Around Asia Pacific & Oceania [11.30.14]

Taiwan

•  Independent Is Elected Taipei Mayor as Taiwan’s Governing Party Falters (New York Times)

"A doctor running as an independent won the mayor’s race in Taipei, the capital, on Saturday, as Taiwan’s governing party suffered heavy losses in local elections. In response to the defeats dealt to the party, which favors closer ties with China, the prime minister resigned.

The election results, including a victory by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party in the central city of Taichung, signal that Taiwan’s governing Chinese Nationalist Party, known as the Kuomintang or K.M.T., will be hard-pressed to retain the presidency in the 2016 election.

In the race for the Taipei mayor’s seat, Ko Wen-je, a blunt-talking political novice, trounced Sean Lien, the scion of a prominent Kuomintang family. Mr. Ko took 57.1 percent of the vote to Mr. Lien’s 40.8 percent,

The wide losses prompted Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah, who leads the executive branch of government under Mr. Ma, to step down. He acknowledged that the results were a display of public dissatisfaction.

The Kuomintang previously held 15 of Taiwan’s 22 cities and counties, but that ratio was roughly reversed Saturday. The Kuomintang won just six seats, while the Democratic Progressive Party declared victory in 13, including four of Taiwan’s six special municipalities, which make up most of the country’s largest cities."

Earlier

• Around Asia Pacific & Oceania [11.28.14] (TahsinVersion2) 

Hong Kong

Police officers threw a pro-democracy protester to the ground 

 

outside government headquarters in Hong Kong on Sunday.

• Hong Kong Protesters Surround City Leader’s Office in Renewed Confrontation (New York Times) 

"Protesters and the police clashed in the political heart of Hong Kong on Sunday night, when thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators surged around the city leader’s office, seeking to blockade it and other government offices, and officers used pepper spray to repel them. The confrontation ended weeks of relative calm at the protesters’ main street camp.

The two student groups at the forefront of the protests had urged supporters to congregate on Sunday in Admiralty

Hong Kong Federation of Students

Scholarism, the political movement of high school and university students"

Tibet

• Exclusive: The Dalai Lama Talks Pot, Facebook and the Pope With TIME (Time Magazine) (Feb. 19, 2014)

"Freedom, democracy, justice, these are American principles.

climate change ... I think we should listen to those scientists and experts.

marijuana ... These kinds of substances are generally considered poison, very bad. But for particular illnesses, this is sometimes deliberately used. So that’s up to the doctor, or up to scientists. The ability to judge reality is something very unique. So if that [our brain] is damaged, that’s awful. So alcohol and drugs are very bad.

[A Few Words:

The most important endowment we humans are blessed with is our "Consciousness". "Controlling Consciousness" is the key to health, wealth and most importantly, happiness and satisfaction.

So anything that hampers our ability of "Controlling consciousness" is bad (for example, drinking alcohol damages our ability of judgement).

And anything that aids us in "Controlling Consciousness" (for example, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga, deep breathing, etc.) is good and highly recommended.]

Tibetan protester who is on the verge of sacrificing himself through self-immolation

India-China ... Genuine good relations based on mutual trust [could] really make a significant contribution to economic development, as well as to education and spirituality.
 
President Xi Jinping ... He is courageously tackling corruption, quite effectively. Fearlessly. [But] real development must take place in rural areas. It is not a solution to build new, big cities. [Also] 1.3 billion Chinese people have every right to know reality … Censorship is an unrealistic method that actually develops distrust and suspicion. The Chinese judicial system must be lifted up to the international standard of judiciary systems. Then these 1 billion poor people can have some kind of protection." 



Related Links

• Around The World [09.23.14] (TahsinVersion2)
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Chinese Christians

• Religion in China : Cracks in the atheist edifice (Economist)
  (November 1, 2014)
    
  

  

  
  

  "The rapid spread of Christianity is forcing an official rethink on religion

  Christians in China have long suffered persecution. Under Mao Zedong, freedom of belief was enshrined in the new Communist constitution (largely to accommodate Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in the west of the country). Yet perhaps as many as half a million Christians were harried to death, and tens of thousands more were sent to labour camps.

  In 2010 the Pew Research Center, an American polling organization, estimated there were 58m Protestants and 9m Catholics. Many experts, foreign and Chinese, now accept that there are probably more Christians than there are members of the 87m-strong Communist Party.
  the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980.
  

  many Chinese are attracted to Christianity because, now that belief in Marxism is declining, it offers a complete moral system with a transcendental source. People find such certainties appealing, she adds, in an age of convulsive change.
  Some Chinese also discern in Christianity the roots of Western strength. They see it as the force behind the development of social justice, civil society and rule of law, all things they hope to see in China.

  There is even talk that the party, the world’s largest explicitly atheist organization, might follow its sister parties in Vietnam and Cuba and allow members to embrace a dogma other than—even higher than—that of Marx.

  Any shift in official thinking on religion could have big ramifications for the way China handles a host of domestic challenges, from separatist unrest among Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs in the country’s west to the growth of NGOs and “civil society”—grassroots organizations, often with a religious coloring"

   
  
  Chinese Uyghur Muslims
  
  

  

  A Uighur woman at a market last summer in Urumqi, the capital of the restive Xinjiang region. The Chinese government has chartered trains to resettle Uighurs.

  
  
  
  • Life Of Chinese Uighur Muslims (New York Times)

  "Though neither he nor the state media reports mentioned it, the county’s policy of exporting Uighur labor set the stage for a factory brawl that led to deadly rioting in Urumqi in 2009, in which at least 200 people were killed."