2014 - 1st Quarter
China's Two Distinct Centuries of Humiliation
Anyone who has been in Asia for any length of time cannot avoid having heard China's oft-repeated canard of its "century of humiliation." It's an ironic canard that usually comes up to defend China's current hegemony. The century referred to, of course, is the 19th Century when foreign powers from the Opium Wars on up to the Boxer Rebellion pressured the weakening Manchu Qing government to open treaty ports and to allow them spheres of influence within major Qing cities. The irony increases when it is used to garner sympathy and it works until one begins to examine more closely the surrounding details. And here the anomalies begin. ...
2-28, the ROC Constitution and Ma Ying-jeou's Disconnect
Taiwan recently observed its annual 2-28 remembrance, and the people again recalled the tragic imposition of White Terror and subsequent Martial Law that the country endured under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for forty years. Yet even as these services were being held, Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou once again demonstrated the strange if not coldly chilling lack of connection that he and his administration have with the Taiwanese people. ...
The Ma Government on Taiwan: Zelig, Ah Q, or Worse?
It's no secret that Ma Ying-jeou has been regularly called a "bumbler" in both local and international media. Nor is it a secret that his competence has been called into question even by members of his own party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). But a different and more serious question has been popping up recently. This question arises whenever Ma and/or his people attempt to "clarify" his position on matters like the ROC's Constitution, Taiwan's territorial rights, its history etc. That question is, "What universe or fantasy world do they live in? ...
Demystifying China: a Club Enron Writ Large?
There was a time when many economic pundits and gurus promoted Enron as the model company to emulate. It had a mystique. The guys that ran it were called the "smartest guys in the room." They were the innovative, bold insightful risk takers and the wizards that the financial world needed. As the company grew, everyone wanted to get on board this bandwagon of praise and profit. It was great as long as a lack of transparency veiled Enron's practices and its moving shell game of mark to market profits and "fabricated companies." But then the hype over the numbers began to diminish and the bottom line was more closely checked. Demystification began. The shell game could not keep pace and the smartest guys in the room soon went from being smart to being clever to being downright deceitful crooks who built an empire on deceptive practices and fabricated reports. ...
Taiwan & China's Political/Religious Paradigms Interplay
Whether we realize it or not, most of our lives are governed not by reality but by the multiple paradigms that reflect and interpret how we feel it is or should be. These paradigms in turn have multiple levels and are revealed as they play out in different intersecting fields. Some of our paradigms are assumed, and acknowledged while others that are subtler may be unnoticed until something challenges them and calls them into question. Take Taiwan for example, as it enters the Year of the Horse in 2014, Taiwanese may or may not be aware of the interplay of two important paradigmatic fields that involve their lives. They are the basic paradigms of ideology and religious spirituality. The differences in these point squarely to the basic differences that stand between Taiwan and that other country on the other side of the Taiwan Strait - China. ...
China's Lost Soul and Fading Chance for Democracy
A century has passed since China's "so called revolution" of 1911. A full century, and yet, despite the passage of time and the bounteous republican rhetoric, in reality China is no closer to Sun Yat-sen's democratic dream of a government of the people, by the people and for the people than it was in the closing days of a reform bent Qing. For despite China's first stillborn attempt at a republic and the resultant period of warlords and on again, off again Civil War, the unfortunate reality and bottom line is that when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) finally drove the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) into exile, Qing China had simply traded an emperor for an oligarchy and Manchu rulers for Han rulers. In short, it was Orwell's Animal Farm revisited where Napoleon defeated a posturing Snowball, but this time with Chinese characteristics. ...