Many fear the island, rather than the U.S., will bear the brunt of Beijing’s ire

The Wall Street Journal
Date: Dec. 6, 2016
By: Andrew Browne

TAIPEI—As soon as President Tsai Ing-wen won election this year, the long lines of mainland

Chinese visitors waiting for pineapple cakes outside the Chia Te bakery began to shrink.

China switched off its tourist flows as economic punishment against a candidate with many pro-indepedence supporters. It was an instant blow to the owner of Taipei’s famous bakery, Chen Tang-peng, whose semisweet pastries delight Chinese palates.

Now, says the celebrated chef, Beijing has the island “by the throat.”

This vindictiveness is why many in Taiwan aren’t celebrating Ms. Tsai’s telephone call with Donald Trump, the first time a Taiwan leader has spoken with a U.S. President-elect since at least 1979, when Washington broke off formal ties and recognized Beijing.

Although the photograph of the historic moment shows Ms. Tsai wearing a satisfied smile as she hunches over a speakerphone, there has been no public jubilation. People are bracing for Chinese retaliation, fearing Taiwan, not the U.S., will bear the brunt of Beijing’s ire.    [FULL  STORY]

‘It’s exciting for me to be part of a historical process. That’s what our job is for. We are documenting history.’

The News Lens
Date: 2016/12/06
By: Olivia Yang

“I’m always very interested in extraordinary personalities that have an impact on society.”

Marco Wilms is nestled comfortably in an old sofa and dressed in black from head to toe when he meets with The News Lens International in his Taipei office-cum-apartment.

The Berlin-born film director was in Taiwan screening his 2014 documentary on the Arab Spring, “Art War,” in the 2016 Urban Nomad Film Festival this March when he first heard of the name “Freddy Lim (林昶佐).”

“I think I went to see him in the parliament the next day,” says Wilms.

Lim, an internationally renowned lead singer for heavy metal band Chthonic, is also a civic activist and member of the New Power Party (NPP). Along with four other NPP members, Lim was elected as a legislator in Taiwan’s January general elections for a four-year term.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/12/06
By: Elaine Hou

Taipei, Dec. 6 (CNA) A former White House official said on Tuesday that the recent call between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was an “important step” in the direction many Republicans have advocated for, but added that the move remains a “small step,” during a visit to Taiwan.

“We should not over-analyze or overreact to the fact that your current and our future leader spoke by phone,” said Stephen Yates, deputy national security adviser to then-U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, during a media conference in Taipei.

Noting that it is reasonable for the people of Taiwan to expect friendly relations from the incoming administration in the United States, he said “it would not be reasonable to anticipate major changes in U.S. policy at this point.”    [FULL  STORY]

‘HOLIDAY KILLERS’:The DPP had promised not to scrap seven holidays, but it ‘turned into another KMT,’ after assuming power, trade union director Chan Su-chen said

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 07, 2016
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

Labor campaigners yesterday rallied outside the Legislative Yuan building to protest against

proposed amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), demanding that lawmakers scrap the amendments, which they said would institutionalize inferior working conditions prevalent in the nation.

More than 100 protesters from the Workers’ Struggle Alliance, Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions and the Trade Union of Electrical, Electronic and Information Workers in Taiwan gathered outside the Legislative Yuan, criticizing what they called the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) attempt to force the amendments through the legislature.

The proposed amendments seek to scrap seven national holidays and implement “one flexible rest day and one fixed day off” to accommodate a 40-hour workweek bill passed last year.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: December 7, 2016
By: Stephanie Chao

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Amendments to the Labor Standards Act passed a third legislative reading on

Tuesday, after a day of gridlocked legislative proceedings that saw lawmakers wrangling to occupy the podium.

President Tsai Ing-wen thanked the Executive Yuan and Legislature for their “time and effort” after the bill was passed.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers used their majority to push the controversial labor bill into a second legislative reading Tuesday afternoon, after voting to extend the plenary session.

