Tucson, one Week on

I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it.

Barack Obama, January 12, 2011

President Obama is cynically exploiting the tragic shooting in Tucson for political gain.

Jeffrey Kuhner, Washington Times, January 13, 2011

Legislative Yuan reacts to Advertorial Controversy

The English-language Taipei Times referred to the newspaper contents in question as advertorials in a report on Tuesday.

A German-English / English-German definition (LEO, Munich):

advertorial   – an extended newspaper or magazine text advertisement that promotes the advertiser’s product or services or special point of view but resembles an editorial in style and layout

I’ll stick to the term advertorial, for the time being.

A term more or less equivalent with advertorial, used by the Liberty Times, the Taipei Times’ Chinese-language sister, is 置入性行銷 (zhì rù xìng xíngxiāo). Xingxiao stands for marketing; zhi ru would be placement – placement marketing.

Cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council’s spokesman Liu Te-shun said late on Thursday that officials will decide if the news reports in question are indeed advertising, but did not say what punishments would be levied for disguising advertising as news,

reports Associated Press (AP), which adds its usual narrative that “Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949″.

Taiwan’s parliament (Legislative Yuan) was to make legal amendments to ban concealed advertising, the Liberty Times reported on Friday, and quoted  MAC spokesman Liu Te-shun (劉德勳, see Associated Press quote above) as saying that such a ban would also apply to Chinese advertising of this kind in Taiwan.

Local government delegations from various parts of China had placed advertorials during the past two years, as they visited Taiwan, writes the Liberty Times. This had led to a “China embeds itself in Taiwan” controversy (“中國置入台灣”).  Liu said that the government would make an intranet page available to  organizations and departments dealing with Chinese visits. The page would privide information about how offenses would be fined. According to the Liberty Times, Liu also said that advertising for Chinese goods and services which had access to the Taiwanese market was legal, but adjustments could be made in that field, too, if the need should arise.

Testing the limits as to how blurred the borders between different forms of publication may become isn’t a merely Chinese specialty – what probably made them particularly controversial is that “closer ties” with China, by plane and tourism links, and by framework treaties such as ECFA, are a sensitive issues anyway, given that China threatens Taiwan with “reunification”, and given concerns that too much dependence on Chinese advertising could compromise the independence of the press.

The Taiwanese government itself came under criticism earlier this month for allegedly “buying independent bloggers”.

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Updated/Related
Cominform in Taiwan’s Press: many Cents, January 13, 2011
Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA)

Cominform in Taiwan’s Press: many Cents

Advertorials placed in the press by Taiwan’s government on all levels blurred relations between the media and the government, and were becoming the main source of revenue for media, former (Chinese-language) China Times senior editor Dennis Huang (黃哲斌) warns. Huang resigned his post with the paper last month, the Taipei Times wrote on Tuesday.

China reportedly adopted the practise, too:

Antonio Chiang (江春男), a consultant for the Chinese-language Apple Daily, told a panel at the “Democracy Building in Interesting Times” conference in Taipei that the most serious threat to the independence of the Taiwanese media was advertorials placed by China under the guise of news reports.

Chiang said this phenomenon was a concern because China was willing to put ads in Taiwanese media to promote its image, media outlets that receive funding for such placements then “self-censor” their news coverage to avoid embarrassing or angering Beijing.

A visit by China’s negotiator Chen Yunlin to Taiwan is a less open affair than were certain Soviet propaganda events in non-communist countries during the past decade. Chen travels, smiles, and offers “opportunities”. If he was asked embarrassing questions, the way Soviet delegates and their fellow conferees were during the Waldorf-Astoria “Peace Conference” in New York, in March 1949, one may wonder which Taiwanese papers would cover the event extensively, if at all.

Just as Moscow rallied Western intellectuals to its cause of “peace” in the early days of the Cold War, a Congress for the freedom of the Culture, an organization sponsored by the CIA, rallied Europeans to its agenda. Not every supporter of the Congress was reportedly aware of its funding. Heinrich Böll, for example, is said to haven’t known.

The way China works its way through free societies isn’t harmless. Different from the USSR, it successfully presents itself as a honeypot for business. This is probably the main reason why the question if the CCP is an authoritarian or a totalitarian party isn’t even seriously discussed. The USSR offered barter trade opportunities at best.

