While I’ve been busy working with holidays and such, there’s been a big kerfuffle between locals and visiting ministers from Taiwan. See, the new government (the Kuomintang or KMT) is very pro-China – no necessarily reunification, but they’re eager to be on China’s good side. There are lot of people, even people who like the KMT, who don’t agree with this and there have been protests all over the country. A couple of weeks ago, there was a supposedly million-strong one against the president and his pro-China-ness. Also around that time, the minister visited Tainan and was attacked by protestors. According to the paper, he went home tearful (really? Do you think a Chinese minister would go home crying, saying some nasty Taiwanese beat him up? Honestly, that is so Asian politics…).
It’s a hot topic these days, especially with the number of items on the melamine list (it’s hit pretty hard over here): eggs, milk products (there is a lot of milk powder used over here), I think they’ve even started testing meat items. There’s not much to do except sit and wait and see what occurs. The current president’s current approval rating is in the toilet over this – it’s gone from up in the 70s in March to the low 30s this month. I don’t know what he can do to improve it, but he’s going to lose power pretty quick if he doesn’t think of something…
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