Campaigning in Taiwan

Of pigs and persimmons

For once, China is not the focus of an election campaign

Dec 3rd 2011 | TAICHUNG | from the print edition

TAIWAN’S president, Ma Ying-jeou, facing an unexpectedly tough battle for re-election in January, has been devoting unusual attention to the woes of the island’s persimmon farmers. Handling relations with China has often been the most bitterly contested issue in Taiwanese politics. But with cross-strait relations now much improved and worries about the island’s economy growing, Taiwan’s political focus has shifted. China too, though concerned that the relatively conciliatory Mr Ma might lose, appears preoccupied with affairs at home.

Despite this shift, Taiwanese politics has lost little of its rancour. In the past few days, Mr Ma and his party, the Kuomintang (KMT), have been squabbling bitterly with the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its leader, Tsai Ing-wen, over the key question of persimmons. Mr Ma has accused the DPP of causing “terror” among persimmon farmers by saying in its campaign literature that the price of the fleshy, orange fruit had slumped. This, he said, had caused people to shun vendors selling the fruit at their actual, much higher, price. The DPP denied charges of being ill informed and heartless, but to push his point home, Mr Ma visited a wholesale fruit market in the Greater Taichung area of central Taiwan, where he pledged to buy five tonnes of persimmons for distribution to Taichung’s needy.

In this section

• A new Great Game?
• Red retreat
• »Of pigs and persimmons
• Not reunited
• Poor by definition
• Tribal Japan

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In the build-up to no less suspenseful presidential elections in 2000 and 2004, the two main parties engaged in more momentous struggles over the island’s identity, fuelled by threats from China. Both those elections were won by the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian. By the time of the elections in 2008, the DPP’s popularity had plunged and few doubted that Mr Ma would win (Mr Chen has since been jailed for corruption). But a simultaneous referendum in 2008, engineered by the departing Mr Chen on whether Taiwan should apply to join the UN, ensured more fierce debate about how to deal with China.

The DPP has now switched tactics. Ms Tsai, despite having served as the government’s top official responsible for China relations during Mr Chen’s presidency, has largely avoided pushing her party’s traditional line about the island’s separateness from China. Hsiao Bi-khim, a DPP spokeswoman, says one thing the party has learned is that cross-strait relations need to be handled through “consensus-building” instead of as a “divisive campaigning tool”. Ms Tsai has said she will not scrap a free-trade deal signed with China last year, despite her party’s formerly strong condemnation of it.

But China is likely to be anxious about Ms Tsai’s rejection of what is commonly referred to as the “1992 consensus”, which the KMT says was an understanding that the two sides would uphold the idea of “one China”, but agree to disagree about what this means. This consensus (though the DPP insists there never was one) formed the basis of China’s decision to reach agreements with Mr Ma’s administration on such issues as trade, the start of cross-strait flights and allowing Chinese tourists to visit the island. But few expect these accords to unravel. China sees them as useful tools for boosting its influence in Taiwan. And as China prepares for sweeping leadership changes late next year, many in Taiwan believe it is unlikely to be in a mood for conflict.

Gaining voter support in Taichung and neighbouring counties is regarded by both parties as a crucial test of their ability to win overall, both in the presidential polls on January 14th and in elections on the same day for the national parliament. The region is a buffer between the DPP’s stronghold in the south of the island and the KMT’s in the north. Mr Ma’s decision to go there to investigate persimmon prices was an attempt to win over its farming community, which the DPP has been assiduously courting. Ms Tsai chose as her running-mate a former minister of agriculture, Su Jia-chyuan, who is popular in the area.

To encourage support from farmers and other less-affluent citizens (and poke at the KMT’s big-business associations), the DPP has been deploying plastic piggy banks. It has distributed some 200,000 of them and urged people to fill them with small donations to the party that will be handed over in a mass-emptying outside the presidential palace in Taipei on December 10th. The brightly coloured little objects appear to be in demand. “If we win, it will be on the back of a piggy revolution”, says the DPP’s Ms Hsiao. If so, China might at least be a little comforted that for once in a DPP campaign, it was not the main focus.

from the print edition | Asia

Of pigs and persimmons

Dec 2nd 2011, 07:49

In general, Chinese name consists of Chinese words, which includes a “family name” as well as some words of “given name”. Basically, one’s characteristic can be recognized from the interpretation of these words’ respective formation, sound and the meaning in the logistics of “Ying-Yang”. This method is called “word – testament”, the branch of “Ying-Yang”. From the example of Tsai Ing-Wen, the word “Ing” contains “center” in the “grass” category while “Wen” is the leader of “Wen” category, which means literature or literacy concerned. It’s just a boring joke to say “she is English”. By contrast, the words “Ma Ying-Jeou”, also having the same word “Ying”, contain “Jeou” which often infers “nearly full” or “numerous” (three, six and nine always represent “limitless” in many literature of Chinese Tang and Soong dynasty). Some supporters of Ma saying Ma is potent forever in various sides may accord this saying. Interestingly, both candidates don’t have English name like Hsieh Chung-Ting (Frank Hsieh) or Lu Show –Lian (Anne Lu).

Chinese history is interacted with cultures and stories full of paintings and beautiful poet and articles. The earliest book deducing Chinese words is “Sow-Wen-Jie-Tz” (Saying literature and Explaining words). Popularly, Kang-Xi Dictionary is used to the demonstration of Chinese words. I had learned of this logistics for about one year when I was an elementary school. The logistics is sometimes my guide to know one more potentially by intuition. Other examples are the next China’s leader Xi Jin-Ping and prime minister Li Ke-Qiang. Reader in front of this screen can guess some and know why I follow Li rather than Xi.

By the way, in this article there is a Taiwanese phonetic “Hsiao Bi-Khim”, including some mistakes because Taiwanese is just the branch of Chinese, not equivalent to English, Japanese, and using Chinese words to express the meaning. As soon as I can be, I’ll talk to Ms. Hsiao, who studied in junior high school the same as mine before she graduated from Taipei First Girl High and Harvard University for her doctot degree and whose aunt was my teacher in English cram school, saying don’t play your childish game of Taiwan independence or you cannot get the love from your so-called handsome legislator Liu Chien-Guo in case of the miserableness as your constant frustration to win election in your hometown Hualien, you know.

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筆者一時興起，提到了馬英九和蔡英文的名字從說文解字要怎麼測測命相。英是草部，央不是中央，是正立之意，一男一女，筆者會覺得女的會當選，所以這局2012大選很奇怪了些。九是乙部，文自成一部，對了，倒也不是指那蔡英文比較台獨，台灣若有馬天皇就是當二等國民，而是人的方面，馬會大局為重，自己比較小了一點，蔡會自己堅守一定信念，但是只有堆棧資料，欠缺思考是一缺點。又有蕭美琴的一個問題了，這個人那天就在當蔡英文的跟班，也是英語翻譯。小豬撲滿現在想來真是幼稚，就像當時眾人靠劉建國的事旁敲側擊此人其人其事一樣。既然用"consensus-building"那就九二共識也可以是共識，能夠變化多少嗎？