Despite objections from opposition parties during clause-by-clause votes on the bill, some of the most contested portions still passed. These included Article 36 of the Labor Standards Act, more commonly known as the “one flexible, one fixed day off” clause, which allows employers to force workers to report to work on one of their two designated days off.    [FULL  STORY]

When Chef Peng had a rstaurant in New York in the 1970’s, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was one of his loyal customers. Photo Credit: Taiwan Business TOPICS

The News Lens
Date: 2016/12/05
By: Edward White

Does the historic Trump-Tsai call mark the beginning of the end for America’s long-held strategy with

China?

The Dec. 2 phone conversation between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) may signal Washington’s longstanding approach to Taiwan and China, developed by Henry Kissinger, could be drawing to an end, a visiting academic in Taiwan says.

The rapprochement between the U.S. and China during the 1970s was spearheaded by Kissinger, who served as national security advisor and secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, and continued in the latter role under Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford.

As U.S.-China scholars have noted, under Nixon, the U.S. pursued closer ties with China, at the expense of Taiwan, as Nixon felt it was “intrinsically important because of China’s size and inevitable importance” and also because he “saw China as a useful counterbalance to the Soviet Union.”

“To Nixon and Kissinger the overarching geopolitical significance of a relationship with China justified eliminating all intervening obstacles,” late historian Nancy Bernkopf Tucker said in an analysis of Sino-U.S. relations of the 1960s and 1970s, published in The Journal of American History in 2005.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016/12/05
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump confirmed a brief phone conversation with “the President of

Taiwan” in a Twitter post Friday evening and sparked a backlash against both Trump and Taiwan among Chinese media, including the Communist Party-sponsored Huanqiu website, an outlet of the People’s Daily, which has threatened to “punish Taiwan by snatching away a few of its last remaining diplomatic allies and let Tsai Ing-wen pay the price,” in an editorial published on Sunday.

The 10-minute phone call is the first of its kind since the U.S. severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979.

On Saturday, Beijing first reacted to news of the call with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying the call was nothing but “a small trick by Taiwan” and “is not going to change the longstanding one-China policy acknowledged by international society.”

In an English editorial run by the state-funded news agency China Daily on Sunday, the call is considered to have exposed “his (Trump’s) and his transition team’s inexperience in dealing with foreign affairs.” The article continued to say that Trump will have to “recognize the significance of prudently and appropriately addressing these sensitive issues after being inaugurated,” as he is to shoulder the responsibility of safeguarding the interests of the United States, which “includes a healthy relationship with China.” With that, “he cannot afford to damage the one-China policy,” the article read.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/12/05
By: Yu Kai-hsiang and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Dec. 5 (CNA) Taiwan investigators last week seized more than 200 kilograms of cocaine that was packed inside car batteries imported from Brazil, the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB) said Monday.

During the raid on the cargo at Kaohsiung Customs, investigators also found not just cocaine but also 51.3 kg of amphetamine, the investigation bureau said.

It was the biggest drug haul in the country’s history, the bureau said, estimating the cocaine’s market value at NT$2 billion (US$62.5 million).

The raid was carried out in a joint operation by Taipei district prosecutors, MJIB agents, and coast guard and customs officers after an investigation into a Taipei-based import/export company, the bureau said.    [FULL  STORY]

TSAI-TRUMP:Stephen Yates discussed the telephone chat in an interview with Voice of America, while former AIT director William Stanton spoke about it on a show in Taipei

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 06, 2016
By: Staff writer, with CNA

President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) congratulatory telephone call to US president-elect Donald Trump

on Friday has been described by two former US officials as a positive development in the ties between the two nations.

The call not only carried symbolic weight, but also had strategic significance for the incoming US administration regarding trade talks with Taiwan, said Stephen Yates, an expert on Asia who served as deputy national security adviser to former US vice president Dick Cheney.

In an interview on Sunday on Voice of America, Yates said he was certain that during the call, Trump addressed Tsai as president of Taiwan because she is Taiwan’s president, a reality that some people in the US and China deny.

Trump knows well how to separate the symbolic and the substantial meanings of the congratulatory call, said Yates, chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, who is scheduled to visit Taiwan this week to meet with business clients.    [FULL  STORY]