Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/12/02
By: Joseph Yeh

Taipei, Dec. 2 (CNA) The ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) major defeat

in last Saturday’s local government elections was the result of voter dissatisfaction with its performance rather than a desire to move closer to China, two former U.S. diplomats said Sunday in Taipei.

The DPP, which came into power in May 2016, won control of only six of Taiwan’s 22 city and county governments in the Nov. 24 polls, down from the 13 it held previously, while the China-friendly opposition Kuomintang (KMT) won 15 seats, a net pickup of nine.

Some foreign media reports described the result as a major setback for the Tsai administration and a victory for Beijing.

During an exclusive interview with CNA on Sunday, however, former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Stephen Young said he saw the result as an “ordinary reaction” of Taiwanese voters who expressed discontent over the DPP’s performance over the last two years.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 03, 2018
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday announced plans to release its first

animal welfare white paper next year and reduce the use of animals in scientific research, as an animal protection fair was held on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei.

It was the first large animal protection event staged on the boulevard, and the 150 stalls were organized by the six special municipalities’ animal protection agencies, veterinarians’ associations and civic groups from across the nation, the council said.

Many pets and their owners visited the Taipei Veterinary Medical Association’s stall, where volunteers were offering free health checks, blood tests, rabies vaccinations and microchip implants, association chairman Chang Chen-tung (張振東) said.

Such services could cost NT$3,000 or NT$4,000 if performed at veterinarian clinics, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Han Kuo-yu of the pro-Beijing Kuomintang stunned the president’s party in Kaohsiung

Nikkei Asian Review
Date: December 01, 2018
By: Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang, Nikkei staff writers

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan — Three days after a stunning election win, the mayor-elect of the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung made his first public appearance since polling day with an impromptu broadcast on Facebook.

More than 100,000 viewers tuned in at 10 p.m. last Tuesday to watch the 61-year-old Han Kuo-yu, sporting scruffy pajamas, speak on the broadcast hosted by his 23-year-old daughter. The Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) politician said he had been sleeping off a cold and was trying to form a new team for the city government, before making a slew of promises that echoed his slogan of “showing Kaohsiung the money.”

“I want to let everyone know that we’ve got more than 10 companies telling us that they are willing to make big bets in Kaohsiung,” he said, using rhetoric akin to U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to bring jobs back to America.

Having reached out to Terry Gou, chairman of key iPhone assembler Foxconn Technology, after the Nov. 24 election to encourage the company to invest in the city, the self-styled “CEO mayor” then amplified his claims of business interest in the region.    [FULL  STORY]

The KMT may try and push a model of cross-Strait cooperation pioneered by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/12/01
By: Brian Hioe, 破土 New Bloom

International views of 2018 local elections in Taiwan, unsurprisingly, have in many cases skewed towards the assessment that China may have been the ultimate victor in nine-in-one elections. This is evident in the coverage of the event by a number of western media outlets.

This includes headlines such as “Will Taiwan Be the First Domino to Fall to China?” in a New York Times op-ed, “Beijing’s Ground Game in Taiwan Is Growing Smarter” in Bloomberg, and “The big winner in Taiwan’s weekend elections? China” in CNBC. A particularly egregious example would be a BBC article by Cindy Sui that asks the question of “Taiwan’s political earthquake: Does China gain from Tsai Ing-wen’s losses?” in its title, but which ends with the conclusion that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s loss is because it remains committed to the political independence of Taiwan and that this is why voters have punished it. A number of commentators have criticized this article as bordering on Chinese propaganda. Many have also asked the question as to whether Chinese election interference was another factor in the KMT’s victory.    [FULL  STORY]

By 4:00 a.m. in the morning Dec. 1 there were over 100 people lined up outside the cram school

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/12/01
By: Duncan Deaeth, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – To demonstrate their commitment to providing their children a good education, many parents in Taiwan are willing to go to extremes.

A cram school in New Taipei’s Yonghe Ｄistrict (永和區) with a reputation built over 30 years recently opened up registration for a junior high mathematics course on Saturday, Dec. 1, but parents and children were queuing up as early as 10 p.m. on Nov. 30 to ensure a spot in the program for their child.

While it may seem a bit much to spend an entire night outside a children’s cram school, for some parents it is worth it. Apple Daily reports that at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, there were nearly 100 people lined up waiting to register for the next round of courses.

An instructor speaking to the media said that the lines are a traditional method, and the fairest way, to determine who enters the classes.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date:2018/12/01
By: Lu Hsin-hui, Fang Cheng-hsiang and Frances Huang 

Taipei, Dec. 1 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Saturday extended her condolences to the family of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who died at the age of 94 in Houston.

Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said Tsai could not help but feel very sad in the wake of the death of the former U.S. president and was reluctant to say goodbye to the longtime friend of Taiwan.

The death was confirmed by family spokesman Jim McGrath, who said Bush died shortly after 10 p.m. Friday.

Bush was the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. After leaving office in January 1993, Bush and his wife Barbara Bush visited Taiwan for three days in December.    [FULL  STORY]

‘GIVE PEOPLE HOPE’: The premier admitted that the government’s communication with the public was less than ideal and vowed to adopt a ‘more humanistic approach’

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 02, 2018
By: Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday initiated the first stage of Cabinet reforms

after the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) losses in the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 24, approving the resignation of three ministers.

Lai called a Cabinet-level meeting at the Executive Yuan in Taipei to discuss policy reforms, in which he approved resignations tendered by Minister of Transportation and Communications Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀), Environmental Protection Administration Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) and Council of Agriculture Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢).

All ministers were at the meeting except Hakka Affairs Council Minister Lee Yong-te (李永得), who had prior engagements, but had rendered a report on ways to improve his agency prior to the meeting.

After the results of the elections were announced on Sunday last week, Wu, Lee Ying-yuan and Lin had tendered verbal resignations to Lai, and they yesterday again expressed their desire to resign after presenting reports on how to improve their organizations, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka told a post-meeting news conference.    [FULL  STORY]

Third parties made breakthroughs in Taiwan’s 2018 regional elections, but supporters are still left wondering what could have been.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/11/30
By: Dafydd Fell, Taiwan Insight

Four years ago, on the eve of the last round of local elections in Taiwan, I wrote a piece looking at the prospects of smaller parties. Today I would like to reflect on what has changed and how we can best understand the challenger parties in 2018. Potentially small parties can play an important role in democracies. They often advocate policies and represent minorities that are neglected by mainstream parties and can bring diversity into political life.

Taiwan’s smaller parties had seemed to be in terminal decline from 2004 through to 2010. There was a small recovery as the People First Party (PFP) and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) returned to parliament in 2012. However, a more important development appeared to be the Sunflower occupation of parliament in the spring of 2014. One of the causes of the wave of social protest during the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) era had been dissatisfaction with mainstream party politics and thus calls for a third force became much louder in society. I recall being on a panel with Sunflower leader Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) in the summer of 2014 in London in which at one point large sections of the audience shouted out “Form a Party.”

Credit: Reuters / Pichi ChuangActivists take part in a sit-in to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the Sunflower Movement outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, Mar. 18, 2015.
The Nov. 2014 elections were held just over six months after the end of the Sunflower occupation so it looked like a historic opportunity to bring alternative voices into Taiwan’s local politics. In that election there were two types of small parties. The first were the splinter parties such as the PFP, New Party (NP) and TSU whose politicians had largely defected from the mainstream parties and tended to have a similar policy outlook to their parent parties. The second were alternative parties such as the Green Party Taiwan (GPT) and Trees Party (TP) that stressed a largely different set of issues and polices from the mainstream parties.   [FULL  STORY]

Taiwanese man who had won contest to become a porn actor in Japan hangs himself in elementary school in Taoyuan

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/11/30
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Taiwanese man who had won a contest to become an actor in Japan’s adult film industry committed suicide by hanging himself in an elementary school near his home in Taoyuan on Wednesday night (Nov. 28), reported ETtoday.

On Wednesday evening, the 30-year-old man, surnamed Lee (李), told his family that he wanted out go out to exercise. However, he never returned home and worried about his mental state, his family hurriedly filed a missing person’s report with the police.

Lee’s brother searched his home and found that Lee had parked his car in front of a junior high school, but there was no one inside the vehicle. After expanding his search, he found Lee hanging by his neck in the playground of a nearby elementary school.

Despite being rushed to Min-Sheng General Hospital, doctors were unable to resuscitate him and he was pronounced dead. When police arrived at the scene, they found no signs of foul play.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/11/30
By: Li Shu-hua and Ko Lin 

Taipei, Nov. 30 (CNA) Legislative by-elections for seats vacated in Taipei and Taichung during recent elections for local government offices will be held on Jan. 26, 2019, the Central Election Commission (CEC) announced on Friday.

One election will be held for the seat representing Taipei’s second electoral district after Taipei mayoral candidate Yao Wen-chih (姚文智) announced on Nov. 18 he would give up his seat as a legislator regardless of what happened in the election.

Yao finished a distant third in the mayoral race.

The other election will fill the seat representing Taichung’s fifth electoral district left vacant by Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕). Lu resigned as a legislator on Nov. 20 before being elected as the city’s new mayor on Nov. 24.    [FULL  STORY]