Following US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei, military exercises conducted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the waters and airspace around Taiwan raised concerns about Beijing’s ambition of pursuing hegemony by embracing the “might is right” approach — that is, intimidating its weaker neighbors whenever it can. Concerns over the possibility that China might soon launch a military invasion of Taiwan have been lingering, especially in Taiwan’s neighbors such as Japan and South Korea. Even before Pelosi’s visit, 73 percent of respondents in the two countries believed that China might soon take military measures to unify Taiwan, and a majority expected their leaders to enhance ties with the US to deter Beijing’s risky actions, according to a survey released by Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun and South Korea’s Hankook Ilbo in June. While international pundits voiced concerns over the fate of Taiwan, a large number of Taiwanese — amid the brewing tensions across the Taiwan Strait — have remained unusually calm and continued their daily routines as normal. No panic buying, stockpiling, or hoarding happened; and people remained disciplined. In general, the social atmosphere in Taiwan — “the most dangerous place on Earth,” as declared by The Economist in May last year — has been quiet, with no indication of worry or hasty posturing. Although the current situation is tense and pressing, residents of Taiwan have been cognizant of China’s provocative actions for more than 20 years and know that they serve Beijing’s propaganda purposes rather than its military goals. For Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader of the world’s second-largest economy, to look weak on Taiwan, which has been framed by Chinese leaders as one of Beijing’s core interests, is unthinkable. Hence, China’s retaliation to Pelosi’s visit aimed at cementing Xi’s image among Chinese. It is unlikely that
In analyzing the Chinese military’s four days of live-fire exercises around Taiwan proper, talking heads on Taiwanese political television programs expended a great deal of time explaining why the Ministry of National Defense did not issue an air-defense warning when China’s military fired ballistic missiles into outer space above Taiwan. However, the significance of the missile launches is not how high they flew, but the intent behind their use and where they landed. China claimed that the missiles had “accurately hit their targets,” which included impact points near Taiwan’s vital ports. This demonstrates that Beijing possesses the intent and the capability to implement a blockade of Taiwan. The locations of many of the missiles’ splashdowns inside Taiwan’s territorial waters likely meets the UN’s definition of an act of aggression by a foreign nation. Therefore, it is insufficient for the government to issue a strong protest against China’s behavior. The nation’s diplomatic corps must rally the international community and make the case for an international convention on Taiwan. Taiwanese must also unite, and with one voice demand that Beijing cease engaging in hostile military behavior. Taiwanese must also call on the international community to pay closer attention to the nation’s security needs, by making the argument that Taiwan’s continued existence as a free nation is vital to upholding international law and world peace. If the world does not take immediate action to constrain China’s bellicose and destructive behavior, recent history tells us what will happen next. When the international community failed to prevent Nazi Germany from invading neighboring nations during the mid-1930s, the seeds of World War II were sown and it was not long before the human race was once again afflicted with a great calamity. Ministry of National Defense spokespersons, think tanks and even pan-green-camp-aligned talking heads on television frequently refer to China’s military
Temple food fights I recently read an op-ed in the Liberty Times [the Taipei Times’ sister paper] that called for a new approach to handling food offerings at pudu (普度) ceremonies held for the dead by temples during Ghost Month, and I fully agree with it. There is a famous temple in Miaoli County that holds a pudu every Ghost Month, which is the seventh month of the lunar calendar. After the ceremony, worshipers are allowed to take food offerings home. Often, while the masters of the temple are still chanting, worshipers begin fighting over the food, using plastic bags, sacks or even carts to haul the offerings away. The chaotic scenes at the temple repeat year after year, and they sometimes even make the news. For people unfamiliar with the ceremony, the prayers must look as if hungry ghosts have descended on the temple to gorge themselves. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the “food fight” was suspended last year. I wonder if the temple will also suspend the food offerings this year to save its image. It is said that grabbing offerings means grabbing “luck” and that eating such food can keep you safe. This is as groundless as the practice of racing to offer the first incense stick at temples on the Lunar New Year’s Day. Such absurd and irrational behavior reflects not only people’s greed, but also their lack of morals. In Buddhism, personal karma is determined by one’s good and bad deeds. So your karma results from a cause-and-effect relationship — just like oil floating on the surface of water and a rock sinking to the bottom. You reap what you sow, and your luck has nothing to do with the offerings. Such superstition is beyond comprehension. On the contrary, some temples in Chiayi City try to