But there are parallels between the Cold-War competitions for hearts and minds, and the current one made in China. In 1950, North Korea invaded the South. Soviet efforts to present itself as a power for peace suffered corresponding setbacks. China’s role as an Asian neighbor, beyond its support for Pyongyang, hasn’t looked too peaceful either, since last year. Beijing’s advertorials in the Taiwanese press, which reportedly began to appear in 2008, may be viewed as a game played by China’s propaganda departments and some not-too influential ministries, while the politburo is playing the more defining, and much less appealing game. When facts speak a different language from propaganda, the effect of propaganda itself is hampered.

Media which report about these issues most openly could be seen as more trustworthy than those who treat it as a rather small issue. But what really decides the matter is a judicious readership. If the markets refuses to buy bullshit, you won’t even need legislation. The editors themselves will then become the best guardians of good practise.

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Related
Hong Kong: How to Corrupt an Open Society, Aguust 29, 2009

Don’t Reload – Mark it Zero

Oh dear. If Sarah Palin should ever get shot (I hope she won’t), I will have to take the blame, or some of it. After all, it’s me who wrote that post in October last year, and added that picture to it. And no, I didn’t mean to say that the stuff lying in front of that Christmas bird should represents Ms Palin’s guts. I  only wanted to express my view that things get messy once Sarah Palin shows up somewhere. Besides, the picture simply reminds me of Ms Palin. Can’t help it.

Mark it zero.

Anyway. Sarah Palin has been accused of being, somehow, even if unintentionally, be partly responsible for the Tucson shooting on January 8. The suspected attacker, Jared Lee Loughner, it is suggested, was possibly inspired by the vitriolic way political concepts that ran counter to each other had been discussed, or by the way the “Tea Party” movement and other members of America’s political right attacked the Obama administration’s agenda. Besides, a photo exists where Palin holds a gun in her hands and gives someone a lunatic grin. She advocates the freedom to bear arms. And, yeah, she used the word “reload” in a political context.

And on the other hand, I don’t find attempts to politicize the Arizona tragedy – the gunshots at Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six people – “repulsive”. To blame others than the attacker himself  is a natural reaction in a heated political climate, and in a rather shallow way, it can help to make some of the pain to go away, at least for a while. But it isn’t helpful to start blaming Palin & Cie. But what’s repulsive is the act of shooting at a group of unarmed and unsuspecting people. But for that, the assasin is responsible. Neither Palin, nor a perceived “liberal conspiracy”, nor Ms Giffords’ reported inability or unwillingness to answer a strange question. If the news from Tucson hurts us, we need a period of silence, rather than acrimony, and we must bear the sadness.

And, needless to say, it isn’t helpful to talk like Sarah Palin. But that’s a different story. She’s so out of touch with real life that she shouldn’t even be an issue.

That’s the problem. Entirely sane and reasonable people can either advocate gun control, or the liberty to bear arms. The problem is the news consumer. Anyone who isn’t prepared to listen to a statement, unless it is made in a pretty sensational way, is part of the problem. He or she isn’t guilty – that would be a different category.

Most people would agree that hate speech contains no hints to a true solution of public problems. Then why listen to it?

Let’s not hate stupid speeches. Let’s just mark them zero, and move on. Let’s look for arguments – from any party – which could make sense, even if the press makes them more difficult to find than radically stupid ones. There is no sensational shortcut to solutions which work.

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Related
Why Wikileaks can’t Work, December 1, 2010
A World of Pain, August 14, 2010
Germany’s Latest Superstar, March 12, 2009

Gates, Liang: Communiqué

US defense secretary Robert Gates met with Chinese state council member and defense minister Liang Guanglie (梁光烈) in Beijing’s 8-1 Building¹⁾ on Monday morning local time, according to Xinhua (via Enorth, Tianjin).  Liang’s native province is terrifying Sichuan. Liang is a general and member of the central military commissions.

Xinhua continues as follows (all links within the translation are mine):

Liang Guanglie said that Chinese-American relations were the world’s most important bilateral relations. At the entry to the new century, Chinese-American interdependence, mutual benefit and the variety of contacts (交融) was continuously growing. To build the 21rst century’s active, cooperative and comprehensive Sino-American relations together was of great significance to China and America, and also to the world.

Liang pointed out that relations between the Chinese and American military were an important part of the two countries’ relations. China had always attached importance to the development of military relations, and made unremitting efforts to this end. Currently, Sino-American military relations were facing new development opportunities, and at the same time, some difficulties and challenges also existed which required bilateral efforts in accordance with the principles of respect, mutual trust, reciprocity²⁾ and mutual benefit, to take the correct direction of development, to expand common interest, to resolve contradictions and differences, and to make sure that the two militaries were moving on a healthy and stable track.

