Fourth Japanese company recalls China-made globes

STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA, TOKYO
Sunday, Jan 20, 2008, Page 2

Another company producing globes identifying Taiwan as part of China has said that it would recall its products following complaints from customers and media outlets.

Nagoya-based toy company Debika announced yesterday that it has already begun to recall the globes, the Japanese Sankei Shimbun reported.

Debika's move follows similar announcements over the past week by three other Japanese companies, Gakken Toys, TakaraTomy and Yanoman, that have produced globes showing Taiwan as part of China.

RECENT SWITCH

A spokesman for Debika said that in the past, the company produced its globes in Taiwan and that it only switched production to China last year.

The spokesman said the company was pressured by the Chinese government into showing Taiwan as belonging to China on its globes in order to avoid having its products barred from export to Japan if it did not comply.

Debika has already sold thousands of the globes on which Taiwan is labeled as part of China, according to the Sankei Shimbun report.

condemnation

The spokesman said that Debika decided to recall the globes following Gakken Toys' announcement the day before that it would be dissolved by the end of March over the error.

Gakken Toys' announcement came in the wake of strong condemnation from Japanese academics and media outlets over kowtowing to Chinese pressure and insulting the Taiwanese people.

Debika's spokesman said that besides recalling the globes, the company has also decided that the globes it sells from this day forward will be affixed with stickers correcting the errors concerning Taiwan's sovereignty.

Anti-whaling activists attack Japanese ship off Antarctica with stink bombs
　

UNDAUNTED: Determined to stop the hunt, the group threw butyric acid at the Japanese sea vessel, whose owner condemned the action as the work of 'terrorists'

AFP, SYDNEY
Sunday, Jan 20, 2008, Page 5

A militant anti-whaling group said yesterday it attacked a Japanese whaling vessel with "stink bombs," frustrating the hunt, only an hour after two of its activists were freed from the harpoon boat.

Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel -- the Steve Irwin -- said his crew resumed its actions against the Japanese fleet shortly after the two men were handed to an Australian customs boat on Friday.

The pair -- Australian Benjamin Potts said Briton Giles Lane -- were held aboard the harpoon boat Yushin Maru No. 2 for two days after they clambered onboard on Tuesday to deliver a letter protesting the slaughter of whales.

"One hour after our people were released we then went after the Yushin Maru No. 2 and hit them with our stink bombs," Paul Watson, told reporters by telephone.

"What that will do is it makes it impossible to work on the deck for two days," he said.

The Sea Shepherd ship is in the icy waters off Antarctica to prevent Japanese whalers from carrying out their annual whale hunt, which this year will see about 1,000 of the giant creatures slaughtered.

Japan exploits a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling to kill the animals for what it calls scientific research, while admitting the meat from the hunt ends up on dinner plates.

The Japanese company which owns the whaling vessels, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd, condemned the butyric acid attacks on its ships which it likened to the work of terrorists.

"We safely released to an Australian patrol boat the intruders without any harm, even though Sea Shepherd has long threatened our safety," company president Kazuo Yamamoto said in a statement.

"The night attack is nothing more than an inhumane act for which they deserve to be called terrorists as they show no sign of honor as human beings," he said.

Watson said he had sent out a smaller boat to deliver the butyric acid bombs, or "stink bombs," which were intended to make the smell on deck so unpleasant that the whalers were unable to work.

"We are not down here hanging banners and taking pictures, we are down here to save whales," he said. "We are going to keep hitting these guys... as long as we don't hurt anybody."

"The most important thing is this is day number nine that no whales have been killed," he said.

Watson said the Steve Irwin, which had to follow the Australian customs boat some 80km away from the Japanese ship to collect its detained crew, was now searching for the Japanese fleet.

"We will continue to disrupt their activities," he said.

The whalers are also being carefully watched by Greenpeace activists, whose vessel Esperanza is trailing the factory ship the Nisshin Maru, which the environmentalists claim to have kept out of the hunt for six days.

"No whales have been killed in that time," expedition leader Karli Thomas said in a statement.