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No matter what indicator you use, Russian President Vladimir Putin is winning in the energy markets. Moscow is milking its oil cash cow, earning hundreds of millions of US dollars every day to bankroll the invasion of Ukraine and buy domestic support for the war. Once European sanctions against Russian crude exports kick in from November, the region’s governments will face some tough choices as the energy crisis starts to bite consumers and companies. Electricity costs for homes and businesses are set to soar from October, as the surge in oil income allows Putin to sacrifice gas revenue and squeeze supplies to Europe. UK prices are likely to jump by 75 percent, while in Germany some municipal utilities have already warned prices would increase in excess of 100 percent. Russia has successfully weaponized energy supplies. Western governments will come under increasing pressure to spend billions either subsidizing household bills or, as is already the case in France, by taking control of power companies. The first indicator showing how Putin has turned the oil tide is Russian crude oil production. Last month, the country’s output climbed back to near pre-war levels, averaging almost 10.8 million barrels per day, only marginally down from the 11 million pumped in January immediately prior to the invasion of Ukraine. Based on industry estimates, oil production is slightly higher so far this month. It is not a blip. Last month marked the third consecutive month of oil production recovery, with output up significantly from this year’s low point of 10 million barrels set in April, when European buyers started shunning Russia and Moscow scrambled to find new buyers. After that initial struggle, Russia has found new customers for the million barrels a day that European oil refiners have stopped purchasing due to self-sanctioning. Most of that crude oil is ending up in
Joseph told Pharaoh to use his seven years of plenty to prepare for the lean times to come. In Aesop’s fable, the grasshopper danced away the summer while the industrious ant prepared for a harsh winter. Western leaders do not lack for good advice from the classics, but clearly they do not always take it. During the golden era that followed the end of the Cold War, prosperity founded on globalization and “nice” growth (non-inflationary and consistently expansionary) was treated as if it would last forever. Investment in national resilience was ignored. The COVID-19 pandemic, a hostile China and the war in Ukraine have shown that the fruits of the long peace were squandered. Now Britain is grumbling through “a summer of discontent.” Inflation is running at 9.4 percent while energy costs have soared 57 percent, with more hikes due in October. Public-sector unions naturally want pay raises to match spiraling prices so have been flexing their muscles. The railway network is being brought to a standstill by strikes. Had political leaders bit the bullet during the good times and enforced realistic staffing levels and flexible working, then higher wages for railway workers might make sense. However, in the good years, no government was prepared to expend the political capital. The unions thus force drivers on London Underground railways designed to be driverless. Today most passengers also purchase their tickets from machines not ticket offices, yet the unions have successfully insisted that the latter stay open. There is a wider unease about the British government’s capacity to deliver. In a moment of remarkable candor, Michael Gove, one of the most experienced Cabinet ministers until he last month fell out with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told a think tank: “There are some core functions — giving you your passport, giving your driving licenses — which are
Last week, Taishin Financial Holding Co and the Ministry of Finance announced that they had settled a dispute over state-run Chang Hwa Commercial Bank’s management rights, with Taishin Financial withdrawing its Supreme Court case against the ministry. Taishin Financial also sold 1.048 billion Chang Hwa Bank shares to other financial institutions for NT$19.09 billion (US$636.97 million), or NT$18.2 per share, in a block trade, the company said in a regulatory filing. The agreement ended a 17-year dispute, but at great cost. In 2005, Taishin Financial outbid six competitors to purchase Chang Hwa Bank’s 1.4 billion special shares for NT$36.57 billion, or NT$26.12 per share. The deal gave it a controlling 22.5 percent stake in then-debt-ridden Chang Hwa, making it the bank’s largest shareholder. The ministry was the second-largest shareholder with a