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Population hits 23 million
　

By Lin Yi-chang AND Lo Cheng-ming
STAFF REPORTERS, WITH CNA
Saturday, Jul 26, 2008, Page 2

While politicians often like to use the term “the will of Taiwan’s 23 million people” in their speeches, the nation’s 23 millionth person was not born until last Thursday.

The baby boy, identified as Wu Cheng-en (吳承恩), was born on July 17 and his birth was registered on Wednesday at 1:50:56pm, making him the country’s 23 millionth citizen, a statement issued by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) said on Thursday. The naming of the 23 millionth citizen is based on birth registrations at the country’s 371 household registration offices, the MOI said.

The infant is his parents’ third child. Wu’s father Wu Chia-chun (吳嘉均) said he holds high expectation for his baby son’s future.

Coincidentally, Wu and the nation’s 20 millionth person, Shen Yen-chen (沈燕禎), who was born in 1989, are both natives of Taoyuan County’s Pingjhen City (平鎮市).

Liu Pao-min (劉保民), a household registration administrator, said that they have been looking out for the birth of the nation’s 23 millionth person for some time.

Nationwide household registration databases showed that Taiwan was only 425 babies away from the 23 millionth baby by the end of the day on Tuesday, Liu said, adding that they then predicted that the 23 millionth baby would be born on Wednesday.

The calculation was based on a birth time database provided by 371 household registration offices across the country.

A computerized calculation was completed by monitoring the number of newborns and subtracting the number of deaths everyday.

The MOI confirmed by the end of the day on Wednesday that Wu is the nation’s 23 millionth baby, and Minister Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) will present a certificate and a congratulatory gold medal to the newborn in a public ceremony on a selected date to welcome his distinction, the MOI statement said.

MOI statistics show that the nation’s population hit the 20 million mark in April 1989. Because of the ever-declining birth rate, the population growth has been very slow in recent years, the officials said, adding that between 1989 and 1999, the population increased by about 1 million every five years, with the total number reaching 22 million in June 1999. The 23 millionth citizen was not born until nine years later.

In the 1950s, each Taiwanese woman gave birth to an average of six or more children, prompting the government to promote a policy of family planning in the 1960s and 1970s to alleviate population growth.

The trend, however, has reversed itself since 1984, when the fertility rate — the average number of children born to each woman — fell below 2.1. The fertility rate dropped even further to 1.1 last year, ranking Taiwan among the countries with ultra-low birth rates.

Tunghai University social work professor Tseng Hua-yuan (曾華源) voiced concerns, saying that the government should not only pay attention to the population number, but also to the marriage rate and the birth rate, as they will be the key factors in demographic changes in the future.

Oh deer! Members of the Hualien Forest District Office remove a trap from the legs of a Formosan barking deer, an endangered species. The animal was later sent to a care center in Hualien County for treatment. PHOTO: CNA

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Scuffles break out at last ticket venue
　

FINAL SALE: Chinese eager to see the Games swarmed the last ticket stall yesterday, some stampeding a line of police in order to get one of the final 250,000 tickets

AP, BEIJING
Saturday, Jul 26, 2008, Page 5
　

Eager fans swarmed sales windows in Beijing yesterday to get the final batch of Olympic tickets after waiting up to two days for a chance to see next month’s games in person.

Scuffles broke out at one ticket site as officials opened additional sales windows, causing some fans to stampede ahead of others in a bid to buy some of the 250,000 tickets on sale, but an official said the start of the sale went well.

“There were so many people who wanted tickets so we decided to open more ticket windows ... In general, so far the ticket sale has gone smoothly,” Sun Weide (孫維德) said, spokesman for Beijing’s Olympic organizing committee.

In addition to the pushing among fans, several Hong Kong media outlets complained about being pushed around by security officials.

Footage from Hong Kong Cable TV showed a policeman putting his arm around the neck of a Hong Kong Cable TV reporter and pulling him to the ground.

The reporter said he was assaulted after his crew refused to leave a media zone, Cable TV reported. They were seen surrounded by dozens of police.

A spokeswoman for Hong Kong Cable TV said it was “unacceptable” for Chinese authorities to treat the media that way.

