[quote=“Omniloquacious”]I just happen to have a higher opinion of Ma than you do. I believe that most of the less-than-admirable things he has said and done in the recent past have been done most unwillingly but out of necessity to appease the hardliners in his party. If he does become president, his leadership of the party will be secure, he’ll be his own man and all that will change.[/quote] This is a good point - some of the about-faces that Ma have done that made him lose credibility seem to be due to the deep blue elements in the KMT. I often wonder what he would be like if he were not so easily manipulated by them - I’ve certainly seen him say and do the right things at times. But, it’s hard to say how much of what he does is genuine and how much is trying to please somebody or the other. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced that if he were president he would simply be able to ignore the the extreme elements in his party.
So a shift back to one-party politics, with DPP as the sole party? 
[/quote]
No, I fully expect that several Taiwan-centered parties will form once the KMT has been reduced, and we can have actual politics here. Right now we’re engaged with a pro-authoritarian party backed by a neighboring power out to suppress the emergence of a polity centered on Taiwan, stuck in the politcs of survival which makes Taiwan-centered forward movement difficult. Not that it hasn’t happened, but good things take longer.
Vorkosigan
Actually what ROC needs are people who are focused on statecraft. Especially with PRC. The problem is that people who claim to love Taiwan have no clue what to do with power once they have it. Just by mouthing off sound-bytes to maximize position doesn’t address a very specific need in ROC for good statecraft. Unfortunately, negotiation and mediation are not a DPP strong point.
Racism, exclusion, and corruption are DPP strong points, though. But at least the DPP are not Japanese apologist like the TSU.
the old people say,
I don’t like the DPP
but I hate the KMT!
The young people say,
I have nothing against the KMT
but neither do I want to associate with the DPP.
–
which younger people?
Ask them if they consider studying Chinese Classics is important for their future jobs… and how about the correct study of geography? Like China is on the other side of the strait, not Mainland…
How much do kids learn today of the Japanese occupation? They can see the infrastructures built by them everywhere, yet they consider they were built by the KMT…
Clean up the education of it’s China-centric and KMT’zation as it should have been done and you’ll see the youth people becoming more and more against the KMT. Teach them the correct facts and you’ll get a very different story…
been there, saw it, lived it…
[quote=“mr_boogie”]
How much do kids learn today of the Japanese occupation? They can see the infrastructures built by them everywhere, yet they consider they were built by the KMT…
Clean up the education of it’s China-centric and KMT’zation as it should have been done and you’ll see the youth people becoming more and more against the KMT. Teach them the correct facts and you’ll get a very different story…
been there, saw it, lived it…[/quote]
Indeed, young people in taiwan need to become more familiar with the history of the Japanese occupation. Such as as the tens of thousands of taiwanese they slaughtered during their occupation of taiwan. Who killed more taiwanese, KMT or Japanese? KMT-bashers dare not to face this stark historical issue.
[quote]which younger people?
Ask them if they consider studying Chinese Classics is important for their future jobs[/quote]
Are you suggesting there are no Chinese majors in colleges throughout ROC and PRC?
Not to mention wenyenwen is often use to express oneself and is tested in college entrance exams.
Just because you don’t see any value in being educated in the classics, no matter what culture, doesn’t neccessarily mean they are not valuable and there are no careers in them.
The last time the Chinese though the classics were useless was during the Cultural Revolution, we already know how that turned out.
One can look to the ABC population for those type of Chinese people. Hate to break the news to you, even people raised outside of Taiwan see value in KMT policy on the Strait Issue.
Well a.c. if I can’t correct your logic or your politics
I can help you with your English -
“Not to mention wenyenwen is often use(d!) to express
oneself and is tested in college entrance exams.”
I think most people is aware of the killings of the Japanese, that is some part of history that the KMT didn’t wash…
But what about the rest? Isn’t Taiwanese advanced agriculture result of the Japanese Invasion? Most of old people I know tell me that the first years of KMT here where the worst of their lives. Not to speak of what happened to the Taiwanese when the KMT decided to create the new dollar.
So tell me, how many infrastructures you know in Taiwan that were Japanese built?
The rising prosperity of the agricultural sector in taiwan over the 2nd half of the 20th century was due to KMT’s land reform policies from 1949 to 1953 which encouraged farmers to become owners of their land.
As for infrastructure, you surely don’t mean the modern infrastructure that exists today. The Japanese left in 1945. Taiwan’s economic boom during the 1970s-1980s, you think japan had more to do with that than KMT? Actually, it was due to KMT’s policy of export driven industrialization which started in 1958.
We agree on one thing, everybody is taiwan needs to become more familiar with their history.
come to the east side and see how many infrastructure look and are old. The current highway to Hualian was built by the Japanese, and, up till now, it is the basic only good access they have.