roughly 20 percent stake. Ideally, the deal should have had synergic benefits, as the state-run lender had a solid foothold in corporate lending and Taishin Financial’s banking arm, Taishin International Bank, had expertise in consumer banking, fixed income and wealth management. However, this supposedly ideal match was never to be; Taishin Financial and the ministry have never been at peace with one another regarding the makeup of Chang Hwa’s nine-member board or with Taishin Financial’s plan to merge Chang Hwa with Taishin International Bank. Instead, boardroom showdowns between the two in 2014, 2017 and 2020 indicated they were simply not on the same page, with the tensions spilling over from one board election to the next. This high-profile deal has revealed the fragility of public-private partnerships in the financial sector: Following the change of political power in Taiwan in 2008, the ministry withdrew its support for Taishin Financial to secure a board majority and control of Chang Hwa. It also highlights the government’s failure to observe the principles of good corporate governance,
In an August 12 Wall Street Journal report, Chinese sources contend that in their July 28 phone call, United States President Joe Biden was told by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) that “he had no intention of going to war with the US” over House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s then upcoming visit to Taiwan. However, there should be global alarm that Xi did use that visit to begin the CCP’s active war against democracy in Taiwan and globally, and that the Biden Administration’s response has been insufficient. To hear CCP officials, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) spokesmen, and a plethora of CCP controlled state media outlets and Chinese “experts,” the PLA’s unprecedented missile, space, air, and naval blockade exercises against Taiwan were a justified response to the August 2-3 visit of United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, third in line to the Presidency, and the first Speaker to visit Taiwan since Newt Gingrich in 1997. As usual, the CCP is peddling its Big Lie. Pelosi’s demonstration of US support for Taiwan was for the CCP merely an excuse for triggering megaphonic hatreds and threats, such as poster-boy threat-monger Hu Xijin’s (胡錫進) July 29 threat to shoot down Pelosi’s plane. The CCP attempt to bully the world into accepting its war against a democracy served only to highlight the regime’s nature as a corrupt dictatorial enterprise — one wholly incapable of the “peaceful rise” as “responsible global stakeholder” that its Western “engagement” dupes have for decades used to excuse the CCP’s increasingly non-status quo behavior. Since its rise to power in 1949, the CCP’s dictatorship has rested on its murdering of real and suspected opponents, 70 to 90 million of its own citizens by some estimates, and the totalizing intimidation of the rest, and of many of its neighbors. Now the
It is disconcerting to learn of employment scams in Cambodia, in which some Taiwanese were “sold,” sexually assaulted, locked up and beaten. There have even been reports of organ harvesting. I believe this to be true after watching news reports showing Criminal Investigation Bureau officers at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport trying to persuade Taiwanese jobseekers not to fly to Cambodia. In southern Taiwan, a friend who is a police officer has asked borough wardens to warn residents through the local broadcasting system not to believe advertisements for high-paying jobs in Southeast Asia. How should Taiwan eliminate these kinds of crimes, which fall outside of its jurisdiction? Under the leadership of Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), the Cabinet has established an “anti-fraud national team” comprised of the Ministry of the Interior, the National Communications Commission (NCC), the Financial Supervisory Commission, the Ministry of Justice and other government agencies. As the national team emphasized, governance of telecom networks, through which the jobs are advertised, is more challenging than traditional administrative assistance between government agencies. With the establishment of the fraud team, the joint efforts of the NCC and the National Police Agency should result in fraud advertisements and online messages gradually disappearing domestically. However, what should be done to collect intelligence from overseas, assist victims who are trying to return home and coordinate with international rescue organizations? Taiwan’s embassies and consulates abroad are staffed with officials from government agencies who report directly to their own department heads. As they serve a minimum three-year term, they are useful in gathering information for the host countries and in dealing with official affairs. I once met an overseas liaison officer the bureau had sent to Japan. I admired his understanding of Japanese police affairs, his work helping to resolve safety problems for Taiwanese in Japan and his ability to negotiate with
