![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The big news in Hong Kong tonight: Taiwan has a new president, and the KMT are back in the saddle after eight years of DPP mayhem.
TVB went all out covering the election, with live results coverage and reporters checking in via satellite or Internet links in six locations, with political analysts on standby. Last night they ran something like two hours worth of analysis of the two presidential candidates and what was at stake.
So just what IS at stake? Well, it’s complicated if you don’t know the history, but essentially it’s about stabilizing both Taiwan’s economy and its relations with China – which are related in that Taiwan and China hope to do more trade with each other, but couldn’t really do when the pro-independence DPP was in power during the last eight years, seeing as how Beijing would rather blow up the entire island than deal with the fuckers in the DPP. Now the old-school KMT is back in power, and ...
Did I mention it was complicated?
Never mind. Suffice to say that I’m not surprised by the outcome. The DPP – the first party to ever depose the KMT, who had ruled Taiwan since ‘49 – had a chance to make a difference, but President Chen Shui-bien blew it with his corruption scandals and his tendency to pledge independence for Taiwan mostly to annoy Beijing and get votes, while allowing the economy to go south.
Personally, I think he jumped the shark when he started having statues of Chiang Kai-shek torn down and monuments renamed in a bizarre bid to erase as much of the island’s political heritage under the KMT as possible. Elected officials don’t do that kind of thing – dictators do. It’d be like Junior Bush ordering Mt Rushmore to be recut so that the faces were Reagan, Bush Senior, Nixon and Jesus.
We’ll see how President-elect Ma fares. Meanwhile, I’ll be interested to see what kind of spin this is getting in the US news media. Or if they’re even bothering to cover it, apart from Junior’s usual blathering about beacons of fucking democracy.
Shut up, Mr President, yr ruining it,
This is dF
TVB went all out covering the election, with live results coverage and reporters checking in via satellite or Internet links in six locations, with political analysts on standby. Last night they ran something like two hours worth of analysis of the two presidential candidates and what was at stake.
So just what IS at stake? Well, it’s complicated if you don’t know the history, but essentially it’s about stabilizing both Taiwan’s economy and its relations with China – which are related in that Taiwan and China hope to do more trade with each other, but couldn’t really do when the pro-independence DPP was in power during the last eight years, seeing as how Beijing would rather blow up the entire island than deal with the fuckers in the DPP. Now the old-school KMT is back in power, and ...
Did I mention it was complicated?
Never mind. Suffice to say that I’m not surprised by the outcome. The DPP – the first party to ever depose the KMT, who had ruled Taiwan since ‘49 – had a chance to make a difference, but President Chen Shui-bien blew it with his corruption scandals and his tendency to pledge independence for Taiwan mostly to annoy Beijing and get votes, while allowing the economy to go south.
Personally, I think he jumped the shark when he started having statues of Chiang Kai-shek torn down and monuments renamed in a bizarre bid to erase as much of the island’s political heritage under the KMT as possible. Elected officials don’t do that kind of thing – dictators do. It’d be like Junior Bush ordering Mt Rushmore to be recut so that the faces were Reagan, Bush Senior, Nixon and Jesus.
We’ll see how President-elect Ma fares. Meanwhile, I’ll be interested to see what kind of spin this is getting in the US news media. Or if they’re even bothering to cover it, apart from Junior’s usual blathering about beacons of fucking democracy.
Shut up, Mr President, yr ruining it,
This is dF
