Jason Hu scraps protest zone for cross-strait talks
　

RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE: The mayor of Taichung said the idea of setting up protest zones for cross-strait talks this month would violate people’s constitutional rights
　

By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 04, 2009, Page 1

Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) yesterday dismissed the idea of establishing a protest zone during upcoming high-level cross-strait talks in the city as “premature,” saying it would be unconstitutional to deprive people of the right to assemble outside a designated area.

“It is strange to set up a place like that when no protest application has been filed. Such thinking is very premature,” he said. “It is like when you invite somebody to dinner. The guest must accept the invitation first. And if the city wanted protesters to stage demonstrations at a designated area, they might not want to do it there. Do you want me to violate the Constitution and strip people of their right to assemble and parade?”

Hu made the remarks in response to media inquiries about a Chinese-language United Daily News report yesterday that quoted Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) spokesman Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) as saying that the Taichung City Government would set up a protest zone for the upcoming meeting. The report said the area would be 30,000 pings (nearly 100,000m2) and free to enter.

On Nov. 24, Hu promised to find a protest area that would satisfy the needs of all involved and at the same time ensure public safety. SEF Secretary-General Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉) said on Nov. 25 that there would be an area set up where different opinions would be expressed.

Maa mentioned on Wednesday that there would be a kind of “opinion plaza” where no admission would be required for the public to have their voices heard.

Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) yesterday said she agreed with Hu’s new stance because it did not make sense to prohibit protesters from staging demonstrations outside a certain area.

Lai said that the government respected freedom of speech and would protect this right in accordance with the law.

She said she believed the government agency supervising the implementation of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) would allow protesters to fully express their opinions. She also supported and trusted the professionalism of the law enforcement offices, she said.

“If necessary, we will recommend that the supervisory agency of the Assembly and Parade Act negotiate with civic groups so they can gather and protest freely,” she said.

Lai said she did not know anything about a protest zone nor was she certain who proposed the idea. She said that she did not think it made sense to set up such an area before applications to protest were filed.

MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said the Taichung City Government never promised to, nor could it, set up the zone because it would violate the Assembly and Parade Act. However, the city could offer ­assistance, ­including negotiating the route, area, time and scale of a protest after applications are filed.

Meanwhile, Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Hu Sing-hwa (胡興華) yesterday said the agreement on quality checks of agricultural products that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait seek to sign during the meeting was just a “principle accord” and would not affect the 830 agricultural products banned from importation from China.

The two sides will address four issues in the next round of cross-strait negotiations: fishing industry cooperation, quality checks of agricultural products, cross-strait cooperation on inspection and certification and the prevention of double taxation.

Kao is scheduled to lead a delegation to Fuzhou, China, on Thursday next week for preparatory negotiations on the four agreements.

The delegation will arrange the details of SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung’s (江丙坤) meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), icluding the date, location and schedule.

Taipei mayor takes jibe from TV show host in stride
　

HONORABLE MENTION? : The mayor’s demand that schools block access to graphic material earned him time on ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’
　

By Mo Yan-chih
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 04, 2009, Page 1

Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) made an international appearance yesterday as a US TV program poked fun at him, jokingly describing him as “the worst person in the world” for demanding the city’s public schools stop subscribing to the Chinese-­language Apple Daily because of the newspaper’s News-In-Motion program.

MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann show is an hour-long weeknight news and political commentary program with Olbermann, who counts down the day’s top stories with humor and sarcasm and pokes fun at individuals in the stories. Usually the latter do not make rebuttals because Olbermann’s show is known for making comments in a subjective and sarcastic style.

Hau, however, responded on the matter when approached by local media for comment yesterday.

Hau said he respected the freedom of the press in making the comments, but said the Olbermann show had selected an animated news clip whose content was greatly improved after the Taipei City Government banned the ­newspaper on campuses.

Hau was referring to the clip of the paper’s News-In-­.Motion segment that Olbermann showed on Tuesday’s show about golf star Tiger Woods’ recent driving accident.

