I'm still around

Allthough I'm too mobile to post, I am still around. Heading to the States on Nov 11. Hope to resume posting at the old frequency shortly after. :)

:(

Yet another year of (probably) fixed baseball in Taiwan makes me very frowny face. Especially when it heavily involves the team that lost the championship.

Hmm...

The green-leaning Liberty Times cites an unnamed KMT Central Standing Committee member, saying Ma Ying-jeou and all the cabinet members were given gifts by candidates back during Mid-Autumn Festival. The disgruntled anonymous "former" CSC member, forced to resign with all other members in the wake of a scandal showing wide spread bribery by those running for election, asks if that means Ma is also guilty of taking a bribe from candidates, as he is also eligible to vote for CSC members.

China Times: Taiwan has access to real time PLA movements

So they say. The report, in which China Times quotes unnamed military sources, claims that Taiwan's military has rented access to a privately-owned high quality satellite to spy on China, and has been doing so for years now. The data is extensive, including photos showing detail down to 0.6m, and allows Taiwan to maintain real time understanding of China's troop and equipment movements.

The article implies that the US must know about and be passively allowing Taiwan to maintain this contract, otherwise, the report alleges, the Taiwanese officials involved wouldn't have gotten visas to go to the US in the process of dealing with this satellite company. Considering the close cooperation between high-tech companies and the US government, I would suggest it would indeed be unlikely such a contract would escape the notice of the US.

Is this news? I don't know enough about the topic to say. But it's being broken as news.

Some things never change...

But TVBS does occasionally switch away from being a KMT mouthpiece! While channel surfing last night, I decided to take the old motto to heart which advises "keep your friends close but your enemies closer." So I turned on a TVBS news talk show, 新聞夜總會. And the opening segment shown here has some interesting rumors, where pro-blue insider commentators suggest that half or more of the newly elected KMT central standing committee gave gifts to voters (against regulations). This was particularly noteworthy because one of Ma's first actions upon coming chairman was to invalidate the results of two members' election to that body on the basis that they gave gifts. Here's the first related clip:



Let's see if anyone else gets punished ...

Ouch.

Taiwan falls from 36th to 59th place in the press freedom rankings compiled by Reporters without Borders, and the compliers point to the newly empowered KMT's actions as a major cause.

On those latest Unification/Independence poll numbers

Tim Maddog has blogged on an apparent explosion in support for "immediate independence" over at Taiwan Matters!, but let me throw in some cautionary words.

First, keep in mind that there is a lot of ambiguity on what constitutes the status quo (is Taiwana province of an all-China ROC? Is Taiwan de facto independent? Is Taiwan's status undetermined?). Remembering this will help us decode the shift in support.

Tim does a good job of comparing the latest poll results with an earlier Mainland Affairs Council poll on the subject. In the table below, I've also thrown in a Global Affairs 5/20 poll on the same subject.

	Independence ASAP	Status quo now, Independence later	Status quo now, decide later	Status quo forever	Status quo now, unification later	Unification ASAP
Global Affairs 10/20	19%	10.3%	40.7%	11%	4.3%	4.0%
Global Affairs 05/20	15%	10.4%	44.9%	11.5%	5.1%	3.2%
MAC 4/20	6.7%	15.1%	35%	27%	7.6%	1.2%

Taking in all the data together, it appears support for unification now or later is rather static at around the 8.0-8.5% mark. The independence ASAP camp does seem to have gained some ground lately, picking up support from the "wait and see" group. Still, if the latest Global Affairs poll is accurate, a solid two thirds majority are content with the ambiguous "status quo."

Perhaps the shift is a result of people fearing Ma is moving too fast. Perhaps it's because people no longer find the status quo as ambiguously favorable toward Taiwan as they did before. Or perhaps the increase is really just statistical noise. In any case, it will be worthwhile to keep an eye on these numbers as time goes on.

Taiwan, China, and freedom

Michael Turton has repeatedly made the point that the closer Taiwan moves to China, even as talks remain restricted to economic issues (for the time being), the farther away Taiwan moves from democracy.

Now, my nose tells me that there will be plenty of skeptics to this theory, especially as the connection is not so linear. After all, why must it be so? There are so many other possible outcomes. Maybe nothing will really chance in Taiwan. Or maybe Taiwan will make China more democratic through osmosis, right?