Gates thanked Liang for the invitation and said that American-Chinese military relations were an important part of active, cooperative and comprehensive relations, advocated both by President Obama and Chairman Hu Jintao.  The two military forces developed uninterrupted exchange and cooperation in accordance with the two sides’ interests, which was helpful in increasing mutual trust, and in reducing misunderstandings and misjudgments. The two countries’ defense departments could use military consultations, work meetings, maritime security consultation and other exchange mechanisms to continue the maintenance of communication and coordination.

After the meeting, Liang and Gates met the press together, and briefed them about the consensus arrived at during the talks. Both sides were in agreement that healthy, stable Sino-American military relations were an important part of their two countries’ leaders’ consensus of building active, cooperative and comprehensive Sino-American relations for the 21rst century.  Both sides were looking forward to Chairman Hu Jintao’s state visit to the United States. The two sides were in agreement that to maintain a healthy and stable development of Sino-American military relations corresponded with their bilateral interests. Both sides understood (认识到) the important effect that  strengthening and maintaining dialog and communication on all levels had for the development of the two military sides. Both sides were equally responsible and obliged to take effective measures, to respect each others’ sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity, to cultivate and further mutual strategic trust, to consolidate and expand common interest, and to avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations. Both sides attached importance to CMC vice chairman Xu Caihou’s (徐才厚) visit to the U.S. in October 2009, and the   seven points of consensus (七点共识) then arrived at with defense secretary Gates about promoting the bilateral military ties. Both sides confirm (or affirm, 确认) a systematic development of exchange by mutual high-level visits, a mechanism of projects, and on educational areas. At an appropriate time during the first half of 2011, chief of staff Chen Bingde (陈炳德) would be invited to visit the U.S., the two militaries will develop cooperation in non-traditional fields such as counter-terrorism, peacekeeping, escorting merchant vessels, humanitarian aid and disaster relief, the two sides agreed to hold Sino-American a defense work meeting during the first half of 2011, and maritime security consultation in working groups, the two sides would carry out consultations concerning the guiding principles and framework of bilateral military relations and, at an appropriate time, shape a document of the two sides’ agreement.

Before the talks, Liang held a welcome ceremony for Gates, and accompanied him reviewing the three services’ honor guard.

Deputy chief of staff Ma Xiaotian (马晓天), deputy navy commander Xu Hongmeng (徐洪猛), deputy air force commander Chen Xiaogong (陈小工),  Second Artillery deputy chief of staff Wei Fenghe (魏凤和, incorrectly spelled 魏士河 in the article), deputy director of the defense ministry’s foreign affairs office Guan Youfei (关友飞), and U.S. ambassador Jon Huntsman attended these activities.

Gates is on a state visit from January 9 – 12 on Liang Guanglie’s invitation. It is his second visit to China as U.S. secretary of defense. State and military leaders will meet with Gates. Gates will also visit the Second Artillery headquarters.

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Notes

¹⁾ The 8-1 building (八一大楼) at Chang An Road (West) serves as a Central Military Commissions’ representative building to receive guests. There are also military offices, but it isn’t the CMC’s central building. 8-1 Building was completed in 1999 to provide more space for military administration than the central building near the Forbidden City (Jingshan Front Street).  8-1 probably refers to the founding day of the “People’s Liberation Army”, on August 1, 1927.

²⁾ Reciprocity refers to confidence-building measures, such as visiting military units of the other side respectively, and providing information to each other – and to play ones military clout down, or to show it off.

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Related
Liang Guanglie: China is “Decades Behind”, BBC News, January 10, 2010
From Hostility to Engagement, Declassified Documents (GWU), 1960 – 1998

Latin America: Public Relations Challenges

Latin American leaders are concerned about China’s growing influence in the region, the Voice of Russia‘s (VoR) English service quotes a document reportedly made public by Wikileaks on Friday:

According to the mass media, the regional leaders reached the conclusion to that end following a 2009 visit to Latin America by the Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping and Deputy Prime Minister Hui Liangyu.

The regional leaders feel that Beijing’s current strategy aims to assume full control of the world’s mineral markets.

Generally, the publication of classified documents by Wikileaks, started late last year, received mixed responses from Latin American leaders.

