Hmm...

Echo Taiwan has some comprehensive coverage and analysis on the cause of deadly clashes in Xinjiang. Disturbing.

http://echotaiwan.blogspot.com/2009/07/trigger-of-uyghor-han-clash-in-xinjing.html

But if we look at ourselves...aren't there people like that in Taiwan as well? They just hear some rumors from the media, and get enraged instantly. Especially if we look back at those KMT supporters during the Red Clothes Army and post 2004 and 2000 presidential election time. Of course what is happening in China is 100 times more severe because obviously those Han Chinese do not even treat those Uyghurs as human beings.

People nowadays look back at the witch-hunt in Europe and North America and think those people are so stupid. But look at what is happening today! Even with all the information technology available, those Guangdong Han Chinese are as ignorant and fanatical as ever. This is disturbing indeed. Also, it is in Guangdong, a supposedly more prosper, advanced and civilized province in Chinese territory. It shows that advance in economy does not guarantee humanity. (Well...if we look back at history, there are already a lot of example, but this one is a good reminder.)

I hope Taiwanese look at this event carefully. I hope they look, sympathize and learn... DON"T REPEAT THE 228 MISTAKE.

The Value of Indepedence

People nowadays emphasize more on words like peace, love, stability, progress, open trade, money,...etc. But looking at the recent events in Tibet,Hong Kong and Xinjiang, I think people need to emphasize more on the value of Independence.

Independence is important. To be your own master, to determine what road to take without the arbitrary coercions of others...these are essential and important for human beings.

Some people say what is the point, you cannot eat Independence. Chinese government, Taiwanese government, Martian government, there is no difference. Look at East Timor, they got their Independence but things don't become better. I can only tell them: YOU ARE WRONG. Just look at what is happening in Xinjiang for the past 60 years and tell me Independence is not important. Independence does not automatically mean prosperity, but at least it gives you a chance. It gives you a chance to be your own master to pursuit your fortune. Without it, you are just a slave, that is kept alive and healthy enough to work for the master.

Finally Some Interesting Economic News

GAMESPOT NEWS

Now this is more like it. Interesting stuff. The government finally gets some fresh ideas. The government needs more stuff like this instead of just thinking about Chinese market all the time. Although in this case, Chinese language market is still part of the focus, I hope they can extend this beyond language and culture. Like what the Japanese and Korean did. (They don't just sell their games in Japan and in Korea only, right?)

Not sure if this will be a success. Video games nowadays have a very high development cost. It's no joke. To be competitive in this industry, there can be no half measure. To be successful, Taiwanese development studios have to compete (and cooperate) with studio in Japan, South Korea, Europe and the US, there is no question about it. Of course Taiwanese studio most like will start out on the smaller PS3 Network Download games. However, even those require good efforts to be successful. And in the long term, bigger titles can be considered.

There are also some concern though regarding the 40% subsidize. I don't see a problem with it. Taiwan also did that for the quite successful semi-conductor industries. However, the government should not interfere or "help" too much otherwise it will most like turn into failure like the car industries. Also, gradual reduction in the subsidization etc after the industry can stand on its own feet needs to the considered and planned.

Now...I just hope this move can turn out some real good games, and hopefully none of those stupid low quality generic games based on some lousy Chinese TV and movies like before.

UPDATE:

Well, since I am a big gamer, might as well talk more about my opinion on Taiwan's game industry. Note though that I am not some industry guru. This is just a small part of my personal opinion. (I have a lot more thoughts on this topic, but too much to write it here).

Personally I hope some dude that really understand Taiwan can make a great game that recreate the success of the movie Cape No. 7. Of course, it has to be even better and able capture market outside of Taiwan. These will enforce the "soul" of Taiwan and letting others know what is interesting about Taiwan's culture etc. Some of the games enjoy success not because they are main stream but because they are unique and have a great loyal fan base. Taiwan cannot just rely on "Chinese" language because heck, China can probably do better with this. They already have game studios in Shanghai etc. Taiwan needs something even more to have a place of its own.)

From my observation, Taiwan's game industry also seem to have quite a narrow vision. They need to broaden it up. For example, most of the games Taiwan make have 2 type of themes. One is Chinese fantasy theme, the other is "cute" theme. They kept drawing inspiration from Chinese history and fantasy, probably because they think China has 5000 years of history or BS like that and thus there are a lot of possible inspiration. Wrong! Although 5000 years are a long time but the interesting periods are only few and far between. Plus a lot of the history stuff are just not much different. Therefore the market is saturated by games that look and sound similar. Everyone just draw from the same theme, same idea, same source. There is no way you can sell games in this way. Gamers a lot of times want something different and refreshing.

Looking at Japanese animation and games for example. They don't just draw ideas from Japanese history and fantasy. They also got inspiration from sci-fi and western fantasy. Taiwan needs to learn to do that. It does not mean to be a copy cat, but getting inspirations from new sources are important. Especially the Sci-Fi area I think Taiwan actually has a lot of potential but people never thought much of it before. Sci-Fi offer an unlimited space for imagination, but developers in Taiwan often just look at Chinese fantasy and limited their imagination into a quite narrow area.

Of course, one major problems every gamer knows about Taiwanese games are its quality. There are games with good quality of course, but there are also games that are just unplayable and a complete ripoff of players' money. This is more of a technical issues that Taiwan's software community needs to work on. However, it is also a lack of watch dog system. In the North America and else where, there are solid game website like GameSpot, Gamespy, IGN etc that has high quality and fair reviews of each games that come out.