I think it's increasingly apparent Michael is right. Not because this outcome is somehow inevitable, but because China clearly has every intention of using all the leverage it has to extract compliance from Taiwan in all areas. Let us count the ways that Chinese pressure has manifested in just the last couple of months:

• Rebiya Kadeer was denied a visa due to the "national interest," which is to say because China would have thrown a hissy fit.
• Kaohsiung City nearly didn't show The 10 Conditions of Love at their film festival due to Chinese pressure; an earlier decision to screen it early and separately still resulted in China directing its tourists away from Kaohsiung, causing a hit to the tourism industry here and setting a solid precedent.
• The virtual guarantee that the Dalai Lama will not be granted a visa again (it had been denied once already, but the 8/8 flooding made it impossible to deny it the second time).

China already uses its rhetorical leverage to send international investors scurrying away from Taiwan whenever China gets its feelings hurt or senses "splittist" activity. But imagine what's going to happen when the Chinese own significant amounts of stock, real estate, and businesses here (including joint ventures with Taiwan companies).

These tools will be leveraged just as the tourists were in Kaohsiung; when Taiwan complies with Chinese wishes (which everyone agrees are aimed solely at unification), China will play nice. When Taiwan does not comply with those wishes, China will make Taiwan hurt.

Even if we grant the KMT the best of intentions, the KMT-CCP dynamic is a whirlpool that will suck Taiwan into ever-decreasing norms of freedoms and eventual unification. Simply put, the KMT wants greater economic integration with China and political détente; China wants unification; China has the greater leverage in negotiations; so China will demand steps toward unification as it grants economic integration and marginal political favors, while denying any political détente that will really push unification off the table for a while.

None of this is to say that China can use this intimidation to successfully annex Taiwan -- there could eventually be significant backlash. But with the KMT in power, things do not look bright.

Dan Bloom writes on Woodstock and how it changed more than the US.

Rundown of KMT factional problems

Well, all candidates are registered for year end elections, and the final picture is not pretty for the KMT -- not because the DPP is looking so strong, but because of KMT infighting. In fact, the KMT is suffering faction driven splits in candidates in Nantou, Hsingchu County, Hualien, Chiayi City, and Jinmen. Those would otherwise be safe seats.

Here is the run down of what things look like on a county by country basis:

District	Candidate	Party
Yilan	林聰賢	DPP
	呂國華	KMT
Taoyuan	吳志揚	KMT
	鄭文燦	DPP
	吳富彤	Hakka Party
Hsinchu County	張碧琴	No affiliation
	曾錦祥	No affiliation
	彭紹瑾	DPP
	邱鏡淳	KMT
Miaoli	李佳穆	No affiliation
	楊長鎮	DPP
	劉政鴻	KMT
Changhua	卓伯源	KMT
	翁金珠	DPP
	張春男	No affiliation
Nantou	陳振盛	No affiliation
	李文忠	DPP
	李朝卿	KMT
	張俊宏	No affiliation
Yunlin	蘇治芬	DPP
	吳威志	KMT
Chiayi County	蕭登標	No affiliation
	張花冠	DPP
	翁玉隆	No affiliation
	翁重鈞	KMT
Pingtung	周典論	KMT
	曹啟鴻	DPP
Taitung	黃健庭	KMT
	劉櫂豪	DPP
Hualien	張志明	No affiliation
	杜麗華	KMT
	傅崐萁	No affiliation
Penghu	王乾發	KMT
	蔡見興	DPP
	曾坤炳	No affiliation
Keelung	李步輝	No affiliation
	張通榮	KMT
	林右昌	DPP
Hsingchu City	許明財	KMT
	劉俊秀	DPP
	林修二	No affiliation
Chiayi City	涂醒哲	DPP
	林聖芬	No affiliation
	黃敏惠	KMT
Jinmen	吳成典	No affiliation
	翁天慶	No affiliation
	楊榮祥	No affiliation
	陳水在	No affiliation
	李沃士	KMT
	許敬民	No affiliation
	梁國棟	No affiliation
Lienchiang	劉增應	KMT
	楊綏生	KMT
	陳財能	No affiliation

More peace agreement thoughts

Now I've thought a lot about the possibility of a China-Taiwan peace agreement and what it would mean for Taiwan's future.

