give peace a chance

a few days before christmas, my husband and i drove into taichung for an appointment with declan's pediatrician.  as we turned down the main road of the city, we saw menacing barbed-wire barricades and rows of policemen along one side of the street.  we noticed, as we drove further down the road, the barricades surrounded the entire block around the windsor hotel.

on our way back after the appointment, we saw crowds of green-clad (DPP) protesters beginning to form (sorry, no picture!).  a friend of ours, who also went out to protest, said they were protesting the trade talks happening between taiwan and china.  

taiwan has two political parties, KMT (blue party, conservative) and DPP (green party, liberal).  KMT's main goal is to develop stronger ties with china; DPP's main goal is to foster stronger global ties and continue to develop taiwan's independence.  

these trade talks were about the prospect of taiwan joining the ASEAN, which would mean zero tariffs on 90% of the products traded between the asian countries in this group.  this would help develop stronger ties between the two countries, but would destroy taiwan's local economy.  taiwan is very small - about the size of washington state - and if china didn't have to pay tariffs, they could flood taiwan's economy.  this would force taiwan to become a consumer economy and to have to rely on china as their manufacturing counterpart. 

on january 1, taiwan officially joined the ASEAN.