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I am writing this from Amritsar, India, in the state of Punjab. The Sikh Golden Temple here is one of India’s leading attractions, and last night I shared space with thousands of people over the course of four or five hours. In that time, I saw only two people who might qualify as white Westerners. That simple observation — and my travels over the past year to Denmark, Switzerland, Ireland, Portugal, Mexico, England, Argentina and Colombia — have led me to a theory about the future of travel: The world is entering a new era in which exotic journeys are for more of a travel elite than a moneyed elite. International travel is rebounding in comfortable “core” locations (for Americans, at least) such as Mexico, London or Dublin. However, people are less keen on going farther afield. “Comfort travel” — by which I mean not just nice hotels, but familiar surroundings — will be OK. “Challenge travel” — involving not only faraway places, but also unaccustomed experiences — faces a more uncertain future. It is not just my own experience. A colleague who is currently visiting Rajasthan relates that his guide says he has not worked with any foreign tourists for more than two years. Chinese, the world’s most frequent travelers, reduced their international travel by 95 percent last year. Or consider the island of Bali, which is admittedly luxurious, but still, to many Westerners, exotic. It was formerly a major tourist destination for North Americans, Europeans and Asians, with 6.3 million foreign visitors at its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak. In all of last year, it recorded just 45 foreign visitors — and estimates are that the island will need 10 years to recover to previous levels. One possibility is that international tourism would soon return to its 2019 composition, as people overcome their inhibitions
Walt Disney Co’s streaming strategy appears to be shifting ever so subtly away from subscriber growth toward profits, dealing another blow to customers who have become accustomed to low-price, ad-free viewing. While Wall Street showed its delight with the 14.4 million new Disney+ subscribers that the company reported on Wednesday for the quarter that ended on July 2, the growth was not as good as it could have been. In the North American market, for instance, Disney+ added just 100,000 subscribers compared with the previous quarter, to 44.5 million from 44.4 million as of April 2. So the growth came almost entirely from overseas, partly from India, where average revenue per subscriber is a fraction of what it is for Disney+ elsewhere. Overseas growth was also fueled by the launch of 50 new markets, which muddies the waters. Disney chief financial officer Christine McCarthy suggested that domestic growth would accelerate a little in the current quarter thanks to releases of new shows. While that is better than the reverse, any acceleration is likely to be short-lived thanks to Disney’s decision to raise the price of the existing ad-free version of Disney+ in the US by 38 percent to US$10.99 on Dec. 8 and to introduce a version with ads at the old US$7.99 price. NO LONG-TERM IMPACT Chief executive officer Bob Chapek assured analysts that he does not expect the price increase to have “any meaningful long-term impact on our churn.” That makes sense. Disney+ fans can trade down to the ad-supported version at the same price if the new ad-free price is too high for them, as McCarthy acknowledged. However, the price increase would not do anything for growth. Anyone who is not interested in Disney+ at US$7.99 a month without ads is unlikely to be more excited in trying it at that price
Does an industrial-sized dog whistle go off when advocates boast about cryptocurrency’s ability to evade US government sanctions? Back in March, a founder of Tornado Cash — a so-called “mixer” service that masks cryptocurrency transactions by mixing them with others — told Bloomberg it would be “technically impossible” for sanctions to be enforced against decentralized protocols. Surprise: Tornado has now been sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, partly because of its use by hackers said to be linked to North Korean money laundering. With Tornado down 95 percent from its all-time high and its source code removed from Microsoft Corp’s GitHub, it is the latest blow to the “no sanctions yay” theory of crypto — the three words used by former Ethereum Foundation scientist Virgil Griffith in 2019, when he told a blockchain conference in North Korea how to dodge sanctions by converting cash into crypto, costly advice that resulted in a guilty plea and a 63-month federal prison sentence. In terms of technology, it shows that even the most decentralized service cannot avoid law enforcement. Exchanges are under pressure to monitor links to regular currencies, as are other service providers, and pseudonymous blockchains can be pored over for suspicious transactions — such as the gains of North Korean cybercriminals that transited through Tornado. As Bloomberg’s Emily Nicolle notes, the crypto industry has not been able to build all its infrastructure yet. Geopolitically, crypto is also suffering — not surging — amid an economic cold war. After the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Washington has been flexing its financial muscles, even amid angst about the kind of blowback that overreach or alternative currencies might bring. Keeping crypto in check fits with the history of US regulation of encrypted tech, like the e-mail mixers of
