Disputes surrounding U.S. military support for Taiwan, internet freedoms and currency appreciation have created tension between the two countries in recent months.

Washington’s Tibetan community is reportedly proud that their spiritual leader was invited to the White House, but many have played down the visit.

Here’s more from our German partner Deutsche Welle.

The United States approved the sale of missiles to Taiwan despite Chinese opposition, and President Obama has also agreed to sit down with the Dalai Obama, despite warnings from the Chinese government against such a meeting.

Trade is another point of contention between the two nations, and China today announced that it would place a duty on imports of American poultry. This move is retaliation for an American tariff placed on Chinese tires by the Obama administration in September.

And Obama, this week, also promised to become “much tougher” on Chinese trade.

David Andelman, editor of the World Policy Journal, and Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, join us for our weekly roundtable to talk about Chinese-American relations.

Adam Segal, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and John Delury, associate director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, join Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss U.S.-China relations.

They discuss Taiwan, China’s role on the world stage, and the U.S. response to the Dalai Lama.

But one man is trying to keep the craft going.

Steve Chao of Al Jazeera English traveled to the town of Cheding to meet Taiwan’s last professional sword-maker, who at 65, hopes to pass the tradition onto an apprentice.

Read their most compelling personal accounts and commentary from 2009, touching on subjects ranging from the seemingly-endless war in eastern Congo to pop culture in North Korea.

	INDIA “Slumdog” immigrant waits for U.S. Green Card lifeline	Rajeet Mohan is an Indian living in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. He shares his frustrating immigration experience and offers some solutions to retain and leverage highly-skilled immigrants in the U.S.
	CONGO War still rages on in corners of eastern Congo	Michael J. Kavanagh reports on the conflicting news coming out of eastern Congo. In the region’s most remote areas, Kavanagh has seen victims of attempted massacres, torture and kidnappings, as well as sex slaves.
	TAIWAN Taiwanese baseball fans outraged by game-fixing charges	Hsin-Yin Lee writes how a game-fixing scandal has rocked Taiwanese professional baseball. Fans are wondering whether there is a future for the island’s beloved sport. Evidence says Taiwan’s league is all mobbed up.
	JAMAICA Gay men in Jamaica must lead two separate lives	Lisa Biagiotti shares the story of a gay Jamaican who received asylum in the U.S. on the basis of his sexuality. While he is now free from persecution, he struggles with his identity and still conceals his sexuality from family members.
	SYRIA Watching Oprah in a Syrian refugee camp	Kristen Gillespie produced two signatures stories out of Jordan for Worldfocus. She writes about the global reach of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which has impacted a refugee living in a Syrian refugee camp.
	PAKISTAN Drone attacks deaden diplomatic track in Pakistan	S. Azmat Hassan argues that U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan will not succeed in fighting the Taliban. He outlines Taliban groups on both sides of the border and explains the Pakistani reluctance to take on the Afghan Taliban.
	NORTH KOREA Sweet dreams of Beyonce in N. Korean people’s paradise	Part 4 of 6 of our Inside the Hermit Kingdom series on the people and culture of North Korea. Ben Piven writes about popular music, food and beer in the most isolated country on earth. Believe it or not, North Koreans know Beyonce.
	CUBA Cuba provides free health care without the worry	Apropos of the current health care debate in the United States — what happens when a government you dislike does some good things? Cuba has a startling level of health care, writes Worldfocus blogger Peter Eisner.
	MYANMAR A Burmese family’s story of multiple arrests, weekly bribes	Karen Zusman writes about one Burmese family caught up in the human trafficking on the border. In June, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report blacklisted Malaysia for trafficking refugees into Thailand.
	CHINA Post-Tiananmen, it’s no easier seeking human rights abroad	On the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Nina Hachigian writes that in the last 20 years, while standards of living in China have risen dramatically, political reform has stalled and dissidents continue to live in terror.

Obama t-shirt at Shanghai bazaar. Photo: Flickr user Shazari

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing Worldfocus blogger.

Obama’s first visit as president to China elicited considerable curiosity among the Chinese, but Obama could not expect the generally rapturous welcome he has received in Europe.

The Chinese government saw to it that his visit was strictly controlled and choreographed. The student audience at the “town hall” meeting was made up of communist party members, who lobbed soft balls toward Obama. There was none of the raucousness or spontaneity one has come to expect in U.S. town hall meetings.

Similarly, the official talks with a confident and assertive President Hu Jintao appeared to avoid contentious issues. Human rights, Taiwan and Tibet were soft-pedaled by Obama. To his questions on the adverse effects on US-China trade of the artificially pegged reminbi, the Chinese currency, Hu Jintao was evasive.