Most of the railways were Japanese built, as also most of the river protections…
according to Wiki
“Taiwan: In the 1950s, after the Nationalist government came to Taiwan, land reform and community development was carried out by the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction. This course of action was made attractive, in part, by the fact that many of the large landowners were Japanese who had fled and also by the fact that the Kuomintang were mostly from the mainland and had few ties to the remaining indigenous landowners.”
The indigenous population was highly skilled in agriculture, the whole problem was land distribution (specially the abandoned land that once had Japanese landowners).
The agricultural sector has been ailing since the early 1960s. Its prosperity grew because farmers switched from farming into industry.
Actually, Taiwan put in little new infrastructure until after 1972. Things got so bad that at the beginning of the 1970s international shipping associations threatened to boycott the island unless the government got off its lazy ass. See the appendix to Ho’s Economic Development of Taiwan 1860-1970.
Yes, Japan had a lot to do with it. Japanese firms were among the first to come in the 1960s. Japanese infrastructure was the basis for the nation’s transformation in the 1950s and 1960s. It was the Japanese who taught the Taiwanese the ideas of progress, rule of law, and orderly civil society.
Export driven industrialization did not begin until after 1960, and only because the US, in conjunction with technocrats in the government, pushed the Chiang regime to open. The US in fact withheld a portion of aid in 1960 because the government did not go far enough.
…as your post makes clear.
Vorkosigan
Thanks Vorkosigan for filling in the blanks…
Vorkosigan,
That is a one sided interpretation. From an ROC point of view those aids packages were no more than high interest loans to secure US interest in Taiwan. ROC suspicion of US aid goes all the way back to the 1940, where overpayment of aid to the US, force the ROC to ask the USA to “donate” a college to ROC.
As for infrastructure in terms of international distribution, those were mostly secured by WSR, because they were forced to leave Taiwan, shortly after realizing how unwelcomed there were by the BSR. Many of those export driven networks were established by WSR family that were forced to leave.
So everytime you think USA and export in terms of Taiwan economic development, you should also thank the KMT and WSR individuals that made it happen.
A hick farmer BSR, that nevers leaves Taiwan, the core of the DPP supporter, is never going to be able to grasp the fact exporting requires just a little bit of international experience. Xenophobic under educated individuals are a bad fit. Great factory workers for the “made in Taiwan” era…but that has long since past.
Not entirely true. A result of the land reform was the abolishment of the feudal relationship between landlord and tenant that existed during the Japanese colonial era. Tenants could not own land during the colonial era. Most of the crop that the tenants produced were shipped to Japan.
Land reform ended this feudal relationship by allowing these tenants to become landowning entrepreneurs who could sell their crop on the market for profit. These former tenants accumulated wealth as land values appreciated over time.
Elite landowners also accumulated wealth by utilizing their stock/bond shares as capital to form their own industrial enterprises, helping transform Taiwan from an agrarian society into an industrial/manufacturing one. An indirect result of the land reform was the creation of the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1961, since former elite landowners needed a medium to trade the shares given to them under the land reform.
A long lasting result of the ROC’s land reform was the flattening of Taiwanese society between the “haves” and the “have nots”. The magic formula was appreciating land and stock values over time that made the outcome a win-win situation for the farmers and their former landlords.
US aid helped provide some of the capital funding for the land reform, but that is only one part of the equation. Much of the financing also came from capital brought to Taiwan from Nanjing banks and Shanghai entrepreneurs in 1949.
I believe that apart from the usual utter absence of intellectual honesty and impartiality, your post or more specifically the sentence quoted above is also sorely missing the qualifier “but failed dismally to make any inroads into getting them to adopt any of the above in Taiwan.”
In fact, if you care to glance outside your window you’ll be faced with overwhelming evidence that nobody thus far has managed to teach the Taiwanese the first bloody thing about progress, rule of law, and orderly civil society… :s
I believe that apart from the usual utter absence of intellectual honesty and impartiality, your post or more specifically the sentence quoted above is also sorely missing the qualifier “but failed dismally to make any inroads into getting them to adopt any of the above in Taiwan.”
In fact, if you care to glance outside your window you’ll be faced with overwhelming evidence that nobody thus far has managed to teach the Taiwanese the first bloody thing about progress, rule of law, and orderly civil society… :s[/quote]
My wife’s mother was first married as the “little wife” of a local businessman. 30 years later her university educated daughter was free to marry a foreigner. No progress. Don’t be daft.
As these posts have made clear, history is whatever we want to perceive it to be. Such as the view that most or all the progress taiwan made in the 2nd half of the 20th century is due to Japan and/or USA and KMT had no part in it. Party on!
sure, sure… anecdotal straw man evidence of progress is easy to find, especially if the starting point and definition of progress is low enough… I guess you’re a “the glass is a fractional percentage of 1/3 full… everything’s great!” kind of guy… I’m a “for pete’s sake it’s 2007 and this island is rich why the hell is the glass so pitifully empty” kind of guy… different strokes, same underlying reality… 