My early ramblings focused on the challenges of getting anything of substance in the agreement, given the political realities between the two sides. However, The continued cooperation between the KMT and CCP on a number of ideological points reduces the chances a peace agreement would be devoid of substantial changes in the relationship.

Still, any peace agreement will be able to tackle only peripheral political issues -- military CBM, maybe exchange of press and private individuals, etc. Nothing in the peace agreement would be able to tackle the core sovereignty issue at this time, because this is still too difficult for Taiwan or China to handle in a mutually agreeable way.

Which led me to my first major shift in speculation, which was that any peace agreement would explicitly be an "interim agreement" with a time table and an understood final result of unification. Like a treaty with a doomsday clock attached.

As this "interim agreement" becomes central to international understanding, Japan and the US will lose interest in Taiwan's defense; the KMT will scale up promotion the Zhonghua Minzu identity instead of a Taiwan-centric identity, and the CCP will also bombard Taiwan with related propaganda; promotion of Taiwanese Independence or statements that Taiwan is already independent will become increasingly taboo again, if not outright illegal; and at the end of the time table laid out in the "interim agreement," Taiwan will have little choice but to be swallowed up.

Now, I've shifted opinion again. I've just finished reading a paper: Bridge over Troubled Water? Envisioning a China-Taiwan Peace Agreement by Phillip C. Saunders and Scott L. Kastner. The paper is very China-centric in its thinking, but it had at least one piece of info that was news to me:

In private conversations with Western academics, however, Chinese officials have indicated their opposition to an interim agreement with a specified duration. This opposition may be partially rooted in concerns that as an agreement neared its end, it might turn into a de facto timetable for unification that could place future Chinese leaders in a difficult position. PRC officials may also be reluctant to sign an agreement that, in essence, implies that unification is off the table for several decades.

I think this seems quite reasonable. China would not want to have its hand forced and does not want to give up on the unification issue either.

So now, I think the most likely result is a peace agreement that touches on those peripheral CBM/press/exchanges issues we've outlined above and officially ends the state of hostility between Taiwan and China; a KMT/CCP united front of propaganda about Taiwan's Chinese heritage; but, very importantly, no time table for unification or an end to the agreement.

That means the CCP will need to push for separate political negotiations for unification after the treaty comes into place, but that will be a completely separate set of issues and hard to get even the KMT moving on. It could also buy Taiwan the leverage and time it needs to wait out the CCP unification campaign and to more fully consolidate a Taiwanese identity (read: wait for the young people to grow up).

I remain skeptical of KMT-CCP intentions for the peace accord and post-accord development in relations. At the same time, I must reiterate that a peace treaty that reduces Chinese threats while indefinitely postponing any chances of unification/annexation talks might not be the worst possible result. In fact, depending on the details, it might be a pretty sweet deal.

Sugar-coated poison? Probably. But I increasingly suspect the pill would not be fatal. This weekend shows Taiwan is full of surprises.

I had missed this

Lien Chan, honorary chairman of the KMT, says that now is the time for Taiwan and China to begin considering political negotiations. While it's too early on the Taiwan side to sign a treaty due to domestic politics, both sides should begin considering the political talks, which "must be faced sooner or later."

Video of Lien's speech (in English) here.

He calls specifically for confidence building measures and a peace treaty. One goal was particularly striking to me:

...首先，和平協議的基礎是九二共識，或中華民國憲法下的「一中」原則，簽署一個能夠維持現狀的臨時協議；其次，和平協定應該清楚表明，兩岸終止敵對狀態。

...first, the foundation of a peace agreement is the 92 consensus, or the "one China" principle as outlined in the ROC constitution. The two sides should sign a interim agreement. And second, the peace agreement should clearly state that the state of hostility between the two sides of the strait is over.

I'm pulled in by the words interim agreement that "preserves the status quo," especially if that somehow involves an indirect admission that the ROC exists. I will withhold my judgment on the details until we see a document emerge. Most important of all is that any such agreement needs to go in front of people by referendum.

