Choke-a-Chicken
The front page of the today’s Taipei Times brought to light the Australian hubbub about a Taiwanese made toy. The toy is a plush chicken 
which, when choked, squawks, clucks, and flails like mad. Apparently the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) feels it sets a bad example for Australian youth, and a bad precedent for toy makers. I think the RSPCA’s sarcastic examples of dreadful toys to come “Burn a Cat” or “Shoot a Dog” sound pretty entertaining. Besides, the example the toys set isn’t necessarily a bad one. In the event of a large scale disaster the ability to choke-a-chicken may come in very handy. Furthermore, with the current avian flu threat choking all of one’s chickens could be a prescient safeguard.
Given the current international trade situation Taiwan’s toymakers may want to market an “Evil Mainlander” toy. It would train kids to distrust mainlanders, and maybe choose their toy purchases a bit more carefully. The Mainland’s ability to produce various manufactures at incredibly low prices is sending low-skill jobs from Taiwan to China. Admittedly many of the companies doing the manufacturing in China are Taiwanese based, but if Taiwan doesn’t carefully manage their economic modernization they may end up with an unemployment rate similar to that of France or Germany where for years jobs have been outsourced overseas, and to Eastern Europe. This may lead to eventual choke-a-finance-minister syndrome in Taiwan, which would just add to the legislative violence.