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No. Rekening : 3831172434
Nama Pemilik : Hendro Susilo
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No. Rekening : 105-00-1057268-7
Nama Pemilik : Hendro Susilo
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Over at Taiwan Matters, where it is all Taiwan politics, all the time, Feiren is back from travels abroad and posting again, discussing the mayoral elections. Meanwhile Wulingren has posted on the elections. Oh, and me too! Sorry about the long hiatus there, but coincidentally several us had significant life events that all happened at the same time. But I expect that the blog will grow with plenty of quality posts. Looking forward to seeing your IP address there!
I've talked a couple times before about rising income inequality on the Beautiful Island. While politicians talk about economic growth, the population at large is experiencing stagnant, even falling, incomes, and greater appropriation of the national wealth to the nation's elites. ESWN today has a report from UDN on this pressing social issue:According to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, over the past six years, the mean income of the 700,000 households with the lowest income just fell from NT$52,820 to NT$34,866 from year 2000 to year 2006. Thus, their mean current income is less than NT$3,000 per month.
Meanwhile the mean income of the 700,000 households with the highest income went from NT$1,621,747 to NT$1,741660 from year 2000 to year 2006. Thus, their mean current income is over NT$145,000 per month.
Meanwhile, the GDP is expected to grow by 4.14% per annum.
Yesterday the Taipei Times reported that a prominent US Taiwan scholar had slammed the pan-Blues for their pro-China servility....and criticized Chen Shui-bian for "provoking" China.US strategy in the East Asian region will be affected if the pan-blue camp continues to lean toward China and remains unwilling to show that Taiwan is determined to defend itself, a US academic said on Friday.
Robert Sutter, a visiting professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University, made the comments while attending a conference on East Asian Security and Taiwan held by the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
He said that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had not taken advantage of the Bush administration's goodwill over the past six years and accused him of promoting provocative policies.
Regardless of whether the US will have a Democrat or Republican president after 2008, the administration will place China in the mainstream and a trend toward marginalizing Taiwan will become unavoidable, he said.
Former US Ambassador to China James Lilley, who also attended the event, said that Americans are realists and that the situation was not as bad as Sutter described it.
Lilley nonetheless added that the US was annoyed by Taiwan's unwillingness to defend itself while asking for US protection, and that the US and Taiwan should work together in examining how Taiwan could effectively defend itself.
Taiwan's representative to Washington David Lee (李大維), in his opening remarks at the conference, said that recent incidents, such as Chinese submarines violating Japanese territorial waters, together with China not having renounced the use of military force against Taiwan, show that China poses a threat not only to Taiwan, but also to East Asian regional security and stability in general.
Bigfoot exists, UFOs are alien transport vehicles, and the Taiwan Bullet Train will make a profit in its 2nd year.
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC), which has built Taiwan's first bullet train system and is still awaiting the final go-ahead to begin service, said that it expects operations to be profitable by its second year.
'We are targeting operational profits in the second year of commercial services,' company chief executive officer Ou Chin-der told XFN-Asia on the sidelines of a media gathering.
It expects to break even 12 months after its first commercial run.
He said each train has 989 seats, of which 66 are business class. The fare for each Taipei-Kaohsiung journey is 1,490 twd for economy class and 2,400 twd for business class.
'The plan is for 60 pct capacity during weekdays and 80 pct on weekends,' Chiang said.
Samuel Lin, company deputy chief operation officer, said the bullet train reaches speeds of 300 km per hour.
Among the THSRC's operational targets is passenger volume of 150,000 passengers per day, representing a 70 pct load factor. It will provide services to Taiwan's western transport corridor, where 94 pct of the island's 23 mln people live.
An official quoted estimates from the Council of Economic Planning and Development that construction of the high-speed rail network has created 480,000 jobs and may contribute 1 percentage point to economic growth.
Mark at the excellent blog Pinyin Info sent me this link to a lecture by Shelly Rigger in October to high school history teachers: "What Every American Needs to Know about Taiwan" to the Foreign Policy Research Institute for the conference: "Understanding China: A History Institute for Teachers."