“We hope the authorities will live up to their earlier promise to allow full freedom of the press during the Olympic Games,” Shum Siu-wah said.

Zhang Xiaojing, 17, who came from Changzhou in Hebei Province to buy tickets, said the line was pretty orderly when she arrived on Thursday afternoon, but there was an uncontrolled rush early yesterday when the additional sales windows opened.

“People started to stampede in,” she said.

But for others like Xue Manjie, the wait was worth it. The 19-year-old and eight friends bought tickets after waiting since Thursday morning.

“We can’t get the tickets for the games we want but at least we can have a look inside the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest,” Xue said, referring to the swimming venue and the main athletics stadium, while flashing his tickets.

Xue and his friends, who just finished their university entrance exams, wanted tickets to the basketball, but had to settle for synchronized swimming and preliminary track and field events.

At Wukesong in the western part of Beijing, tens of thousands of people were lined up to buy tickets for the popular basketball competition. About 20,000 basketball tickets were expected to go on sale.

Besides the Olympics tickets for events in Beijing, another 570,000 tickets are on sale for soccer matches in co-host cities: Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao.

All told 6.8 million Olympic tickets have been available for domestic and foreign sales. The Olympics start on Aug. 8.

Organizers were embarrassed last November when the computer system crashed, forcing organizers to sack the Olympic ticketing chief and revert to a lottery system to sell tickets.

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If only Paul Wolfowitz is right

Saturday, Jul 26, 2008, Page 8

It was strange to see a once-powerful person like former US deputy secretary of defense and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz addressing more benign issues of trade in a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei this week. The neocon, or hawk, or whatever label the reader prefers, who played such a big role in shaping the US’ aggressive policy in the Middle East spent much of the time talking about Taiwan, Taiwanese people and their democratic “experiment” in glowing, almost emotive terms.

Wolfowitz called himself a friend of Taiwan, and there is no reason to doubt this given his involvement in defense issues affecting Taiwan in the last 25 years or so. And it is a bipartisan friendship as far as Taiwanese politics is concerned: Wolfowitz had no interest in presenting commentary on domestic squabbles.

But he did raise the 1984 murder of writer Henry Liu (江南) on US soil by Taiwan’s security services, and observed that with this killing the goodwill that the Chiang dynasty had generated in Washington over the decades was close to dissipating, threatening to turn Congress against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.

This was a welcome reminder that what Taiwan is now is very different to what it was then. But Wolfowitz’s words also had the flavor of a warning: Taiwan’s security, now as then, hinges on the regard in which Taiwan — or more precisely, its government — is held by Congress and the US administration, and that this affection had been tested in recent years by the Democratic Progressive Party government.

That affection is still there, though a combination of US wars in the Middle East and the pro-China machinations of members of the State Department and their academic networks, not to mention the China lobby, tends to stifle this affection.

That may all be changing, judging from Wolfowitz’s confidence (amid none-too-subtle prodding) that the arms freeze conceded by US Admiral Timothy Keating will be lifted, possibly before the end of the congressional session in September, and hence before the next US president takes office.

Amid gloomy forecasts by local defense analysts, there are increasing reports of activity in and around Congress to deliver the arms that the government agreed to so long ago. And yesterday’s comments by Jason Yuan (袁健生), Taiwan’s new envoy to Washington, that the delivery of the arms is “almost a done deal,” suggest that senior KMT figures know more about maneuvering in Washington than it cares to admit — right down to the visit to Taiwan of a top US figure in the weeks to come.

This is all well and good. If we can assume that Yuan’s comments are a reflection of the reality and not just bluster from an envoy who seems not to know when to close his mouth, then there is hope on the horizon that Taiwan will be able to lurch back in the direction of keeping the Chinese military threat within its capabilities.

But if US President George W. Bush does not live up to Wolfowitz’s expectations and does not release the arms, then these things will become crystal clear: the pro-China group in the State Department will have triumphed, Taiwan’s new envoy will have been discredited even before arriving in the US and Taiwan’s security will be at the mercy of the US electoral process, giving China even more time to tighten the screws.