Formosa Neijia

As the Chinese supposedly say — may you live in interesting times. (BTW, I’ve never heard that said here.) And oh boy are things going to get interesting now. Ma Ying-jeou won yesterday’s presidential election by a landslide. This means that all branches of government are firmly back under KMT control. The DPP has been rendered totally toothless.

A good amount of insight into why the DPP lost can be found at Michael Turton’s excellent blog The View from Taiwan. The DPP, as usual, made zero effort to communicate with or attract people outside of their traditional base of support. As Michael points out, they are very provincial and they don’t have a vision for the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country Taiwan has become. The KMT have been very inclusive in their appeals.

So why will things get interesting after this?

Any discussion of whether or not to open the three direct links to China or what nature of links to open is effectively over. The KMT controls everything and whatever they want, they will get. The DPP can do nothing but watch and complain.

How will Ma negotiate those links? He’ll have to make concessions in any negotiation, so what will they be? Is he strong enough to stand up to China?

One thing is for certain — Taiwan is about to become a lot more Chinese. We’ll get more Chinese products (as if I don’t already spend enough time worrying about where the kids’ toys come from) and more Chinese visiting the island.

In terms of martial arts, my guess is that bringing teachers here and studying in China will be very convenient and cheap. That will shift the balance even more away from the older Taiwanese styles. But frankly I’m looking forward to cheap flights.