Similarly, Obama got scant purchase out of him on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. China is a major importer of Iranian oil and a major trading partner.

China is an emerging super power poised to surpass the United States in the next few decades. Current estimates suggest that China’s will equal the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2027 and in 2050 China’s GDP will be double that of the U.S.

These astonishing figures — plus China’s foreign exchange reserves which stand at a staggering $2.27 trillion — indicate why China is enjoying the sunshine of success. The wind is certainly at its back.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is indebted to China to the tune of almost $1 trillion, and rising. Worse still, the U.S. is borrowing largely from China and Japan at the rate of $2 billion per day.

Perhaps our Wall Street trained economic managers think there will never be a reckoning for this dizzying profligacy initiated in the last 8 years.

Granted, Obama is trying hard to stanch the hemorrhaging which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are causing to America’s resources, and the financial crisis of last year. Obama is trying to put the economy on an even keel. A key ingredient will be to head for the exits in these two countries sooner rather than prolonging the agony. Let’s hope and pray he succeeds.

Meanwhile, a confident and assertive China has no need genuflect to the United States. If its march continues as predicted, the roles may be reversed.

Let’s get our children motivated to learn Mandarin. That language is on track to replace English as the common language of diplomacy and commerce. We have to adjust to new realities. Reform or perish!

Martin Savidge hosts David Rayside and Rachel Tiven on LGBT politics and gay asylum. We begin the conversation with Jamaica, which makes up 17 of the 55 U.S. asylum cases won by Immigration Equality last year alone. We examine the metastasizing colonial and slave culture, entrenched poverty and rampant violence in Jamaica.

In 1994, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno expanded asylum law to include persecution based on sexual orientation. Sexual orientation has been increasingly used as grounds for asylum. We also discuss how to begin the process of applying for gay asylum in the U.S.

From human rights abuses to political progress, the gay rights movement is at different stages throughout the world. We take a comparative look at the progress of LGBT politics and the gay rights movement in different countries, including the best and worst places to be gay.

A Greek gay rights parade. Photo: Megan Thompson

• Read about one gay Jamaican’s story of asylum: Gay men in Jamaica must lead two separate lives
• Watch signature videos from Jamaica: Violence and venom force gay Jamaicans to hide and Gays in Jamaica worship in underground church
• Watch our signature video from Greece: Ancient Greek values clash with modern treatment of gays

GUESTS:

David Rayside is a political science professor at the University of Toronto. His latest book “Queer Inclusions, Continental Divisions” is a comparative analysis of Canadian and  American political recognition of same-sex relationships, the extension of parenting rights to same-sex couples and the response to sexual diversity in public schooling. For over thirty years, he has also been an activist on issues related to sexual diversity and gender within academic institutions and beyond.

Rachel B. Tiven is the executive director of Immigration Equality, a national organization fighting for equal immigration rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive community. Under her leadership, Immigration Equality has doubled in size, quadrupled client services and opened a policy office in Washington, D.C.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven
Researcher: Geneva Sands-Sadowitz

For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Photo: Flickr user hihi_vita

Hsin-Yin Lee, a former associate producer at Worldfocus, is a news editor at the “China Times” in Taipei. She writes how a game-fixing scandal has rocked Taiwanese professional baseball.

Unlike Phillies fans who vow for a comeback next season, baseball fans in Taiwan wonder if there is a tomorrow for the island’s beloved sport, as evidence says Taiwan’s pro league is all mobbed up.

The blow came in late October, when Taiwan’s own post-season thrill reached a high. Baseball fans astonishingly found out that many of their most favorite players deliberately lost the game in exchange for payoffs. The scandal hit Taiwan’s pro baseball badly, as it’s not only the largest but also the fifth game-fixing case in the league, since its establishment 20 years ago.

As angry baseball fans flooded to the street and vowed to stamp the mob out of the game, critics argued that the fragile baseball environment ia to blame.

Baseball players in Taiwan are generally underpaid, despite their world-class competence, said Richard Lin, secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association. The situation is especially true for topnotch players. Chin-Feng Chen, the first Taiwanese player who played in MLB, is paid $300,000 a year in Taiwan. Multiply this number by 20, you have the salary of Hideki Matsui when he played in Japan; multiply it by 100, and you get a sense of how much A-Rod earns each season.

While the mobs in Taiwan can easily rake in at least $30 million a season by fixing games, accepting the bribes seems to be an offer many players can’t refuse. In addition, the pro league in Taiwan has no free-agent rights, which pushes many players to go underground.

