Monthly Archives: April 2016

What Would China Do if America Sold Taiwan F-35s?

Imagine a world in which Taiwanese F-35s patrol the skies over the South China Sea.

National Interest
Date: April 4, 2016
By: Nicholas Butts & Jared McKinney

What would happen if the United States decides to sell its new F-35 Lightning II fighter to F35_2Taiwan? The fictionalized scenario below, based on a careful analysis of the Chinese leadership, attempts to answer that question.

March 2, 2017: A Taiwanese fighter jet on a routine patrol collides with a Chinese drone and crashes into the South China Sea; the pilot is killed. In response, the Republic of China Air Force, which for some time has been asking for upgraded planes, presses for a new arms package from America. Despite promising to maintain peace and stability in cross-Strait relations a little over a year ago in her victory speech, Tsai Ing-Wen, Taiwan’s president, is faced with growing pressure to respond strongly. A concerned Legislative Yuan authorizes major defense budget increases (overcoming budget difficulties) aimed at acquiring the F-35. Eager to signal that the rebalance she spearheaded in the Obama administration is returning in full force, newly elected president Hillary Clinton (following the advice of hawkish media commentators) directs the Defense Department to sell Taipei fifty F-35s. The sale is made, despite severe protestations from Beijing. How is a humiliated China likely to respond?
President Xi assembles his National Security Commission (NSC) and asks for options. Exasperated with the United States for so publically rejecting his offer of a “new type of great power relations,” he says he wants to “impose costs” on Taiwan and America for their destabilizing actions. Liu He, Xi’s principal economic advisor and vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, replies that the Sino-American economic relationship is too important to risk over arms sales to Taiwan, which have occurred before. “Moreover, even unofficial aggression, such as the incident with the young singer during the election in Taiwan, can strengthen the voices for independence. Our response, therefore, should be subtle.”     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan national team top team in 4th leg of Tour of Thailand

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/04
By: Lee Yu-cheng and Kuo Chung-han

Taipei, April 4 (CNA) Three Taiwanese cyclists with Taiwan’s national team took the top spot in the team classification in the fourth leg of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn’s Cup Tour of Thailand on Monday.

Lo Wei-yu (羅偉譽), Yang Wu-hsing (楊武興) and Liu En-chieh (劉恩杰), who finished 10th, 12th and 18th, respectively, in the individual standings on the 137-kilometer leg, won the team race for the Chinese Taipei National team, as it’s formally known.

But the result did not improve the overall standing of the team, which is ranked last among the 19 teams after four legs in the six-stage race.

Yang is currently 70th out of 86 riders in the individual standings after four stages, Liu is 73rd, and Lo is 85th.

The highest ranked Taiwanese rider after four stages is 50th-place Huang Wen-chung, who rides for Attaque Team Gusto.      [SOURCE]

Chien-Ming Wang sees dream come true

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/04
By: Tony Liao and Elizabeth Hsu

Kansas City, U.S., April 3 (CNA) Taiwanese pitcher Chien-Ming Wang said Sunday that his 201604040004t2017return to the U.S. Major League after an absence of nearly three years was a realization of his dream.

“I’m just doing my utmost, and trying my best to return to the path I chose,” Wang said at a press conference at the Kansas City Royals’ home stadium, during which he confirmed that he was returning to majors after his non-roster spring training with the Royals.

Speaking with reporters from Taiwan, the right-hander, who was an ace in the New York Yankees before he was injured in 2008, stressed the importance of being oneself.

“Be yourself, stick to your own beliefs and realize your own dreams,” he said. “Don’t give up simply because of what people say. Just carry on.”     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan holds stewardship code forum to push corporate governance

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-04
By: Central News Agency

The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) recently held a forum on the Taiwan Stewardship Code, hoping to get institutional investors to make a greater commitment to improving their corporate governance.

Institutional investors hold nearly 50 percent of the market value of Taiwan’s stock market and trade about half of all shares traded every day, demonstrating their importance to the stability and development of the equity market, the TWSE said.

Jamie Allen, secretary general of the Hong Kong-based Asian Corporate Governance Association, said at the March 29 meeting that while some investors paid attention to corporate governance in Australia in the 1980s and in the U.K. in the 1990s, it was not until 2010 that Britain set up its stewardship code.     [FULL  STORY]

Subsidy program boosts new car sales

CUSTOMERS AT WORK:There fewer holidays last month compared with February, which allowed new car sales to increase by 20,000 in the last week of the month

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 05, 2016
By: Aileen Chuang / Staff reporter

New car sales picked up sharply last month from February as promotion campaigns by dealers and the government’s subsidy policy paid off.

New car sales reached 37,589 units last month, indicating a 74.3 percent increase from February’s 21,561 units, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) data showed.

Both Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) and China Motor Corp (CMC, 中華汽車), the nation’s leading car dealers, reported double-digit percentage increases from a year ago.

