to China.

The town is heavily linked to nearby Tibet and has one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. China briefly occupied Tawang during the 1962 war before pulling back to the informal border.

The sixth Dalai Lama was born in Tawang in the 17th century and China fears the current Dalai Lama might announce that his successor could come from this town or somewhere else outside Tibet — meaning outside of Chinese control. China expects to exercise a strong hand in choosing the next Dalai Lama and is increasingly sensitive about the region since deadly anti-government riots broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last year.

Delicate economic balance needed

Sunday, Nov 08, 2009, Page 8

Consumer spending constitutes a crucial element of Taiwan’s economic activity, as it accounts for up to 60 percent of GDP. However, recent economic data suggested that consumers remain wary about economic prospects and are spending less and saving more.

On Thursday, the Taiwan Institute for Economic Research (TIER) revised its economic forecast for this year, predicting the nation’s GDP would contract 2.89 percent year-on-year, worse than its previous estimate of a 1.91 percent decline.

TIER’s forecast came after the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER) last month predicted a 3.72 percent decline for Taiwan’s economy this year, which was also a downward estimate from a forecast of a 3.56 percent drop issued in July. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) — which predicted in August that the economy would contract 4.04 percent this year — is expected to update its forecast on Nov. 26.

Both TIER and CIER listed feeble consumer spending as one of the reasons why the economy this year looked set to turn out weaker than they had previously expected. TIER predicted a 0.37 percent rise year-on-year in private consumption this year, while CIER anticipated 0.46 percent growth, following a decline of 0.3 percent last year. For next year, TIER forecast 1.89 percent growth and CIER expected an increase of 1.91 percent, but this growth outlook has more to do with this year’s low base than the true state of economic momentum.

Taiwan is facing persistent weakness in consumer spending. DGBAS data show consumer spending showed an average 3.14 percent annual increase from 2000 through last year, average growth of 10.37 percent from 1990 to 1999 and 13.45 percent from 1980 to 1989.

While shopping sprees seen at local department stores last week came as a welcome relief — consumers were spending money for their own reasons, unlike when the government handed out shopping vouchers to help stimulate the economy — they may change their behavior if the economy takes a turn for the worse and job prospects become worrisome.

That consumers have become more frugal in recent years is a result of rising unemployment and stagnant real wages. As the unemployment rate, which still hovered at around 6 percent in recent months, is not likely to show significant improvement in the short term, the continual weakness in consumer spending raises concerns about whether Taiwan’s economic recovery that started in the second quarter can be sustained without government support.

The government’s recent push for an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China could bring a mixed bag of fortune to businesses and workers. The problem is that is if Taiwan were to engage with China while not making an effort to develop similar free-trade pacts with other countries, an ECFA would just make it easier for businesses to move to China. This would mean more unemployment at home and further weak consumer spending.

An economic recovery usually first sees domestic productivity rise and exports grow, with improvements in the labor market coming later. The challenge for the government now is to maintain a delicate balance of growth in these key areas to avert a double-dip recession or a W-shaped recovery in the months ahead.

Lessons to learn from beef debacle
　

By Chou Kuei-tien 周桂田
Sunday, Nov 08, 2009, Page 8

Controversy over the government’s decision to relax restrictions on US beef imports is heating up. The government shirked its responsibility to control the safety of imports and instead transferred that responsibility and risk directly to consumers. At the same time, the entire nation seems to have bought into the idea that local governments and the public themselves should manage the risk through self-discipline, a view that, strangely enough, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) is encouraging.

Since the late 1990s, major countries have viewed issues involving potential risks to public health and the environment as affairs of national security in addition to military and economic issues. These countries stress the adoption of precautionary measures and place even greater importance on engaging the public in decision-making to ensure the legitimacy of their policies.

While the government claims to have worked very hard at the negotiations on US beef imports, it has fallen into the trap of developing countries that treat economic factors as their overriding concern, and is consequently ignoring safety factors such as national health. This makes it clear that high-ranking officials do not have a vision of risk management in the globalization era.

Counter to the international democratic trend, the government also avoided public consultation during its decision-making process despite the fact that the Green Party and the Homemakers Union and Foundation (主婦聯盟環境保護基金會) several months ago called on the Department of Health (DOH) to hold public hearings on the proposed relaxation of restrictions on US beef imports. This is the first lesson we have learned from the affair.

Amid nationwide criticism of the government’s decision-making process, decision makers have scrambled to make amends by “strengthening communication and explanations” to an angry public and lobbied legislators in an attempt to prevent an amendment to the Food Sanitation Control Law (食品衛生管理法). In the current atmosphere of distrust, these efforts to conduct risk management have proven futile. This is the second lesson we have learned.

