Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Ma’s day in ‘Provence’ could cost

Taipei Times Editorial

Typhoon Morakot was a turning point for the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). Its mishandling of the disaster response made a mockery of the slogan — “We’re ready” — adopted by Ma’s campaign team during the 2008 presidential election. After the Morakot fiasco, Ma’s popularity rating plunged from 70 percent to just over 30, and never really recovered. It’s been two years since the typhoon wreaked havoc and the government is still hoping to pick itself up and dust itself off. It’s a shame Ma can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth.

Ma, keen to show solidarity with Morakot victims, spent Saturday in Majia Township (瑪家), Pingtung County, in a new “permanent housing” unit built for those left homeless by the disaster. He said it was a pleasant experience, describing his stay as balmy and comfortable and likening the area to Provence, France, and “Peach Blossom Land” — the latter being the paradise on earth described in a popular Chinese fable.

Tsai would have good relations with US, China: Chen

Taipei Times

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) could expect a sound relationship with the US and China if she were to win January’s presidential election, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) wrote in an article published yesterday.

“I’m confident we will have the first female president in Taiwan’s history in January,” Chen, who is serving a 17-and-a-half-year jail sentence for corruption and money laundering, wrote in his latest column titled “The truth you did not know.”

The DPP presidential candidate would stand behind her pledge to safeguard Taiwan’s sovereignty and not make deals with China in exchange for personal benefit, Chen wrote in the article, which was dated July 30.

Tibet enters new era as PM Sangay sworn in

John Isom and Fiona McConnell

Yesterday, a 43-year-old Harvard graduate and legal academic became the first non-monastic, directly elected prime minister of Tibet’s exiled government.

The swearing in of Tibetan Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, not only ended more than 350 years of political leadership by the lineage of the Dalai Lamas over the Tibetan polity, it also capped a half-century of the secular maturation of Tibet’s democratically elected government-in-exile.

Most of what the world knows about Tibet has come through the 14th Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959. During more than 50 years in exile, the Dalai Lama has been recognized around the world for his tireless devotion to peace and non--violence and in 1989 he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Leaving Taiwan, Economics, the Dutch VOC and the Rest of the Story

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

What made the Dutch East India Company (VOC) leave Taiwan? Ask any Taiwanese school boy versed in his history and he will tell you that Zheng Cheng-gong (aka Koxinga and son of Zheng Zhi-long Iquan) fleeing the Manchu takeover of China came to Taiwan with a force of some 25,000 men in 1661. After a nine month siege, he captured Fort Zeelandia (Anping) and thus forced the Dutch out of Taiwan. All well and good, but that rendering is not entirely accurate. True, Koxinga, who died that same year, did capture Fort Zeelandia in 1662, and true the Dutch left. But few books continue on and relate how the Dutch returned in 1664 and took Keelung. Once there they re-built the former Spanish Fort San Salvador, named it Fort Noord Holland and set up shop in hopes of establishing trade with the Manchu Qing. Ironically, it would be that same Manchu Qing government in Beijing and not Zheng's successors that would be responsible for making the Dutch decide to leave Taiwan for good in 1668. The Dutch side of how all that happened is brought out in greater detail in two recent books published in late 2010.

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