China and Taiwan Expand Accords

China and Taiwan Expand Accords is major news. A friend of mine liked it, since before when he had to fly to Shanghai, he had to fly to Hong Kong taking 8 hours. Now a direct flight will take 80 minutes from Taiwan. From a business prospective, he is very pro it. He only wants the agreement to be business related.

The fear of many Taiwanese is it will somehow make unification with China more likely. There are many people in Taiwan who favor Taiwan independence, and don't want to be unified with China.

From what I can see the pact will just reduce business costs and hurt Hong Kong and Okinawa that were making money because of the barriers to direct plane and ship travel. Ships from China would dock in Okinawa, and then go to Taiwan.

China Milk Crisis and Taiwan

Taiwan orders 160 China-linked goods off shelves from the IHT. The Taiwan government raised the allowable limits for Melamine under pressure from merchants, but there was such a backlash that the minister in charge of that area was forced to resign. Taiwan has been opening up to China in trade, but this milk scandal is causing doubts about the government's China policy. 25 tons of milk powder were imported into Taiwan for baking and $31.3 Million of China milk products/goods have been removed from shops in Taiwan.

3 Kids in Taiwan were found to have Kidney stones, but it seems they spent a lot of time in China.

And this is just dumb for those bakers who are unhappy:

Meanwhile bakeries in Taipei County have decided to forego milk powder and only use Taiwanese milk as the scare over tainted dairy products from China spread yesterday the Taipei County Bakeries Association told the Chinese-language Liberty Times.

Not all bakers welcomed the association's decision, saying switching entirely to Taiwanese milk would drive up their costs by at least 20 percent, while business was already down 50 percent because of the melamine scare.

Japan/China/Taiwan Incident?

NY Times mentioned it:

Lately Mr. Ma’s energies have been focused on smoothing out a diplomatic conflict that caught him by surprise — a surge in tensions with Japan over a June 10 incident in the group of disputed islands that the Taiwanese call the Diaoyutai Islands, where a Japanese coast guard vessel sank a Taiwanese sport-fishing boat. Although Japan administers the islands, which it calls the Senkaku Islands, China and Taiwan argue that they belong to the Chinese people.

Protesters in both mainland China and Taiwan have demanded a formal apology from Japan.

Right after a new President took power in Taiwan who was elected on better relations with China, and this happens with Japan. Who would of thought!

China, Tibet, and Taiwan?

NY Times article suggests what is going on in Tibet may influence Taiwan's election. Taiwan's election process is very exciting with Blue, Green, and for a while a Red party. US politics compared to that is pretty tame. DPP is the Green Party, KMT is the Blue party, and the Red Party just hates the guts of the Mr. Chen Shui-bian, the current President of Taiwan. Some people from the US even fly back to Taiwan just to vote.

Panda baiting is the term, that I just learned, of when the DPP attempts to upset China to get a reaction to sway voters at home. China at first played along beautifully, but lately has been attempting to just ignore Taiwan's politics.

Tip - It's a good idea to avoid discussions on Taiwan independence, politics, and such with Taiwanese and Chinese. These are pretty emotional issues.

Me - I try to stay out of it and just be a neutral observer at home.