ECFA Televised Debate

On Sunday April 25th, at 2pm, DPP Chair Chai-Ing-Wen will debate the President and KMT Chair Ma Ing-Jeou regarding the so-called "Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement", the central concern of the KMT since the party took office in May 2008.  China and the KMT are poised to sign the framework in June.  

The televised event is heartily anticipated, as no information on what the agreement entails has been released to the Taiwanese public, and the ECFA's name has changed rapidly over the course of the last year-and-a-half as the population of Taiwan consistently opposes it.

Since early April, the DPP has requested the ECFA documents to serve as a contextual basis for the debate- and a review of the resulting packet sent from the KMT last week reveals only that there is no actual "file" processing through the legislative body.  The ECFA is somehow progressing without regard for even the branches of goverment.

What Taiwan sees is the way the KMT handles Taiwan's possible future: deferring to China.  Recently, Taiwanese Tseng Yani, the LPGA Rookie of the Year in 2008 and champion of the Kraft Nabisco Championship on April 4 2010, was sponsored by a Chinese company on April 18th.  Local media in Taiwan was surprisingly antagonised by the move, wondering if it wasn't a "taking of Taiwanese talent".