– I’ll roughly refer to some passages of the document in the following, but won’t link to it, as this platform apparently doesn’t allow links to there – they turn into links pointing elsewhere. Enter a searchword combination at google.com, something like “Shanghai scholars” “Brazil’s natural resources” “Need to Diversify Trade Partners”, and you should get there, or read the (apparently full) document at eats shoots ‘n leaves. — JR

A US consular document from Shanghai, published on Friday goes beyond the Latin American mass media, and also quotes the Brazilian Consul General in Shanghai as saying that China’s strategy in Latin America was clear: it wanted to “control the supply of commodities”. Chinese scholars quoted addressed an image problem China was facing in Latin America, and Chinese problems with unionized labor. Things were easier for Chinese business in Africa, since Africa’s institutions and regulatory environment were less well-developed than Latin America’s.

The views of Argentina’s Consul General in Shanghai come across as notably friendlier. However, he is also quoted as saying that “real investment” from China in Argentina only started five years ago, was only growing at a “modest pace”, and the examples he is said to give referred to a rather diverse set of projects, including a motorcycle factory in Buenos Aires.

In December, Inácio Lula Da Silva, then still president of Brazil, expressed his indignation about the arrest of Julian Assange, one of the Wikileaks founders. Nothing was done about this offense against a man’s freedom of speech, he said, according to this video, “of a guy that was bringing to the public a little mess made by some ambassadors”.

Stay tuned, Lula.

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Related
Strategic Commodities, October 26, 2010
Xi Jinping criticizes his Critics, February 18, 2009
JR-Tag: Africa »

Li Keqiang’s Germany Visit: Industriousness and Wisdom

Li Keqiang (李克強), vice chief state councillor and likely to succeed his boss Wen Jiabao next year, is currently on a European tour. After visiting Spain and Germany, he will arive in the UK today.

According to Li, “China remains the world’s largest developing country”. Although China’s economy belongs to the world’s biggest, it is ranks as the world’s 100th in terms of GDP per capita, Li wrote in a guest editorial for Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), published on January 5. Some of the usual artificial honey is included, too:

Germany is known as the country of philosophers, scientists, and musicians. While the Germans’ industriousness and wisdom enjoy the admiration of the Chinese, “Made in Germany” is greatly popular with Chinese consumers for high quality, excellent technology, and innovation. The Chinese have fond feelings for the Germans. During the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, more than four million Chinese people have visited the German Pavillon , and even more did that online, or by watching television. The first prize in the category of implementing the expo theme’s concept helped to make the Chinese understand Germany better.

And

Exchange and cooperation on culture, science and technology, education, health, and justice, are bearing rich fruit.

Li lists the bilateral homework, as he sees it:

We have to work to maintain an open market, promote liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment, advocate the resolution of economic and trade disputes by consultation, and to fight against protectionism of all kinds. We hope that the EU will ease its restrictions on the export of high-tech products to China. It is essential to bring the international system of trade and finance to perfection, and to shape balanced and sustainable trade relations.
[...]
We welcome more foreign investment in China, especially in the fields of modern agriculture, new and high-technology, energy efficiency and environmental protection, new energies and new material. We encourage high-performing and creditworthy Chinese enterprises to invest more abroad. At present, Germany’s investment in China are only at two per cent of its foreign investment in total.

The most notable point seems to be his case for resolution of economic and trade disputes by consultation. Mere consultation requires a degree of good faith which is hardly ever there. Consultation may help to – occasionally – ease the degree to which the Chinese-foreign playing field is tilted in China’s favor, but it won’t do the job as promptly and impartially as arbitration can, provided that arbitration remains accepted and acknowledged, even when it really matters, in times of differences and conflicts.

There are good reasons not to ease restrictions the export of high-tech products to China. For what can be exported, and for the technology transfer which is required for investment in China, foreign companies are taking more than a fair share of risk already.

In certain fields, and in all those where a foreigner has more know-how, investors have to find Chinese partners for joint ventures. To get permission from the authorities, they have to describe the technology in great detail and the documentation then becomes state property,

the Voice of Germany (DW) quotes a lawyer who is specialized in national and international joint ventures. The procedure helps to weaken the foreign party’s rights to its own patents.

The head of the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s Asia-Pacific Division, Sabine Hepperle, also quoted by DW, looks at China’s precondition for foreign investment – technology transfer – much more benignly:

[...] German companies would not have a problem on the Chinese market, despite the restrictions, as long as they remained one step ahead.