“I believe the host would not make the same comments if he had seen previous news clips from News-In-Motion, which contained a lot of sensational scenes of sex, violence and dead bodies,” Hau said.

The News-In-Motion program was launched by the Apple Daily — published by Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英) — last month in a trial run as the Next Media Group expands from print to TV. It uses animated graphics to reconstruct news stories.

Because some of the stories feature graphic depictions of sexual assault and violence, the program has stirred public anger.

Hau yesterday defended the city government’s decision to demand the city’s public schools not subscribe to the Apple Daily, adding that he would “take all the responsibility and blame” for the decision to keep students under 18 from being affected by the sensational news.

Originally, the News-In-Motion program service could be viewed by cellphone users who scanned a bar code printed in the newspaper. It is now accessible only to readers who pay a fee.

In related news, the ­Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ) yesterday voiced concern that the Taipei City Government’s demand that schools cease subscribing to the Apple Daily violated freedom of the press.

While supporting measures to sanction the Apple Daily because it has allegedly violated the Children and Juveniles’ Welfare Act (兒童及少年福利法) for showing violent scenes on its Web site, the ATJ said in a statement it “­believes that such a ban may have violated freedom of the press, and there should not be a ‘restricted’ category for news.

“Whether to boycott a media organization should be decided following discussions with ­students, teachers and civic groups — the decision should not be unilaterally made by a government,” the association said.

Formosan black bear stuffed toy sold to Hong Kong Disney
　

By Fanny Liu
CNA
Friday, Dec 04, 2009, Page 2
　

A creativity and cultural learning institute, a fashion design house and a local toy manufacturer have teamed up to create the first ever Formosan black bear stuffed toy — with a “green” twist.

In a unprecedented effort to promote a green lifestyle and wildlife protection, Lilin Hsu (徐莉玲), the founder and chairman of the Xue Xue Institute, decided to make the endangered species indigenous to Taiwan into a soft toy and commissioned a young Taiwanese team to come up with the design, using green materials.

“In order to express a perspective about loving the Earth and supporting a green lifestyle, it is necessary to consider mass-­producing something in a way that a commercial market can accept,” said Hsu, who managed a department store in the 1980s.

Hsu noticed the work of the young design team Biaugust Creation Office at an exhibition, when it introduced its Nonlife Zoo series of artworks featuring species that are facing extinction.

Searching out suitable materials for her idea, Hsu went to her old friend local fashion designer Shiatzy Chen (王陳彩霞).

Chen donated four kinds of high-quality fabrics to Hsu for the soft toys, which are stuffed with ecological polyester staple cotton.

The limited edition of 800 of the toys, about 30cm tall, are expected to go on sale this month at NT$600 each.

“They really look better and more creative than I would have thought,” said Chen, saying her decades-long friendship with Hsu was one of the reasons she was willing to support this cross-­industry cooperation.

Letting more people know about their green approach and creating a platform for local young designers to showcase their work made Hsu’s decision even more meaningful, Chen said.

Chen said she did not rule out cooperating with Hsu again if the toys attracted enough attention from the public.

Each of the toys will come packaged in a Tyvek bag, which is made of strong polyethylene fiber that can be reused as a backpack or drawstring bag.

“It is another way of promoting environmental protection, as it is a multiple-use bag,” said Amy Wu, a Xue Xue manager.

The toys made a shining debut during their debut at the Xue Xue headquarters in October.

Hsu said officials from Hong Kong Disney decided to take all of them when they visited Xue Xue and have been in negotiation with Xue Xue over distribution rights in Hong Kong and China.

“Strength sometimes comes from a group,” said Hsu, expressing optimism about cooperating with more partners to promote a green lifestyle.

Vote-buying — the scourge of democratic development

AFP, TAIPEI
Friday, Dec 04, 2009, Page 3
　

Taiwan should be a shining example of democracy in East Asia, but it is tainted by vote-buying, and tomorrow’s local elections are no exception, observers said.

