China Redux

The always insightful Angry Chinese Blogger beat me to the punch on the recent name-changing at some of Taiwan’s most high-profile state-run enterprises.

It’s all Change for some of Taiwan’s best know state owned enterprises. As of this week 5 of them are sporting new names.

While such an event would not normally attract the attention of a (right wing/reactionary/scandal mongering/all of the above) blog such as this, this particular round of corporate re branding is quite notable in that all of the companies involved appear to have purposefully chosen names that either exclude or play down the word “China.”

The FT quotes Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian as saying,”Changing these names is a small part of our effort to make Taiwan a full, normal country.”

This is probably as close as Chen will ever come to that dream, at least while in office. His approval ratings and popularity in Taiwan are abysmal. One sign that this is a desperate measure — the renaming exercise did not require approval of Taiwan’s legislature.

Another bad sign for Taiwan’s pro-independence contingent: Chen’s push for independence is receiving little support from abroad. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Friday that “we do not support administrative steps by Taiwan authorities that would appear to change Taiwan’s status unilaterally or move toward independence.” Ouch. And the US Democrats are not eager to fete the Taiwanese, either. Word is that new Democratic leaders are cold to the concerns of pro-independence lobbyists and officials in Washington.  But at least CPC Corp, Taiwan sounds much, much better than China Petroleum Corp.