What Taiwan needs, are websites like those, that focus on giving fair review to games, especially Taiwanese games. There are site like Gamers.com.tw and others in Taiwan but from what I can see, they don't review much games at all. Most of the time they only give preview and news. It's like a big commercial website. What we need are review sites people trust. These kind of trust can only be built over time with professional and serious reviews of each games that come out. However, this must be done, in order to restore and sustain consumers' confidence in Taiwanese games, and give developers big incentive to make great games in order to sell them well.

Suspecious...

Many people would agree that Ma's trip to Latin America was a total disaster. Mr. Keating has a nice one on this. One thing that really puzzles me though, is why? Why did he make this trip? Because I remembered he had another trip to the same places just few months ago. In both trip, he didn't do anything meaningful. It is like he is a tourist. So what is the point? And why so frequent? Especially this time, the performance is really bad. What is the rush?

The Pattern...

Recently there are a lot of unrest around the world, from Iran, Honduras and now Xinjiang. All these recent events in Tibet, Iran and Xinjiang showed a general pattern however:

1. Protest occurs.
2. Paramilitary police went in and starts the killing.
3. Foreign media access, Internet access and other access including cell phones are cut. The area is locked down.
4. Official media becomes the primary source of the news, and starts releasing footage and photos etc.
5. There are accounts of police going around arresting people from their house etc. However, as the media is not there it's not clear how many got arrested etc.

I think, if one takes a look at what people say on the Internet forum discussion etc, one can realize this is actually a clever strategy of the despots. They have taken great advantages of the modern technology:

1. By blocking out information sources, most people, including the main stream media and the government officials, do not know what exactly is going on. They can only get a fuzzy pictures from the occasional leak of information from YouTube and twitter. It is like looking at the computer screen one pixel at a time: you only see the trees, but not the forest.
2. By blocking out foreign media, the official despot media is the only one that can pump out information in great quantity. Using the good old communist propaganda trick, mixing 80% truth with 20% lies, and by not showing everything, the despots have the power of interpretation. As the propaganda contains 80% truth, and there are no other major source of information, it is hard to tell what are facts and what are bullshits. They can damp down the opinions against them and create general confusion regarding the events. Thus, cooling off the sympathy towards the protesters and oppositions etc.
3. Internet becomes another battle field in which the despots supporters have the advantages. Because the lack of true information, sympathy expressed toward the victims are not as strong as it could be, while the despots supporters can use the partially information to further support the despots action and further harming the victims.

Thus, the victim becomes less of a victim, the murders become less of a murder, and the world becomes even greyer.

UPDATE: LINK

Looks like things are getting worse. In some ways similar to Iran, now there are another pro-government mob going around beating people up. But this one is worse because it's ethnically based. I wonder if those Han Chinese realized they are just pawns of the Chinese government, or perhaps they are willing to be the pawns. Look carefully at this, Taiwanese. This is what could happen. First, conquer and suppression. Second, force immigration. Third, ethnic culture destruction. If the situation reaches this point it's already too late.

Interesting News, Japan and the US finally Made a Move?

This is an interesting news.

Japan and the US are moving military forces Apache helicopters to 與那國島.


Not totally sure what the implication is yet, but certainly it looks like a big move by Japan and the US. Does this have something to do with North Korea situation? Or is this just for Taiwan, or something else?

Hmm....

But looks like the stupid KMT "military specialist" already jumps up and down with great fury...idiots. If they take care of their business in the past few years, would Japan and the US make this move? It is obvious their action of hindering Taiwan's military development has threaten the stability in the region, now that the military balance is tilting in China's favor. That is why the move by the US and Japan.

All I can say is, those KMT so called "military specialists" can only think for China, not for Taiwan. I would say most of their "expert" opinion can be discarded unless Taiwan wants to help China instead of helping itself.

The Concern Over Chinese Investment

http://www.shadowgov.tw/22773_126_act.htm?page_no=0

Mr. 謝 got a very good point on the issue of Chinese investment in Taiwan.

This issue actually bothers me quite a bit. Because on the one hand there is the traditional idea of opening market create prosperity, competition and stability, on the other hand China is not friendly toward Taiwan. The problem becomes, does it make sense to open market to a country that wants to swallow Taiwan? What 謝 said makes me realize the key point, and make my thoughts on this much clearer.

It's actually quite simple, just looking from the economical side:

1. China is not real capitalism. A lot of big industries are under control of communist party, some even under control of PLA.
2. Under normal circumstances, all corporation's goal is to gain money. When they invest, they also expect profit and risk etc. But as mention by point one. Chinese corporations are actually controlled by the government more or less. What does this mean then? It means those investment are not for profit. They are for Chinese government goal, to swallow Taiwan.
3. Thus it will create unfair competition. Because they are not for profit, they will not reward those companies that are profitable, but those companies that are pro-China. It will mess up the whole market system. Because now the market is not driven by profit, but driven by political will of Beijing at the same time. Those company can get huge funds even if they are not profitable, as long as they are pro-China. Those companies that have very nice products, but are not favored by Chinese government, will face unnecessary tough competitors. Thus the free market become not free because the Chinese government can manipulate it.
4. With the huge control Chinese government has, the whole economic system of Taiwan might fall completely into Chinese control. The market system will be destroyed, replaced by Chinese controlled market.

I think this is one of the possible outcome. Probably some economic experts with more solid data can have a more clear and concrete view on this. But I think these are the general idea and the danger. There are actually already some example we can take note from. One is Hong Kong. In the recent July 1st celebration we can see how much Hong Kong's political circle has changed. A lot of politicians simple kiss Beijing's ass. Furthermore, if we really think about it, there is no way Hong Kong can break free from the grip of China, because their economy is "infiltrated" by China and is now under Chinese control.

And I haven't even mention the obvious political implication. As 謝 mentioned, with Chinese investment in, China can indirectly "participate" in Taiwan's election, through election campaign donation. What will result from this, I think everyone knows already.