Still, the authority bears criticism for not enforcing the law against illegal gambling strictly enough. Even worse, it is widely considered that Taiwan’s corrupt political culture has spilled over into baseball and many politicians have been actively involved in the scandal. In some cases, players are motivated not by the carrot, but the stick. A tactic mobs often use is to destroy the fingers of a player and walk away with light sentences under “bodily injury” charges.

Chien-Ming Wang, a Taiwanese-born Yankees pitcher, said Taiwan’s pro league should apply the U.S. system, which assures players’ security so that they don’t need to worry about being blackmailed. He also said that, without a wholesome baseball environment, it’s very hard for Taiwanese players to take the mound on the world stage.

Baseball has been a part of Taiwan’s identity since 1968, when a Taiwanese team won the Little League World Series in Williamsport. At the dawn of the break-off between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government and the Carter authority, it was baseball that gave Taiwanese a reason to hold their pride.

The Taiwanese version of a “Say it aint so, Joe” scandal has apparently become a political crisis for the government. President Ma Ying-jeou recently stressed that as baseball is Taiwan’s national game, the authority will grant full support, including a $3 million promotional fund, to build an environment free from game-fixing and outside interference.

Whether it works or not, most Taiwanese think it’s worth trying. Watching baseball fall seems too much to bear for the public — after all, the sport carries much more than just scores.

A Taiwanese gamer playing Happy Farm on Facebook. Photo: Flickr user copycatko

Hsin-Yin Lee, a former associate producer at Worldfocus, is a news editor at the “China Times” in Taipei.  She writes about the current Taiwanese obsession with a Facebook game.

“Happy Farm,” a six-month-old Facebook application, has spawned millions of cyber farmers across the island. According to the game developer, Taiwanese fans constitute up to 80 percent of the 3.7 million members of “Happy Farm.” Thanks to its popularity, Facebook’s reach rate in August was up 60 percent from July, which helped Taiwan post the highest growth in new Facebook members worldwide during September.

The rule of “Happy Farm” is quite simple: You come, you seed, you conquer. Each virtual farmer is allowed to set up farms, grow crops and raise livestock in a fiercely competitive environment. Points are won not only by one’s hard work but also his craft in stealing from friends when they are offline.

However, not everyone is happy with “Happy Farm.” Taiwanese premier Wu Den-yih recently had to step in to discourage people–especially civil servants–from playing it.

Wu’s comment came after several server shut-downs at local police stations because too many police were playing the game at work. The authority also worried that “crop-stealing” might hurt the image of the police.

The Happy Farm craze has set Taiwanese society in circus. In private companies, managers have issued statements to make clear that “harvesting in an air-conditioned room is immoral.” Some restaurants have even been renovated to resemble the “Happy Farm” interface to attract customers!

Students are complaining that too much work has made them unable to wake up in the middle of night to guard their crops; even drug dealers have been seen using the game to contact customers and establish new networks.

Experts say that overuse of Happy Farm didn’t come out of thin air, though. Taiwanese people are generally overworked, and it is the fatigue generated by heavy workload, experts argue, that leaves people no choice but to get connected through the Internet as much as possible.

According to the 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook published by the Lausanne-based business school IMD, Taiwan’s working hours were ranked as the fifth-longest in the world - behind Mexico, Hong Kong, South Korea and India.

Since each Taiwanese employee has to work an average of 2,256 hours a year, experts said “Happy Farm” provides an ideal environment for self-indulgence at work. While taking care of your own farm brings contentment, getting a taste of humanity by stealing crops somehow eases the feeling of isolation.

Now, pardon me for ending my article here. I really need to get back to my farm to collect some pumpkins.

Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English reports on the damage.

Read what bloggers in the region had to say about the devastation.

Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan.

In Asia, Typhoon Morakot has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but not before it caused widespread destruction in several countries.

The typhoon dumped as much as 80 inches of rain in parts of Taiwan, where 400 or more people were reported buried and are unaccounted for after a mudslide in one village Sunday morning. In China, hundreds of villages and towns were flooded and more than 2,000 houses collapsed. Almost one million people were evacuated. In the Phillippines, the storm killed at least 22 people over the weekend.

Blogger Sandy in Neipu, Taiwain describes the devastation:

Riding around Neipu today we saw - a duck farm’s metal shed all twisted all over the bridge between Neipu and WanJin, elementary school and junior high with school kids gathering fallen tree limbs to put into dumpsters, and signs blown all over. The new levy at the river between Neipu and WanLuan where we had ridden bicycles to all summer is covered with mud and a tree is across the one-lane bridge, but less flooding occured there than before.

More aftermath of the typhoon - many stranded, many displaced from their homes, many without power or water, many wondering if their families high in the mountains are all right, many scared, many hungry and thirsty, many cleaning mud and floodwaters from their homes.