"Now we've got two whalers out of the hunting grounds. If they try to begin whaling, we'll carry out peaceful direct action by putting ourselves in front of the harpoons to defend the whales," Thomas said.

Meanwhile, Japanese diplomats and government officials will hold an emergency meeting soon to discuss measures to prevent future attacks against whaling vessels, the online edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

New system favors KMT


Sunday, Jan 20, 2008, Page 8

The rush is on to analyze, interpret and spin the meaning of the Jan. 12 elections and the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) capture of a nearly three-fourths legislative majority. Pundits have discussed reasons for the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) loss: a repudiation of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), an incumbent effect, perceptions of poor economic performance, resurfacing of local factions and a low voter turnout to name a few.

A majority of these commentaries focus on the new electoral system and its effects on the outcome. If political fortunes are being bet on the meaning of the Jan. 12 elections for Taiwan's political future, one cannot deny that the new electoral system played a critical role in the KMT's major victory.

In a nutshell, the foundation of the KMT's victory was not policy, people or identity, but redistricting and single-member districts. Barring a marked increase in green support from 2004, the KMT and the larger pan-blue camp were structurally destined to win the election, and win it big. Based on voting patterns from four years ago, the KMT won in districts where it numerically should have won, as did the DPP in most cases.

A very literal application of the 2004 vote, adjusted for the new districting this year, indicated approximately 73 seats for the pan-blue camp. If political winds had remained unchanged, the DPP should have secured no more than 21 district seats.

The DPP's publicly stated goal of 35 or so seats was unrealistic from the start and the actual outcome may not have been a political indictment of the DPP as much as it was the straightforward result of structural and regulatory changes to the election system.

The new system favors the largest party and in most of the nation's electoral districts, the party with the most historical electoral support was the KMT.

The "surprise" losses for the DPP, of which there were approximately eight, were largely concentrated in the Kaohsiung area, and this is where the parties can learn most of the political lessons from this election.

A common perception is developing that the DPP failed to hold its base and was repudiated by voters. In reality, the national vote for the DPP was higher this year than in 2004, and when one looks at the district results nationwide, the DPP increased its vote from 2004 in most cases or suffered small declines.

Again, these are not signs of a massive shift in voter sentiment, but rather an effect of the single-member district competition which rewards winners generously and punishes losers disproportionately.

What appears to be a key reason for the DPP's general defeat was its unrealistic goal and/or failure to adopt electoral strategies crucial to winning under new majority wins rules. Either way, with only one-third of voters to count on this year, the DPP was set to lose at least a two-thirds majority to the KMT and its allies.

The majority of voters in legislative elections have traditionally favored the blue camp; it was thus not surprising that the KMT did so well in the single-member district contest.

Hans Stockton
Taipei

In search of a better voting system
　

By Jerome Keating
Sunday, Jan 20, 2008, Page 8

`The only saving grace is that this is a democracy and not a dictatorship. Although it was a winner-take-all contest for each district, it was not a winner-take-all for the country. The winners do not have the right to silence opposition.'

AS THE DEMOCRATIC Progressive Party (DPP) regroups after its dismal performance in the Jan. 6 legislative elections, there are several things that its members should realize.

First its loss was amplified by an inadequate electoral system. This does not excuse the DPP of its faults and poor strategies, but it does give a more appropriate perspective. No election system is perfect and this is the first time that the new system for the Legislative Yuan was used. However, it also quickly proved in need of restructuring if Taiwanese are to have proper representation.

Examine the voting results. The DPP received almost 37 percent of the party vote, but only got 24 percent of the seats in the legislature. This represents a disproportionate loss of 13 points. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), on the other hand, received a little more than 51 percent of the party vote, but it got 72 percent of the legislative seats, which translates into a disproportionate gain of 21 points. If you match the DPP's disproportionate loss with the KMT's disproportionate gain, it shows that the disproportion created by the system is 34 percent of the seats in the legislature.

