More than 70,000 houses destroyed by aftershocks
　

SUFFERING SICHUAN: Weather forecasts said that heavy rain yesterday and today could hamper relief efforts, which were already made more difficult by a new temblor

AGENCIES, BEICHUAN AND CHENGDU, CHINA
Monday, May 26, 2008, Page 1
　

A big aftershock rattled southwest China yesterday, killing at least one person and injuring 400, state media reported, nearly a fortnight after a big quake killed tens of thousands in the same area.

More than 70,000 houses were toppled during yesterday’s tremor in Sichuan Province, state TV reported. The 5.8 magnitude aftershock was epicentered 40km west-northwest of Guangyuan, the US Geological Survey said.

At the same time hundreds of troops carrying explosives were trekking through the area, attempting to reach a “quake lake” that threatened a secondary disaster.

Concerned by a rise in the water level of a giant lake at Tangjiashan, authorities have been seeking to blast a hole in the barrier before it bursts and causes a flashflood. Thousands have been evacuated below the lake as a precaution.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), who believes the overall death toll from the main quake could exceed 80,000, has said the main concerns are now secondary disasters like flooding and landslides, epidemics and providing shelter for the millions of displaced.

State TV earlier reported that an 80-year-old partially paralyzed man was the longest known survivor to date. He was pulled alive from the rubble on Friday, 266 hours after the 7.9 magnitude quake hit.

The man was rescued in Mianzhu City, where he had been trapped under a collapsed pillar of his house. He had survived after being fed by his wife, the TV report said.

The biggest concern among the dozens of quake lakes is the one at Tangjiashan, which rose 1.93m yesterday to 723m, Xinhua said.

“The relief work for Tangjiashan quake lake is now at critical stage,” Vice Minister of Water Resource E Jingping (鄂竟平) told a news conference in Beijing.

“The daunting difficulty in treating a quake lake is its unpredictability — its formation and when it could burst,” he said.

But a military expert near the wrecked town of Beichuan said the lake did not pose an immediate threat.

“This is a precautionary step in case there is rain over the coming days. The dam is far from overflowing yet, but we need to release water in case the predicted rains come,” said the People’s Liberation Army officer, surnamed Liu.

Forecasts of rain added to worries yesterday about relief efforts to house the millions of people left homeless by the earthquake.

The government warned that heavy rain was on the way, possibly hampering work to get temporary shelters up to house the estimated 5 million who lost their homes in Sichuan Province.

The State Meteorological Bureau said yesterday that parts of Sichuan would suffer “heavy and even in some areas torrential rains” later yesterday and today.

The bureau warned of “possible mudslides” caused by the heavy rain.

Rescuers were also trying to reach 24 coal miners who officials said were trapped in three mines by the disaster, though they didn’t know if the miners were alive.

Xinhua news agency said that China’s customs office had streamlined entry procedures for relief materials and rescue personnel. It said that on Saturday 47 batches of overseas relief materials, including tents and medicine had arrived in quake-hit areas. Aid is being sent by large and small countries.

Disappointment in Tokyo over Ma’s inaugural speech
　

By Chang Mao-Sen and Fan Cheng-hsiang
STAFF REPORTERS
Monday, May 26, 2008, Page 3

President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) failure to mention Japan in his inaugural address last week disappointed the large Japanese delegation, who had high hopes that Ma would continue the Japan-friendly line he took during his presidential campaign and after winning the election.

Many had expected Ma to pledge to bolster ties with Japan and reiterate his support for the US-Japan Security Alliance in the speech, Kyodo news agency reported.

Considering Ma’s focus on Japan at key junctures during his presidential campaign, the omission raised eyebrows. But Ma’s even stronger focus on China, whose relations with Japan are often strained, goes a long way to explaining why Ma apparently felt Japan — a key, albeit unofficial, ally — did not deserve mention, the agency quoted experts as saying.

“China definitely played a factor,” said Luo Fu-chuan (羅福全), Taiwan’s former representative to Japan.

The Sankei Shimbun reported on Friday of a translation mishap at Ma’s lunch meeting with the Japanese delegation at the Presidential Office following the inauguration on Tuesday, which inadvertently turned the “goodwill” of the Japanese delegation into “bad will.”

The report said that as Ma had made no mention of Tokyo in his inaugural address, Takeo Hiranuma, leader of the Japanese delegation to the inauguration and head of the Japan-ROC Parliamentarian’s Council, told Ma during the lunch meeting that “Japan will do its utmost, and I hope that you will mention Japan in your next inaugural speech.”

However, the interpreter made a mistake in the translation.

“I hope that in four years’ time, President Ma Ying-jeou will use Japanese to deliver an even more complete speech,” the interpreter said.

Hiranuma’s original words were meant to express goodwill and modesty, but the message got lost in translation and ended up sounding like an arrogant order, the paper reported.

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said the interpreter also failed to translate important questions in Hiranuma’s address.

The mishap added to the disappointment felt by the Japanese delegation.

In response, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that after questioning the interpreter, it appeared the sound volume diminished during this part of Hiranuma’s address, making it difficult to hear and that was what caused the interpreter to make a mistake.

