2014 - 1st Quarter
China's Two Distinct Centuries of Humiliation
Anyone who has been in Asia for any length of time cannot avoid having heard China's oft-repeated canard of its "century of humiliation." It's an ironic canard that usually comes up to defend China's current hegemony. The century referred to, of course, is the 19th Century when foreign powers from the Opium Wars on up to the Boxer Rebellion pressured ...
2-28, the ROC Constitution and Ma Ying-jeou's Disconnect
Taiwan recently observed its annual 2-28 remembrance, and the people again recalled the tragic imposition of White Terror and subsequent Martial Law that the country endured under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for forty years. Yet even as these services were being held, Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou once again demonstrated the strange if not coldly chilling lack of connection that ...
The Ma Government on Taiwan: Zelig, Ah Q, or Worse?
It's no secret that Ma Ying-jeou has been regularly called a "bumbler" in both local and international media. Nor is it a secret that his competence has been called into question even by members of his own party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). But a different and more serious question has been popping up recently. This question arises whenever Ma ...
Demystifying China: a Club Enron Writ Large?
There was a time when many economic pundits and gurus promoted Enron as the model company to emulate. It had a mystique. The guys that ran it were called the "smartest guys in the room." They were the innovative, bold insightful risk takers and the wizards that the financial world needed. As the company grew, everyone wanted to get on ...
Taiwan & China's Political/Religious Paradigms Interplay
Whether we realize it or not, most of our lives are governed not by reality but by the multiple paradigms that reflect and interpret how we feel it is or should be. These paradigms in turn have multiple levels and are revealed as they play out in different intersecting fields. Some of our paradigms are assumed, and acknowledged while others ...
China's Lost Soul and Fading Chance for Democracy
A century has passed since China's "so called revolution" of 1911. A full century, and yet, despite the passage of time and the bounteous republican rhetoric, in reality China is no closer to Sun Yat-sen's democratic dream of a government of the people, by the people and for the people than it was in the closing days of a reform ...