To be perfectly honest, there are scenarios I can foresee where such an agreement may be the best bet for Taiwan and most effective way to forestall any more moves toward political unification, even given the CCP and KMT understanding of the agreement as being a stepping stone to unification.

Why does this feel like a sales pitch?

If it looks like a duck...

Deputy Minister Mainland Affairs Council The Executive Yuan Chien-min Chao (趙建民) spoke today in his role as a Professor of political science at a conference titled, The establishment of Chinese Communist rule and sixty years of separate administration across the Taiwan strait.

(Just so you know, he'll also be at this upcoming conference [pdf] on Grassroots Democracy and Local Governance in China in early November if you want to see him).

The professor argued that the old label of party-state system (黨國體制) is an inaccurate description of China, and was not even accurate under Mao, when it was more of a one-man authoritarian dictatorship. Chao also said while some scholars think "post-party-state system" (後黨國體制) is a good label, the label ignores the role of the social and political changes in China. Today, Chao argues, now that the market economy is the driving factor in political decision making, China is seeing many of the kind of incidents like Taiwan's "Formosa Incident" and an increase in social movements. Why then can't we label China as a country in the early stages of democratic development?

I'm going to put aside for the moment that Chao seems to be selling me something. I'll just address his arguments. I agree that China shows some of the same symptoms of a society crying out for greater democracy, but there are no signs that CCP leadership intends to ever allow a multi-party system or a truly democratic society, and the weak civil society in China means there are no signs that a collapsed CCP would be replaced with anything but the PLA;. In contrast, while the KMT leadership was reluctant to allow democratic changes, it was always committed to that transition in principle.

You may want to know how I reach this conclusion. First, as has been well-documented within The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan (Chao and Myers), by the time of the Formosa Incident, the KMT was regularly losing elections at multiple levels to independents. To the KMT's credit, it had for years allowed somewhat free local elections -- plenty of vote buying on all sides, but ballot box stuffing was not as serious a problem, and local rivals were more likely to be co-opted than threatened -- and so although an organized opposition party was still completely out of the question for the KMT leadership, and although there was constant cracking down on political dissidents, the momentum for reform had been building for sometime (it took Lee Teng-hui's determination to drag the rest of the KMT elite into ending one party rule).

Similarly, as Chao and Myers document, while the KMT leadership was not willing to tolerate an opposition party at that time, it remained rhetorically committed to an eventual Western-style, multi-party democracy. Though the KMT claimed that Taiwan was not ready for such a transition yet, eventually, it would be. And as David blogged, the Wild Lily protest movement was able to push the country significantly in that directly in 1990.

That's a bit of an overview on Taiwan; what about China? While China has made some breakthroughs at creating real competition at the village chief level (He 2003 [PDF]), though these officials have little control beyond the village and the party remains strictly authoritarian at the national level. Unlike the Wild Lily movement, the Tiananmen Square protests ended in tragedy.

Further, the CCP has no rhetorical commitments to any multi-party system; instead, the party promotes "Intra-party democracy," basically a 'harmonious' consultative process that hopes to bring in innovative ideas and heed local demands, but without the risk of a transition of power. Chinese scholars remain committed to the one-party state. And the party continues to promote its one-party democracy on its own news sites.

If there is to be real hope that China will experience a democratic transition, a few pre-conditions must be met: a stronger civil society to help form the skeleton outline of a capable opposition, a relaxation on crushing censorship rules, perhaps greater autonomy in the autonomous zones (to relax tensions there and fears that democracy will lead to the break-up of the country), and most importantly of all, willingness at the CCP leadership center to accept the prospect of losing power.

So far, the CCP shows no signs of relaxing its control over China, nor in fact of wanting anything but greater power -- over Taiwan, the Spratly Islands, Aranchul Pradesh, the Senkaku Islands... and who knows what would be next.

Deputy Minister Chao, I wish you were right. I hope I'm delusional and you're right. But I think we both know better. China shows no signs of heading toward a Taiwan-inspired path to a democratic transition.

I guess this is the middle of the end, then?

The Rebiya Kadeer documentary is being spun as "on" for the KaohsiungFilm Festival, despite pressure from China. But that is not really the truth of the situation, as much as the Liberty Times will try to spin it otherwise.