It seems the Cabinet has decided to go ahead and allow the expanded imports of US beef. However, mad cow disease and its human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) disease have long incubation periods, increasing the risk of infection going unnoticed. Not only did the decision brush aside the rights of consumers, it could also affect future generations. Do not forget that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights just a few months ago. The government’s move to lift the ban on US beef has violated intergenerational justice. This is the third lesson we have learned.

In 2006, the government of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) opened up the nation to US beef imports. The DOH commissioned the National Health Research Institute to conduct a health risk assessment, which fallaciously calculated the risk of consuming US beef in the same way as dioxin pollution is calculated. In addition, the DOH distorted a “consensus” reached by a committee of experts, prompting several authoritative experts to resign. This year the government has commissioned the College of Public Health at National Taiwan University to conduct a health assessment on US beef, but the DOH has reportedly forcibly intervened in the assessment. This kind of situation where political concerns override the opinions of experts seems to be present in various environmental assessments throughout Taiwan, and this leads to a deterioration in the quality of decision-making and high levels of public distrust in the government. This is the fourth lesson we have learned.

Just like its predecessor, the government cites various health assessments and claims that the risk of contracting vCJD by eating US beef is one in several hundred million. But don’t forget that, three years ago, the government refused to allow imports of US bone-in beef because it said bone-in beef carried a higher risk of mad cow disease. This is contradictory to the reasons currently given for relaxing restrictions on US beef imports. Also do not forget that the US sells around 36 million head of cattle every year, only 1 percent of which is checked for mad cow disease. This means that more than 35 million unchecked cows are exported. We can imagine how high the potential risk of contracting vCJD by eating US beef would be. Both Japan and the EU check each animal they import. Government officials continue to play a numbers game with the public and continue to fail to understand why people are so panicked about US beef. This is the fifth lesson we have learned.

Officials all the way up to the president claim that strict standards will be used for US beef imports, but would the public believe such claims in the current climate?

The central government has not only failed to guard national health, it has also shifted risk liability to individuals. On the one hand, the Cabinet “gently expects” self-discipline of businesspeople, while on the other the government claims negotiations with Washington were difficult. The logic behind Taiwan’s national security concerns remains at the level of developing countries, prioritizing economic development (well, some may prioritize the military) at the expense of Taiwan’s already bruised environment and national health. The government should face up to the globalization era’s non-conventional safety issues involving ecology, health and food. This is the lesson we must urgently learn.

Chou Kuei-tien is a professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at Taiwan University.
　

Medical insurance leading to drug waste
　

By Chen Honyi 陳宏毅
Sunday, Nov 08, 2009, Page 8

‘I get upset every time I see this waste, which has been helped along by low-priced health insurance policies. It is a problem that has been upsetting pharmacists for a long time.’

A recent article in the ­Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) said flushing old medicines down the toilet pollutes the environment. In actual fact, recycling medicines does not only pollute the environment, it is also a waste of health insurance resources.

Speaking from my own experience, the hospital where I work receives medicines that patients do no want each day. Many expensive medicines are returned unopened to pharmacies, where they are all destroyed. These medicines are just the tip of the iceberg, as even more are never returned but just thrown away by patients themselves.

The medicines that are thrown away are funded by the health insurance fees that each citizen pays. I get upset every time I see this waste, which has been helped along by low-priced health insurance policies. It is a problem that has been upsetting pharmacists for a long time.

For example, the hospital where I work is very busy on Saturdays, sometimes even more so than weekdays, because on Saturdays, Taiwanese people doing business in China come to our hospital to get their medicine before they go back to China. Each time they come, they take two months worth of medication. Why don’t they see doctors and get medicine in China? While China’s national income is lower than Taiwan’s, it costs more than in Taiwan to see a doctor there and the quality of its medicine is inferior to ours. When chatting with other pharmacists recently, someone told me that overseas Chinese from the US and Canada try to use personal connections to join Taiwan’s health insurance system because it has given Taiwan the cheapest medical care environment in the world. I have even heard that there are people who get the same medicine from many different hospitals here and then sell them in China.

The Department of Health handles this by demanding that municipal hospitals and local healthcare centers countrywide set up medicine return sites for unwanted medicines or by asking local pharmacies to help collect unwanted medicine, but these are only temporary solutions. To really solve the problem we must encourage citizens to keep a record of the medicines they are taking and to remind their doctors of how much they have taken to avoid situations where doctors repeatedly prescribe the same medicine when it is not needed.

We should teach Taiwanese to get into the habit of telling their doctors not to fill prescriptions if they have leftover medicine. This can help save some of the costs of medicine. Starting by focusing on the interests of our citizens and spreading the message around is the only way to stop wasting medical resources. Even more importantly, we should look at the overall health insurance system and put an end to the systemic waste of resources, for this is the only way to protect the medical rights and interests of Taiwanese citizens.

Chen Honyi is a pharmacist.