The DPP was not the only one that suffered from the new system. Independent parties combined garnered more than 11 percent of the party vote, but they got only two seats in the legislature. The Non-Partisan Solidarity Union, in contrast, scored the biggest gain. It did not even garner 1 percent of the party vote, yet it got three seats in the legislature.

Translate this into numbers and it is more easily grasped. Taiwan has approximately 17.3 million eligible voters and 73 districts. If all districts were equally proportioned (which of course they were not), there would be one representative legislator for every 237,000 voters. The contest for the 73 district seats was decided by a winner-takes-all vote. To balance this, another 34 seats for legislators-at-large were proportionately selected from the total votes cast for a particular party (separate ballot). The importance of the legislator-at-large ballot is underscored by the unusual fact that the DPP received more legislator-at-large seats (14) than it did from elected district legislators (13). Six of the remaining seats are designated for Aboriginal legislators.

This is how it would ideally break down.

* 73 Elected Districts (73 seats/17,300,000 votes): One seat for every 237,000 voters.

* Full Legislature (113 seats/17,300,000 votes): One seat for every 153,097 voters.

However, when there is a low voter turnout, the representation of seats per voters changes and is further adjusted.

A total of 9,797,573 votes were cast, resulting in the following:

* Low Voter Turnout (113 seats/9,797,573 votes): One seat for 86,704 voters.

Now look at the down and dirty view of the actual way the results came out and the disparities of representation become clearer.

* Non-Partisan Solidarity Union: (3 seats/88,527 votes): One seat for every 29,509 voters.

* KMT (81 seats/5,010,801 votes): One seat for every 61,861 voters.

* DPP (27 seats/3,610,106 votes): One seat for every 133,707 voters.

* All other parties (2 seats/1,091,139 votes): One seat for every 545,569 voters.

The six Aboriginal seats are represented in the above parties, but there is also a disproportionate factor here.

* Aborigines (6 seats/114,212 votes): One seat for every 19,035 voters.

The inequality is also seen in districts that are disproportionately small, as follows:

* Lienchiang County, one seat for 2,182 voters.

* Kinmen County, one seat for 9,912 voters.

* Penghu County, one seat for 19,584 voters.

* Taitung County, one seat for 34,794 voters.

In the best of all worlds, the ideal proportion should be one seat for every 86,704 voters.

Aborigines came out far and above all others. They would do well to form an Aboriginal party or at least an Aboriginal caucus to ensure that their current guaranteed seats would benefit them and not some other party.

Next the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union ran off with three seats.

As for the KMT, it received a disproportionately high share, gaining a powerful two-thirds majority in the legislature -- and the control and responsibility for progress.

The DPP suffered most as a major party; with approximately 37 percent of the vote, it should have at least had enough seats to prevent the KMT from gaining more than a two-thirds majority.

The independents also suffered (one seat for every 545,569 voters), ending up with little or no representation. With one-ninth of the votes cast, they should roughly have 12 seats instead of two. Obviously, a legislative election cannot accommodate every splinter group, but with more than 1 million combined votes, these disparate groups should find a common ground of unification to give them better representation.

No system is perfect, and all systems will give some disproportionate advantage in seats to one party or another. The goal is to minimize this. Since all parties agreed to the current system (whether hastily or not), they have no one to blame but themselves. One does wonder, however, why no one did the math when the system was drawn up.

The only saving grace is that this is a democracy and not a dictatorship. Although it was a winner-take-all contest for each district, it was not a winner-take-all for the country. The winners do not have the right to silence opposition as happens in other countries like the People's Republic of China.

What should be learned?

First, each party must understand the new system and see the importance of each district. New systems demand new tactics and new strategies.

Second, a grassroots neighborhood by neighborhood representation is needed. The new legislators will now be beholden to those who put them there.

Finally, the system already shows a need of revamping. In its victory announcement, the KMT vowed not to abuse its power after winning a two-thirds majority. Whether that promise was fake and for show or not, a quick test of the sincerity of the KMT's promise to forgo abuse would be a sincere effort to make the system more representative and so correct the imbalance and lack of proportionate representation. Any bets? Any takers out there?

Jerome Keating is a Taiwan-based writer.