The showing has been scheduled for a Tues. or Wed. way before the official festival starts, and you can't watch that film as part of the package ticket either. In otherwords, Kaohsiung will show it, but not at the film festival. Wuss out. Bam.

So, if the Kaohsiung city government will be willing to do this just to keep Chinese tourists coming in, I conclude we are now fully and irreversibly in China's orbit. Get ready for soft unification, friends!

Final round of Holo Taiwanese characters

Characters

Besides knowing the roman orthography for Holo Taiwanese (explained in this handbook:臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案使用手冊), knowing how to read Taiwanese in characters is key for Taiwanese language study in Taiwan. And at long last, the third batch of standardized Holo Taiwanese characters has been announced by the Ministry of Education's National Languages Committee. You can find it here: 臺灣閩南語推薦用字(第3批)

This document contains the newest 300 characters from the 3rd round of standardization, but also remember the 100 characters adopted May 1, 2008 and 300 characters adopted in May 2007.

臺灣閩南語推薦用字（第1批）採用創用CC授權
臺灣閩南語推薦用字(第2批)採用創用CC授權

Your best bet is to just download one of the cheat sheets provided by the government here.

You can also see a list of some of the suggested revisions and how they would affect Holo Taiwanese songs frequently heard at karaoke:

臺灣閩南語卡拉ok正字字表 (pdf)

For the time being, this is the final batch and these three lists of 700 characters total more or less finish the process of standardizing those previously "hard to pin down" Holo Taiwanese characters. Amendments will be made as required in the future.

I got advance word on August 27 of this impending announcement, mostly due to my relentless stalking of the National Languages Committee (國語會).

Dictionary

In addition, the MOE's Taiwanese Southern Min Dictionary of Frequently Used Phrases (臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典) which fully integrates the now standardized orthography, is online and functional. The print version will be published in October.

There is also a similar dictionary for Hakka (臺灣客家語常用詞辭典), an initial list of standardized characters (臺灣客家語書寫推薦用字 (第1批)) and a standardization of romanization as well (臺灣客家語拼音方案).

The online version allows you to search in characters or romanization, with ton marks/numbers or without tones, using either the official standard Taiwanese Roman Orthography (台語羅馬字，簡稱台羅拼音) or its predecessor and main inspiration, Church Romanization (教會羅馬字，亦稱白話字).

The dictionary also includes notes on literary or colloquial readings and example sentences. One thing to note: one thing missing from the dictionary are some very common nouns and phrases; the scope of this dictionary is not yet that ambitious. You won't find Tâi-uân (台灣), kok-ka (國家), Tiong-kok (中國) or kok-tiong (國中) in this dictionary, though you will find the characters listed separately or in phrases such as Kok-li̍p Tâi-uân Gē-su̍t Kàu-io̍k-kuán (國立台灣藝術教育館).

The standardized romanization system used in that dictionary, Taiwanese Roman Orthography , is outlined in the orthography handbook mentioned above (臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案使用手冊). The handbook should allow any competent Southern Min speaker to master the basics of the romanization and tone system within a couple of hours.

The dictionary draws on and is also complemented by two earlier Southern Min character databases, both of which have been updated to reflect orthography standardization and are available in print for about NT$300.

閩南語字彙(一)修訂版 & 閩南語字彙(二)修訂版


Input method

The MOE also offers a multi-platform input method that gives only romanization output, built on Open Vanilla, downloadable here (these links are to version 1.2, which may be be updated soon to reflect any additions. You can find the download at the dictionary main page, linked to above):

臺羅輸入法下載：Windows、Mac、Linux.

For character output using romanization input, which is what most people will want, there are a number of sources; I recommend FHL Taigi IME (信望愛台語文輸入法).

Remaining problems

Unfortunately, there is little public interest in using the new standardized Holo Taiwanese orthography, either in romanization or character form. So don't expect to see written Holo Taiwanese popping up on your TV subtitles, Karaoke lyrics, cereal box, street signs or story books any time soon.

In fact, I expect the vast majority of Taiwanese people, even those younger ones that are educated with the standardized characters and romanization, to remain unable to effectively read or write their mother tongue. But this is certainly a huge step forward.