On Radio

ABC Australia radio program on Taiwan:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2008/2189619.htm

This Saturday March 22 is the Taiwanese presidential election. ABC Radio National’s “Rear Vision” program is covering Taiwan this week, and I was interviewed for it last Monday at the ABC studios in Portland Place in London. Overall, the interviewer was well informed, but the references in the introduction to the program to an upcoming “independence referendum”, which of course it isn’t, show how far the media has to go before it understands the Taiwanese situation. The referenda, two of them, are on UN membership, not independence, and we know that because if it was “independence” there would be Chinese missiles instead of water raining down outside the window of the Far Eastern Shangri-la in Taipei right now.

The likely election result has seemed to be favouring the KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou, but some bad behaviour by KMT legislators and the situation in Tibet might have given the DPP some momentum in the last couple of days. It is going to be an intense week.