The increase had much to do with the government stimulus that provides NT$50,000 (US$1,544) in subsidies for new car buyers.     [FULL  STORY]

‘Negative energy’ book tops bookstore bestseller list

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-04
By: Central News Agency

A book that promotes “negative energy” has topped an Eslite Bookstore bestseller list just two weeks after its publication, the bookstore said Monday.

The book, titled “NeEnergy: The Power of G-bye”, is a collection of witty, humorous and self-deprecating one-liners and short remarks about work, life, dreams and love.

It currently ranks number 1 on the bestseller list of books in the leisure and entertainment category.

The author, Lin Yu-sheng, was a computer and communication engineering major who quit his day job to start his own copywriting business last year, according to the bookstore.

He has over 340,000 fans on his Facebook page, which posts his short remarks and encourages people to “receive some negative energy every day.”     [FULL  STORY]

46% of children aged under 3 have poor eyesight in 2015: report

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/04
By: Chen Cheng-wei and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, April 4 (CNA) Around 46.1 percent of children aged under 12 were diagnosed as

(CNA file photo)

(CNA file photo)

having poor eyesight in academic year 2015, down by 0.9 percentage points from the previous year, according to a report by the Directorate General of Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS).

Taiwanese children aged from three to 11 spent about 4.4 hours a day watching television, using computers, surfing the Internet and playing computer games in 2013, the report showed, citing a national health survey by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

This marked a decline of 0.5 hours from the 4.9 hours each day in 2009, when the previous survey was conducted, the data showed. The poll results were included in the report compiled by the DGBAS.

However, the period of time children staring at monitors remained far longer than the one hour limit as suggested by the Ophthalmological Society of Taiwan, the report said.     [FULL  STORY]

Protesters urge harsher penalties for murderers

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 05, 2016
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

Protesters yesterday festooned the gates and walls of the legislature in Taipei with flowers,

Folded paper cranes printed with prayers of well-being and calls for the “severe punishment” of murderers festoon the legislature’s boundary fence in Taipei yesterday. Photo: Abraham Gerber, Taipei Times

Folded paper cranes printed with prayers of well-being and calls for the “severe punishment” of murderers festoon the legislature’s boundary fence in Taipei yesterday. Photo: Abraham Gerber, Taipei Times

ribbons and paper cranes to urge the passage of harsher penalties for murderers, following the decapitation of a four-year-old girl on Monday last week.

Yellow ribbons strung with paper cranes hung from the bars of the western fence of the legislative compound, with white roses and yellow chrysanthemums tied to the top of the bars.

The cranes were folded on site from paper printed with calls for the enforcement of “punitive laws” and “severe punishment,” along with prayers for well-being.

Event organizer Kelly Chen (陳思婷) said that the event was intended as a memorial to the four-year-old girl who was decapitated in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) last week, while spurring legislators to enact harsher penalties for child murderers.

“Murderers deserve to be sentenced to death, but anyone who kills a defenseless child should be subject to severe punishment before the death sentence is carried out,” she said, citing “whipping” as an example. “Otherwise, people won’t care enough because they know that the worse they can expect is a painless death.”     [FULL  STORY]

International immigration literature looked upon to inject new perspectives

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-04
By: Jennifer Lin

The National Taiwan Museum and Quartet Cultural & Creative have jointly organized a Taiwan-Indonesia bilateral literary forum, with the first session being held on April 3. This forum will invite two famed Indonesian writers and four Taiwanese writers to talk about the spirit of international immigration literature and the environment for literature creation.

Pipiet Senja, dubbed as the “mother of migrant workers” by young Indonesian migrant workers around the world, and Wu Ming-yi, a professor in the Department of Sinophone Literatures at the National Dong Hwa University, will engage in in-depth discussion on the topic of migrant workers’ literature and culture. He predicts that ratio of young writers with multiple origins of races and immigrants will increase and the languages and culture of their home countries will inject new perspectives into Taiwan’s literature and culture.

Nowadays, universities in Taiwan have an “imbalance of culture”, with almost no schools having a Southeast Asian language-related department, and very few Taiwanese students chose languages of Southeastern Asia as their second language. “It is a great regret that a deep culture discrimination exists,” Wu said.

Pipiet doesn’t think that language is a hindrance between cultural exchange. She found that new immigrants can learn local language very quickly, she said. When she teaches them how to compose, she often encourages them to write letters to their children and practice writing at the same time.     [FULL  STORY]

Thai man caught in bid to take NT$2.4 million in cash to Bangkok

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/04
By: Chiu Chun-chin and Lilian Wu

Taipei, April 4 (CNA) A Thai man trying to smuggle NT$2.4 million (US$74,220) out of

Photo courtesy of the Aviation Police Bureau

Photo courtesy of the Aviation Police Bureau

Taiwan was intercepted at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, aviation police reported Monday night.

Police said the man was scheduled to take a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok departing at 8:05 p.m. but was found to be carrying the cash in his luggage in NT$1,000 bills.

The Thai national, who claimed he wanted to carry the money out of Taiwan to shop and had no bad intentions, missed his flight because of the long time it took to count the money, which was later returned to him.     [FULL  STORY]