Watch a video of the typhoon’s aftermath from YouTube user WXextremeWX:

Blogger Nick in Taiwan says that many have braved the weather:

In New Orleans, when a hurricane was coming, we usually evacuated – either to Baton Rouge or Texas or wherever we could north or west. Well, you can’t really evacuate here, since, you know, we’re on a small island, and no matter where you go you’re more than likely still somewhere in the storm’s path. You obviously can’t fly anywhere, and boating is not too encouraged in these conditions. So, we’re stuck here.

Some of you might think that I’m nuts for venturing out in this weather, but the truth is, I am far from alone. In fact, the weather doesn’t seem to have slowed this town down as much as one might think. There are many, many restaurants and stores that have remained open the whole weekend. In my cab ride last night, there were lots of cars on the road, and even a few brave – or unlucky – scooter riders. When Mo drove me home this afternoon, there were even more cars on the road. It’s just crazy, especially given the fact that, despite the storm traveling through northern Taiwan, it’s our beloved southern part of the island that has by far sustained the most flooding and damage.

Meanwhile, The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami watch for five countries after a massive 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit the Indian Ocean, though the warning was later lifted.

Japan was struck by a 6.6-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday and a  7.1-magnitude earthquake on Sunday. The quake was centered well offshore, deep under the Pacific Ocean. Japan is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and is struck by about 20 percent of the world’s quakes. Experts put the chances of an earthquake centered near Tokyo at 70 percent in the next couple of decades and warn that thousands could die.

A blogger at “Shibuya” in Japan shares that worry:

Japan experiences many earthquakes every year and most are not too strong. The one everyone is worried about is if a huge earthquake were to hit the center of Tokyo.

Whilst most apartment buildings and office buildings have been constructed under some strict earthquake resistant guidelines, there are still many older structures which may not stand up so well under the ultimate stress test.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Jon@th@nC under a Creative Commons license.

Many Taiwanese women have seen their husbands leave for China and abandon them, only to later return, jobless and empty-handed.

In years past, as Chinese industry boomed, thousands of men from Taiwan left behind wives and children to head to the Chinese mainland, eager for work.

Many found success — and many found new wives and second families on the mainland.

But now that the economic crisis has deepened, writes Michael Turton, men are headed back empty-handed to Taiwan. Since the men spent money on second families, their Taiwanese wives and children face a stiff financial burden. Turton is an English instructor in Taiwan writing at “The View from Taiwan.”

The Human Cost of China Investment

The damage by the growing Great Depression – is recovery even possible? — is masking another crisis already long concealed by the China boom: the human cost of Taiwan’s massive investment in China.

This week my wife called one of relatives who lives across town. This woman, in her early fifties, had been taken to the hospital last week and my wife wanted to know why.

Turns out she had been spitting up blood, on account of the fact that her stomach, completely lacking in food, had developed a mass of ulcers and was more or less digesting itself. She worked as a cook in a kindergarten making $8000 a month for four hours a day cooking for 30 or so children and adults. It was their only income. She has two daughters, the one in a good high school across the city needing $2000 a month for food and travel costs, while the family had to shell out $10,000 a month for rent. To save money she had decided to do without food. They were living — if you could call it that — on the charity of neighbors. There’s plenty of charity in Taiwanese culture, but it is not the obvious kind of people making ostentatious donations of time and cash to big institutions (we do have that), but rather, charity in Taiwan begins in and around the home….

The reason they were in this state of abject poverty is simple: her husband had gone off to China to work early in the boom and had never returned. Raising a second family there, he had never sent even a single dollar home for his wife and kids in Taiwan. Now the crisis had sent him back home to Taiwan to live with his wife. He brought no money and doesn’t work. But he still has to be fed.

This is not an isolated case; it is a common pattern. Among our friends and family I can easily think of a half-dozen similar cases. Several students at my former university came to me for tearful discussions of how they had discovered that their father had a second family across the Strait, complete with half-siblings. And they themselves had no money, because Dad had “invested” it in his second wife. The next time someone tells me what great businessmen Taiwanese are, I’m going to ask him why so many of these “great businessmen” blew so much money on mistresses and other meaningless displays of wealth, instead of reinvesting the cash in their businesses, or in the future of their children.

The “investment” in China has not only pillaged capital that could have gone to develop the island and continue to raise its living standards, but has also imposed enormous costs on a generation of women and children in Taiwan — its effects are gendered — patriarchy mediates the linkage between Taiwan and the global economy — and working mothers, as so often in society, bear the heaviest personal and social costs.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Worldfocus correspondents Dave and Amy Marash traveled to Taiwan to learn more about the island and its progressing relations with mainland China.