Voters will go to the polls to elect mayors, county chiefs and city councilors across the country amid reports of candidates spending their way into public office despite vows to the opposite.

“We will not buy votes during the elections and we will not become corrupt as the ruling party,” President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), also the chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), said late last month.

Just days after Ma spoke, however, Ministry of Justice data showed prosecutors were investigating 128 alleged vote-buying cases for local mayor and county chief elections and 807 cases in local councilor elections.

“If you look at other East Asian countries like South Korea and Japan, I’d say vote-buying [here] is worse ... by far,” said Christian Schafferer, a political scientist at the Overseas Chinese University.

The situation is particularly serious in rural areas, where local ­politicians enjoy enormous prestige and often have close personal connections with the voters.

“In the big cities, young people will take the money and vote for whomever they want to, or not vote at all. But older people in the countryside may feel a moral obligation,” Schafferer said.

Part of the explanation is history, traceable back to the end of World War II in 1945, when a defeated Japan gave up 50 years of colonial rule over Taiwan.

When the KMT arrived, it had no links to Taiwanese society and it had to ally itself with existing powerbrokers.

They were typically to be found among influential families who had dominated their communities for generations, offering protection against disaster and public goods in return for grassroots support.

Even today, these families are often still in charge and are more crucial at the local level than the big national parties, said Alexander Tan, an expert on Taiwanese politics at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury.

“Public office is seen as a private thing. They run it like a private ­corporation. It’s quite entrenched,” he said. “The party is the big dog, and the tail is the local politicians, and the tail wags the dog.”

The price of a vote can range from NT$500 to several thousand depending on how close the race is, said Wang Yeh-lih (王業立), a political science professor at National Taiwan University.

“Candidates usually buy votes through their key campaign staff, who have close ties with the local communities,” Wang said. “The situation has been improving in recent years, with more local staffers being prosecuted for vote-buying.”

Weeding out the practice completely could be hard because the local factions remain crucial for political parties’ ability to extend their power to all corners of society.

“Local families are the ones that have to be courted by the large parties, so in some sense, it’s easier for the parties to look the other way and ignore what’s happening,” Tan said.

“If party A says it wants to clean it up, local politicians will ask, ‘How about party B, do you want to go with us?’” he said.

There is little doubt the harmful impact on democracy is real and often prevents the voice of the people being reflected in election results, observers said.

“In an election for county chief, you have to engage in massive buying, but if it’s an election for the city council, you don’t need so many votes,” Schafferer said. “You can actually take out the other candidate by buying votes. Then of course it’s not good for democracy.”

Illusions about Chinese tourism

Friday, Dec 04, 2009, Page 8

The Institute for Business Development released a study on Wednesday stating what most people already knew — that the number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan is well below expectations, and those that do visit don’t spend as much money as forecast.

The results showed that spending by each tourist was only about half of government predictions, hardly surprising when the study also showed that a majority of the tourists were middle-aged Chinese from rural areas, probably visiting to experience the fabled “treasure island” they were taught to sing about during the height of the communist era.

The Tourism Bureau may have rebutted the IDB’s figures, but it cannot hide the fact that the tourism “silver bullet” touted by this administration has fallen way short of expectations. Not only that, but the influx of Chinese tourists has come at the expense of wealthier, bigger spenders from other countries in Asia.

And while they may have profited a few travel agents, hoteliers and trinket sellers, the growing hordes of Chinese visitors have also made it an increasingly difficult — and at times unpleasant — experience for many Taiwanese wanting to travel to some of the nation’s more popular tourist destinations. One can only hope that the numbers never reach the 10,000 per day figure bandied around by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during his presidential campaign.

Another unwelcome side effect of the increasing number of Chinese visiting these shores is the rising number of individuals who decide to stay on illegally.

On the same day the institute’s study came out, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) admitted that about 4,000 Chinese are believed to be residing in Taiwan illegally.