The Constitutional Court on Friday ruled that a National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) policy of allowing other government agencies and researchers to access its database is partly unconstitutional. Taiwan’s single-payer health insurance was launched in 1995, and by 2014 more than 99.9 percent of the population was enrolled. In 1998, the National Health Research Institute was commissioned to establish a database with information on insurance holders, and anonymized files became accessible for researchers in 2000. In 2016, the database was returned to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and integrated with a dedicated service center that imposed tighter privacy protections, but continued to grant access to the files. However, seven human rights advocates in 2012 asked the NHIA to limit access to the database. As the agency did not comply, they sued the NHIA. Their claim was rejected, but they appealed the initial decision, as well as ensuing decisions in favor of the NHIA by higher courts. After the Supreme Administrative Court in 2017 rejected their claim, they filed for a constitutional interpretation, arguing that granting access to highly sensitive personal information without people consenting to their files being used breaches privacy rights and the principle of information self-determination. The NHIA said that entities seeking access to the files must undergo an application process, which ensures privacy and that the purpose for which the files are used must be in the public interest. The ministry added that if individuals were allowed to have their files deleted or kept secret, researchers would face a sampling bias, harming studies that are in the public interest. It said the database also helped the government implement successful policies to curb the spread of COVID-19. However, the Constitutional Court ruled that Article 6 of the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) — which requires the encryption of healthcare data, and
Just hours after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi departed Taiwan, Beijing initiated large-scale military drills, or what it called “Operation Stabilize Taiwan.” The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) reaction to Pelosi’s visit has created the most tense situation in the Taiwan Strait since the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995 and 1996, which was triggered by a visit of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to his alma mater, Cornell University in New York State. However, what is truly baffling about this latest show of Chinese military might is that there is a consensus in academic circles that the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis was initiated by then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) because he needed to cement his authority within the CCP. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), now approaching the end of his second term in office, has already amassed an enormous amount of power within the party, including the chairmanship of the all-powerful Chinese Central Military Commission, so why would he feel it is necessary to orchestrate a fourth Taiwan Strait crisis? Is the stabilization of his authority within the party a possible explanation? After the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, Taiwanese academics specializing in cross-strait politics began to develop the theory that the harshness of China’s Taiwan policy directly correlates with the degree to which the political leader enjoys a position of strength within the CCP. After Jiang took over the reins from his predecessor, Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), he was initially living in Deng’s shadow. In China’s one-party political system, where political power is achieved “through the barrel of a gun,” hawkish generals in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army had the upper hand during the initial stages of Jiang’s presidency. According to the theory, Jiang lacked power, so even though there originally existed a tacit agreement between Taipei and Beijing over Lee’s planned trip to
