The validity of Internet polling should never be taken for granted, whether conducted by the public or the private sector.
This is good counsel for anyone who assumes that a poll taken by a labor broker, for example, that uses its own clients as subjects and releases the results in an ersatz “press release” provides hard evidence of labor trends.
Despite this, it is still difficult not to sympathize with Clare Wang (王秀毓), Taiwan’s finalist in the “Best Job in the World” competition that concluded this week.
Far and away the most “popular” of the “wild card” candidates based on an Internet vote, this wasn’t enough to get her the gig.
Disappointing, yes. But it was genuinely mystifying that after going to all the effort of appealing to a whole world of candidates — including a masterly, multilingual Web site — the Queensland government should choose a winner hailing from Australia’s former colonial master.
This may seem a little unfair, and it should be said that the Englishman who won the competition will likely fulfill his responsibilities to the letter.
But this was, after all, a promotional exercise. With the global recession in place and the state of Queensland suffering increased vulnerability because of its extensive tourism sector, the pragmatic choice might have been a popular, multilingual person who could appeal to developing markets where advertising campaigns could benefit from the charisma and personal touch of a blogger.
Ideally, a candidate also fluent in Spanish or Chinese would have been perfect because a very large number of potential tourists could have been communicated with in Spain and Central and South America, or from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and the Chinese diaspora — not to mention other Asian territories whose residents might find someone like Clare Wang disarming and convincing.
Wang’s visibility and sheer energy could have developed a loyal and envious following in this and other highly Web-connected societies in Asia.
In Taiwan’s case, she could have also filled the vacuum left behind after the misfortune of that other global Taiwanese celebrity, New York Yankees pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民).
Instead, it seems that those who place stock in the visibility of Taiwan’s achievers in the international arena will have to place their hopes in director Ang Lee (李安) bringing home the bacon from Cannes this year.
In the meantime, the Queensland government ought to know that the free press that it secured around the world with this promotion — through its sheer novelty and idyllic prize — will be a lot harder to secure next time, should there be a next time, now that the Survivor-style stunts and “popular vote” all proved to be a bit of a con.
If tremendous personal appeal, fluent English and a sense of humor and grace were not enough to get Clare onto the island, might we suggest readers follow Clare’s lead and travel to another part of Australia for their next overseas holiday.
Or, better still, New Zealand.
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS