Tuesday recap

I had the chance to run over to Taipei 101, the world's tallest building, after supper tonight. Quite a view. We spent the morning today over at the American Institute of Taiwan, which is similar to what would be our American embassy/consulate except for the fact that we don't recognize Taiwan diplomatically. In an ironic twist, this was the first and only place where I have not been able to take pictures. I had to check my camera at the door. A few things of interest:

- Our relationship with Taiwan is defined by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which sets our official policy with Taiwan;

- One of the hottest current issues is Taiwan's proposal for a referendum to allow its citizens to vote as to whether to apply for United Nations membership under the name Taiwan. This raises the ire of Beijing but is a fairly good time to debate such a topic sicne the 2008 Olympics act as a sort of shield for China to raise too much of an objection. The referendum seems to be largely symbolic and won't have an effect on the application itself, which apparently doesn't have much of a chance. It's also opposed by the United States. Taiwan is only recognized by 24 countries around the world;

- Another hot topic here is includes hopes for serious negotiations for a bilateral US-Taiwan Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), especially considering that South Korea now enjoys a free trade agreement with the United States. Taiwan considers this a setback since South Korea is a trade competitor;

- There are 70,000 Americans living in Taiwan, most of whom obtained citizenship while studying in America;

- Taiwan has the 6th largest contingent of students in the United States (~28,000), right behind Canada;

- For the second time since I've been here, government officals (one American and one Taiwanese) have made it a point to mention that there are 900 missiles pointed at Taiwan now from mainland China; and

- Taiwan is the 2nd largest foreign consumer of U.S. agricultural products behind Canada

I got the chance to visit over lunch with Bruce Liu, Deputy Director of Tourism in the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The tourism industry here is hampered by the inability to visit Taiwan directly from mainland China. If you want to fly here from China (just 100 miles across the strait), you must first connect through Seoul or Hong Kong. The United States ranks third in the number of annual visitors here behind Japan and Macau.

We also met today with Dr. James Wu, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Foreign Trade. Of course, the role states can play internationally is largely limited to items such as the recruitment of economic development, so this was a good opportunity to hear first hand about Taiwan's trade policy and continued expansion into the United States by its businesses and industries. Taiwan suffers from the same problem we have of jobs being exported to China (among other places). Dr. Wu is hopeful that those low paying exported positions can be replaced by higher-paying technically-complex positions requiring high skill levels such as the manufacturing of integrated chips.

We also visited with the Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and members of his staff. We ended the day over at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, an organization whose work is pretty tough considering that the only true democracies in the region are limited to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and India. Here I am pictured at that meeting with Chad Warmington of Oklahoma.