Which is quite a shaky undertaking. Two per cent of German foreign investment going to China is, under such circumstances, no small number. Not every German company is Siemens-size, and can afford to lose a complete field to a competitor without going out of business altogether.

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Related
UK State Visit, BBC News, January 9, 2011
A Model and an Outline, January 4, 2011
Just a little bit longer, June 16, 2010
No more Development Aid, Nov 2, 2009

Presidential Elections 2012: there are Rules

Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Taiwan’s first democratically-elected president from 1996 to 1999, and KMT-appointed president from 1988 to 1996, recently had a discussion with Japanese professor Nakajima Mineo of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (and/or Akita International University). Japan’s news magazine WiLL drew on, or published what was said to have been their converstation, in its latest publication, on Thursday.

Lee will be 87 on January 15, and Nakajima Mineo was born in 1933. They are no strangers to each other – they wrote a book on democracy and Asian values together, “The Wisdom of Asia” (亞洲的智略), published in 2000. With that book, Lee, for the first time, stated that the Republic of China on Taiwan had left the era of the two Chiangs (Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo), and had transformed itself into the concept of a Second Republic (蛻變為「第二共和」的構想)^*). Both revisions of the RoC constitutions since 1991, and changes in the structure of government, had constituted the Second Republic.

Lee is an active agent of his presidential legacy, an important policy of which had been to widen Taiwan’s international leeway, and to define Taiwan-Chinese relations as state-to-state relations. He is frequently in the news – shortly before the municipal elections of November last year, he advised the electorate to use the elections as an opportunity to “abandon [incumbent president] Ma” and to thus “protect Taiwan” (棄馬保台, qì Mǎ bǎo Tái), a message which conflicted to quite a degree with opposition DPP leaders’ approach which was focused on local, i. e. municipal, rather than foreign issues, or on Taiwan identity matters.

DPP chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) reaffirmed this approach as she spoke to supporters of her candicacy for Xinbei mayorship, after losing the campaign to KMT candidate Eric Chu.

That’s what makes the alleged content of Lee’s discussion with Prof. Mineo a sensitive issue. According to the WiLL publication, Lee suggested that while Tsai was outstanding (民進黨主席蔡英文很優秀), it was yet too early for her to become  president (但要當總統的話，時機尚早), and that a third force for emphasizing Taiwaneseness should draw Taiwan-conscious forces both from the DPP and the KMT  to provide a Taiwan- rather than China-focused new president with a majority of his or her own in parliament (Legislative Yuan).

Lee denied this and other quotes on Friday, in a statement on his facebook page. If his facebook statement is believed or not may depend on how people view him. The elder statesman may have come across as somewhat unstatesmanlike, i. e. rather spiteful, in recent years.

Either way, according to Lee’s facebook statement as quoted by the Taipei Times, he believed that

it did not matter how the presidential and vice presidential candidates are chosen or whether political parties cooperate in the presidential election next year.  “For the battle in 2012, pro–localization forces should unite and take over power with an absolute majority so we can continue reform, promote Taiwan consciousness and pursue Taiwan’s normalization.”

This advice carries some weight. The results of the municipal elections last November, where almost 65 per cent of Taiwan’s population casted their vote (or were eligible – I didn’t find a clear definition in last year’s coverage), don’t suggest that either of the main political parties – the incumbent KMT and the oppositional DPP – will “crush” the other in elections any time, soon. A president will be elected in 2012, but if he or she will have a majority in parliament is a different question. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the DPP never had a majority in the Legislative Yuan, which may explain some of the shortcomings of his presidency.

Lee’s facebook statement – in different words and much more vaguely than in the WiLL quotes – would still mirror a concern WiLL quoted him with – that Tsai might risk repeating the mistakes of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and would be unable to carry out policies in a minority government if she ran for president next year.

That said, the DPP would still be much more likely to draw an absolute parliamentary majority by itself, than a “third force” would be.

It’s hard to tell how many personal and political animosities may play a role here  – either way, DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) reportedly thanked Lee for giving his views, but only after saying that Cheng said that the DPP would follow its schedule to choose the most electable Presidential candidate.

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Notes
^*) zh.wikipedia.org, on January 8, 2011

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Related
Lee’s Second Republic, Chen’s Second Republic, China Post, Oct 18, 2006