While it is uncertain exactly what these 4,000 individuals are doing or whether they are working in labor-intensive industries or as spies, one thing is certain: Opening up to Chinese tourism on such a large scale makes it much easier for such people to enter Taiwan. This was a fact validated by a Coast Guard Administration official in a recent story in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) about illegal Chinese immigrants.

Making it easier for nationals of what is effectively an enemy state to visit and therefore abscond poses a grave and obvious threat to national security and are not the actions of a competent government.

Yet just one day before the NIA announced these figures, the government further relaxed restrictions on certain groups of Chinese nationals who want to visit Taiwan. More worrying, the agency also announced that it was “streamlining” the process of validating travel documents.

From scenic spots with not enough hotel space for the number of tourists to the potential damage caused by increased numbers of Chinese spies entering the country, this is what you get when a government is in such a rush to implement a policy that it doesn’t stop to think through the implications

While there is nothing wrong with allowing Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, their numbers should be managed in a way that places Taiwan’s national interest — not profit — as the priority.

Events over the last 18 months have made it quite clear that this government is not up to the task.

ECFA spells doom for local service businesses
　

By Lin Kien-tsu 林健次
Friday, Dec 04, 2009, Page 8

After signing the proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Beijing, Taiwan will have to open most of its service sector businesses to China within a limited period of time.

The production value of Taiwan’s service sector exceeds 70 percent of the nation’s total economic output, and service sector employees make up 60 percent of the total work force. Within the service sector, commercial services — including the retail, wholesale and hospitality industries — account for 20 percent of the nation’s total output. With 2.5 million employees — 25 percent of Taiwan’s work force — it is the sector with the biggest work force.

The government plans to open the nation’s retail, wholesale and hospitality industries to Chinese investment in line with the treatment given to other WTO member states. Once an ECFA is signed, Chinese businesspeople will be able to invest and run businesses in these industries. Chinese will also be allowed to open shops in the nation’s urban and rural areas, on big roads and back streets.

Taiwan and China share a common language. In overpopulated China, many people hope to make money in Taiwan. Chinese enterprises and self-employed entrepreneurs lack legal and ethical understanding and use illegal means to beat the competition. They have the backing of their authoritarian country, which claims that Taiwan is part of its territory. This will make it difficult for Taiwanese retailers to survive, meaning they may in the end be taken over.

Based on the treatment given to other WTO member states, Taiwan will have to grant residence and work permits to Chinese retail managers. The initial visa is valid for three years, which is then renewable on a one year basis indefinitely. This would cause two problems.

First, if a Chinese enterprise or individual entrepreneur opens a store in Taiwan, a Chinese manager will be sent to head the store. A small shop, however, would only have three or four workers, including the manager. That means one local worker would lose his job if a Chinese store replaces a Taiwanese one.

In light of the large number of small businesses here, the unemployment rate will surge once Taiwan opens its retail, wholesale and hospitality industries to Chinese investment. Chinese enterprises bend the rules by labeling the large number of Chinese workers it hires as managers, consultants or experts. Chinese firms hiring illegal Chinese workers for Chinese projects overseas is a good example. Can the Taiwanese government and administrative system stop this?

Second, because of the unclear “one China” situation, it will be difficult to deny Republic of China (ROC) citizenship and identity cards to Chinese workers once they have resided in Taiwan for a certain period of time. This will lead to political and social problems, with new immigrants replacing local residents. It could even lead to ethnic conflicts like the confrontation between Hans and Uighurs in Urumqi, China.

Retailers and businesses in the hospitality industry, from big hotels to tiny breakfast shops, provide a key employment channel. Unfortunately, the government has failed to state the negative impact an ECFA will have on this employment channel, and it will not allow a referendum or allow open debate.

One of the solutions for the Taiwanese to save themselves is to not vote for candidates supported by Ma in the local government elections tomorrow. Otherwise, he may think the public supports an ECFA.

Lin Kien-tsu is a member of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.