DPP opposed to Wu’s China visit, Lai says

STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA
Monday, May 26, 2008, Page 3

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday that the DPP opposes the so-called “second channel” that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is using to direct the China policy of the new KMT administration.

Lai was referring to KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung’s (吳伯雄) upcoming visit to China, during which Wu is expected to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) for talks on several issues, including the opening of direct cross-strait charter flight services and the admission of Chinese tourists to Taiwan.

The Wu-Hu meeting, which last night was confirmed for Wednesday, will mark the first formal contact between the ruling parties on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait since 1949, when the KMT retreated to Taiwan after losing the civil war.

Lai warned Wu and the other members of the KMT delegation that are visiting China on the five-day trip not to compromise the interests of the nation and its people.

The planned Wu-Hu meeting is dubbed as a KMT-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engagement, but the two party leaders will discuss “national affairs,” while avoiding any use of national titles for either side.

“This is unethical,” Lai said.

He said that before President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) assumed office, and before Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) became the chairwoman of the Mainland Affairs Council, they were both opposed to the idea of party-to-party engagements, or a “second channel” of communication across the Strait.

The DPP legislator said that now both Ma and Lai Shin-yuan were supporting the KMT’s efforts to seek closer engagements with the CCP and its maneuvering to create a “second channel” of communication across the Strait.

“Ma and Lai’s [Shin-yuan] change of heart could have happened as a result of intimidation by Beijing,” Lai said.

The KMT and the CCP have been in contact since former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) met with Hu in late April 2005.

Critics of the Lien-Hu meeting and the upcoming Wu-Hu meeting contend that this approach gives China the opportunity to divide Taiwan internally and downgrade its sovereignty by emphasizing party-to-party talks rather than government-to-government negotiations.

Meanwhile, the DPP whip described as “totally ridiculous” Ma’s request on Saturday that Wu relay to Hu Taiwan’s willingness to “assist in the relief efforts in quake-stricken areas in Sichuan” by providing aid for the mental rehabilitation of quake survivors, donating funds to help survivors and their children get back on their feet and funding the reconstruction of some devastated areas.

“The KMT is paying closer attention to the Chinese people than to the Taiwanese people, many of whom need help as well,” the DPP legislator said.

The earthquake that struck on May 12 has resulted in a confirmed death toll of more than 60,000.

Misguided economic policy will hurt nation
　

By Allen Houng 洪裕宏
Monday, May 26, 2008, Page 8

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won the presidential election by playing the economy card. Many of his promises, such as increasing economic growth to 6 percent, or cutting the rate of unemployment to 3 percent, were criticized as impossibilities during the campaign since Taiwan has little chance of beating the odds when the international economy is sluggish. Ma’s government also faces challenges from inflation and soaring commodity prices. However, the Achilles’ heel of his government is not his impossible economic promises, but the fact that the direction of his economic policy is mistaken.

If the government pursues these policies, it will increase deindustrialization and unemployment, reduce consumers’ real income, erode the middle class and increase the number of poor. Civil unrest and public discontentment will follow.

Ma’s thinking follows typical neoliberal economic and globalization ideas: the government should intervene in and administer markets as little as possible in order to create a single globalized free market to facilitate global pillaging by trans-national corporations. His so-called “opening” is really privatization and deregulation aimed at allowing markets to operate freely.

Neoliberalism has always insisted that the government must not intervene in markets because markets are all-powerful, and can automatically resolve their own problems.

Ma believes that all market intervention by the government is a form of containment. However, Ma’s theory is immoral: he considers all governmental policies regulating markets in order to care for the welfare of the lower and middle class as a form of “containment,” “isolationist” and not “open.”

This purposeful misleading by sleight-of-word is not presidential behavior.

Many top economists have long claimed that there are a multitude of problems connected to neoliberal economic globalization. The theory has been in practice since the early 1980s, and its mainstays are deregulation, completely liberalized markets, privatization of all industries — including government-owned firms — and the reduction or cancellation of social welfare payments.

Argentina’s painful experiences serve as an example. In the 1990s, the IMF and the World Bank named Argentina the paragon of developing nations. To accede to the demands of those two institutions, Argentina greatly deregulated its economy, lowered tariffs, privatized government enterprises and cancelled many social welfare measures. Initially, the economy did indeed improve.

However, after more demands from the IMF in 2000, Argentina’s economy quickly collapsed. This, along with social unrest, led the Argentine president to declare national bankruptcy and admit that neoliberal economic globalization had destroyed his country.

A M-shaped society is emerging around the world, including in Europe and North America. Many academics believe this is the result of globalization. Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) has admitted the beginning of a M-shaped society in Taiwan and listed the strengthening of the middle class as a priority.

Solving the problems caused by a M-shaped society and strengthening the middle class are not goals that can be achieved through more globalization, but by more comprehensive regulations to curb trans-national corporations’ plundering.

Ma and Liu obviously do not get this point. Massive deregulation will not invigorate the public, but corporations. Is Ma’s public made up entirely of corporations?

If the government truly wants to strengthen the middle class, then it shouldn’t deregulate. It must focus on how to keep industries and their investments in Taiwan, rather than hollowing out the country.

Allen Houng is a professor at National Yang Ming University.