Bengo’s Latest News
Clips 2012.11.22
1.
A Star in
China Both Rises and Sets
The New York Times November 16, 2012
BEIJING
— Peng Liyuan, China’s most enduring pop-folk icon, is beloved for her
glass-cracking soprano and her ability to take on such roles as a coquettish
Tibetan yak herder, a lovelorn imperial courtesan, even a stiff-lipped major
general — which in fact she is.
But
as the nation begins to absorb the reality that its newly anointed top leader,
Xi Jinping, is coming to office with a wife who happens to be a big-haired
brassy diva known for her striking figure, palace watchers are daring to ask
the question: has China’s Carla Bruni-Sarkozy moment finally arrived?
Ms.
Peng, 49, certainly has what it takes to revolutionize China’s stodgy first
lady paradigm, in which the spouses of top leaders are usually kept well out of
sight or, at best, stand mute behind their husbands during state visits.
For
more than two decades she was a lavishly costumed fixture on the nation’s
must-see Chinese New Year variety show, often emerging from a blur of
synchronized backup dancers to trill about the sacrifices of the People’s
Liberation Army, which bestowed on her a civilian rank equivalent to major
general. More recently, she has extended her celebrity to public service,
comforting survivors of the Sichuan earthquake and gently scolding young people
about the dangers of smoking and unprotected sex.
“Peng
Liyuan could be an enormously positive thing for China, which really needs
female role models,” said Hung Huang, publisher of a fashion magazine. “Just
imagine if she turned out to be a first lady like Michelle Obama.”
But
experts here agree that there is a major obstacle to Ms. Peng playing a more
prominent role on the national stage: Chinese men. Despite Mao Zedong’s
feel-good dictum that “women hold up half the sky,” they are barely visible in
the inner sanctum of the granite-clad colossus on Tiananmen Square where
Communist Party elders selected a new club of leaders.
While
there was hopeful, unsubstantiated talk earlier this year that Liu Yandong, a
woman, might be named to the seven-seat Politburo Standing Committee, the
lineup revealed to the world on Thursday was an unrelieved row of dark suits,
drab ties and black hair without a touch of gray. The party did throw out a
bone: they added Sun Chunlan to the Politburo, which means the 25-member
advisory committee now contains two women.
Chinese
women — at least those who dare to speak out — are not pleased. “It’s unhealthy
and unfair to have so few women within the Chinese political system,” said Guo
Jianmei, director of the Women’s Legal Research and Service Center in Beijing,
a nonprofit group. “It just reinforces the traditional cultural view that women
are less capable than men.”
By
all accounts, Chinese male chauvinism and the fear of the power-hungry vixen
has been percolating for a few thousand years. Until the last century, women
were kept uneducated and barred from the imperial bureaucracy. In times of
famine, boys ate first. A lucky girl might have her growing feet bound so
tightly she could barely walk by the time she was married off to the groom’s
family as little more than chattel.
Even
today the gender imbalance — with 118 men for every 100 women — is a testament
to Chinese favoritism toward boys, expressed through targeted abortions or
abandoned baby girls. Many of the nation’s best schools give male students a
leg up by requiring higher marks for women. The discriminatory scoring system,
according to the Ministry of Education, is designed to “protect the interests
of the nation.”
2.
Ma the
bumbler
A former
heart-throb loses his shine
The Economist Nov 17th 2012
WHEN
he was first elected in 2008, Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, offered
Taiwanese high hopes that the island’s economy would open a new chapter. He
promised ground-breaking agreements with China to help end Taiwan’s growing
economic marginalisation. At the time, Mr Ma’s image was of a clean technocrat
able to rise above the cronyism and infighting of his party, the Kuomintang
(KMT). He was a welcome contrast to his fiery and pro-independence predecessor,
Chen Shui-bian, now in jail for corruption.
Five
years on, and despite being handily re-elected ten months ago, much has
changed. In particular, popular satisfaction with Mr Ma has plummeted, to a
record low of 13%, according to the TVBS Poll Centre. The country appears to
agree on one thing: Mr Ma is an ineffectual bumbler.
Ordinary
people do not find their livelihoods improving. Salaries have stagnated for a
decade. The most visible impact of more open ties with China, which include a
free-trade agreement, has been property speculation in anticipation of a flood
of mainland money. Housing in former working-class areas on the edge of Taipei,
the capital, now costs up to 40 times the average annual wage of $15,400. The
number of families below the poverty line has leapt. Labour activists have
taken to pelting the presidential office with eggs.
Exports
account for 70% of GDP. So some of Taiwan’s problems are down to the dismal
state of rich-world economies. Yet Mr Ma’s leadership is also to blame. He has
failed to paint a more hopeful future, with sometimes hard measures needed now.
Worse, he frequently tweaks policies in response to opposition or media
criticism. It suggests indecisiveness.
Public
anger first arose in June, when Mr Ma raised the price of government-subsidised
electricity. Few Taiwanese understood why, even though Taiwan’s state-owned
power company loses billions. In the face of public outrage, Mr. Ma postponed a
second round of electricity price rises scheduled for December. They will now
take place later next year.
People
are also worried that a national pension scheme is on course for bankruptcy in
less than two decades. Yet Mr Ma cannot bring himself to raise premiums
sharply, because of the temporary unpopularity it risks. When Mr Ma does try to
appeal to Taiwanese who make up the island’s broad political centre, it often
backfires with his party’s core supporters. Following public grumbles that
retired civil servants, teachers and ex-servicemen were a privileged group, the
cabinet announced plans to cut more than $300m in year-end bonuses, affecting
around 381,000. The trouble was, veterans are among the KMT’s most fervent
backers. Now some threaten to take to the streets in protest and deprive the
KMT of their votes until the plan is scrapped. Meanwhile, Mr. Ma’s clean image
has been sullied by the indictment of the cabinet secretary-general for graft.
Cracks
are starting to grow in the KMT façade. Recently Sean Lien, a prominent
politician, criticised Mr Ma’s economic policies, saying that any politician in
office during this time of sluggish growth was at best a “master of a beggar
clan”—implying a country of paupers.
But
the next election is four years away, and presidential hopefuls will not try to
oust or even outshine Mr. Ma anytime soon. After all, they will not want to
take responsibility for the country’s economic problems. Nothing suggests Mr.
Ma’s main policies will change (or that they should), but his credibility is
draining by the day.
3.
Patience,
Consciousness and White Lies
The New York Times NOVEMBER 21, 2012
The
author, far left, standing next to his mother, newly married son and
daughter-in-law, and his in-laws. In the second row, from left, are the
author’s wife and their younger adult children.
My
wife and I are blessed with having three "semi-independent" parents
in their mid-80s living within a few blocks of us. Our children grew up knowing
their grandparents as integral parts of our nuclear family, within walking
distance for most of their childhoods. But now that our nest is empty, we find
ourselves reliving many of the parenting issues we faced when our children were
little -- now in geriatric versions, at close range. As it turns out, parenting
was good practice for the issues we face with our own parents.
What
exactly does semi-independence mean as applied to elderly parents? Among our
three, we have two canes, five walkers, one wheelchair (for long walks), four
artificial joints, a pacemaker, four hearing aides and a knee brace. The list
of medical conditions is long, and the list of medications even longer,
requiring different color pill box organizers for morning, afternoon and
evening.
Our
parents all live in the same homes they have been in for many years. Keeping
them safe and healthy there, as well as when they leave the house, has become a
big part of our day-to-day work these days. Therein the yin and yang of
parenting has returned -- independence versus helicoptering.
Children's
yearning for independence begins in toddlerhood: "I can do it
myself!" It escalates through childhood, accelerates with the driver's
license, and crescendos, with pomp and circumstance, at high school graduation.