Much of the foreign policy conversation in the US over the past two weeks has centered on whether US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi ought to have visited Taiwan. Her backers pointed out that there was precedent for such a visit — a previous House speaker and US Cabinet members had visited Taiwan — and that it is important for officials to underscore the US’ commitment to Taiwan in the face of increasing Chinese pressure. Critics argued that the trip was ill-timed, because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would likely feel a need to respond, lest he appear weak heading into the critical Chinese Communist Party (CCP) National Congress in the fall. There were also worries that the visit might lead Xi to do more to support Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. However, the focus on Pelosi’s visit is misplaced. The important question is why China responded not just by denouncing the trip, but with import and export bans, cyberattacks and military exercises that represented a major escalation over anything it had previously done to punish and intimidate Taiwan. None of this was inevitable. The Chinese leadership had options. It could have ignored or downplayed Pelosi’s visit. What we saw was a reaction — more accurately, an overreaction — of choice. The scale and complexity of the response indicated that it had long been planned, suggesting that if the Pelosi trip had not taken place, some other development would have been cited as a pretext to “justify” China’s actions. China’s increasingly fraught internal political and economic situation goes a long way toward explaining Xi’s reaction. His priority is to be appointed to an unprecedented third term as CCP chairman, but the country’s economic performance, for decades the principal source of legitimacy for China’s leaders, can no longer be counted on as growth
When Russian-language speakers want to say that somebody is bluffing, they often use the idiom “China’s final warnings.” China failed to intimidate US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi into canceling her trip to Taiwan, and its claims that Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft would “accompany” her plane on its approach to the nation, and probably even shoot it down and launch a war, did not materialize. Beijing’s bluff not only discredited China, it also frustrated Chinese nationalists known as “little pinks.” Pandering to their whims, the Chinese government sought to replicate the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995 and 1996, and set up zones for military drills extending into Taiwan’s territorial waters to practice encircling the nation. China told its domestic audience that it had successfully blockaded Taiwan, even fabricating images to make little pinks believe that its warships patrolled near the nation’s shores. Elsewhere in the world, the military drills dominated the headlines, and the G7 foreign ministers issued a joint statement urging China to abide by international, rule of law-based norms. Although China claimed its missiles had hit all intended targets on the first day of the drills, Japan said that five of them had come down in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which Beijing used as a pretext to cancel its talks with Tokyo at an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting. While the Japanese minister of foreign affairs was giving a speech at the event in Cambodia, the top Chinese and Russian diplomats walked out, signaling that Beijing has no intention to resolve the issue with Japan through dialogue. It even denied that the areas where the missiles landed were within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, disputing that the sea border between the two countries is where it is. Chinese drones recently appeared in Japan’s airspace near Okinawa, causing anxiety. Japan
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The financial capitals of the world have lost their luster. The bright lights of New York City seem to have dimmed. London has far too many issues to contend with, from inflation, messy politics and homes not built for the heat to a dysfunctional international airport. Hong Kong is a dark shadow of what it once was — a former British colony filled with tycoons and billionaires whose fast, wheeling-dealing free spirit has faded. Other close contenders such as Tokyo, Singapore and Shanghai do not hold the same allure as they once did. So what’s left? Financial centers have typically been places with well-formed regulatory oversight and deep capital markets. Naturally, an ecosystem of workers is created around this, drawing in professionals such as bankers, lawyers, accountants and headhunters. Factors such as tax rates and the ability to draw capital — equity and debt — that facilitate business and bolster a city’s competitiveness help, too. There are various ways to measure that — the size and depth of capital markets, along with detailed, weighted indices that take into account everything from tax rates to office occupancy and legal jurisdiction. These measures, though, ignore an underappreciated but increasingly relevant factor in the post-COVID-19 era: human capital. We can no longer measure workers based on one-dimensional factors such as education level or income bracket. Where do people want to live? Where can professionals do their jobs smoothly and, therefore, successfully? That has changed since COVID-19 turned our world upside down. The latest rankings of the Global Financial Centers Index, or GFCI, based on 150 quantitative measures and almost 75,000 assessments of cities, as well as about 12,000 survey respondents, put New York, London, Hong Kong and Shanghai at the top of the list. Notably, human capital was the most-mentioned area of competitiveness when respondents were asked what
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