An odd venue for intra-Chinese rivalry

Now how is it that this issue of The Panama News Online has a cover photo taken in the United States rather than Panama, which moreover is about a Chinese, rather than a Panamanian, dispute? (The photo, by the way, is courtesy of the Taiwan News, and was taken during Republic of China President Chen Shui-bian's US stopover on a trip that will take him to Panama and several other countries.)

Little Panama finds itself an important venue for rivalry between mainland China and Taiwan. Sometimes the rivalry takes the form of competition between Taiwan's Evergreen and China's COSCO shipping lines, sometimes as Colon's crosstown competition between the Taiwanese-owned Coco Solo Norte port and the Port of Cristobal, which is run by a Hong Kong-based company. No doubt there are spies for both China and Taiwan skulking around Panama. The National Security Center, a conservative Washington think tank, even goes so far as to allege that since the US military withdrawal from this country, China has become the "gatekeeper of the Panama Canal." A visit by a Taiwanese president to Panama, which maintains official diplomatic relations with Taiwan only but has important economic ties with China, is always the occasion for concern in the Far East. As you will see in our cover story, Chen Shui-bian's visit here is also the occasion for much division within Panama's significant Chinese community, which was established almost exactly a century before the China-Taiwan rivalry began.

Taiwan maintains normal relations with only 29 other countries, so we can expect that President Chen won't say things that offend the Panamanian government during his visit here. It is worth noting, however, that one of Panama's principal human rights issues is this government's use of criminal defamation laws to intimidate journalists in general and its critics in particular, and that Chen has some experience with this sort of thing — voters in Taipei once elected him as their legislator while he was in prison for the supposed criminal defamation of a leader of the then-ruling KMT party.

The intra-Chinese controversy is being fought in, among other places, Panama's two Chinese-language newspapers. Meanwhile, the Moscoso administration has drafted legislation that, if passed and enforced, would effectively ban this country's foreign-language press, including both The Panama News and the Chinese dailies. Willy Carrera, several of whose stories grace the pages of this issue, would be banned because he's Peruvian. Sparky the Wonder Dog's editor, Pat Alvarado, and our frequent contributor Emily Zhukov, would be banned because they're American citizens married to Panamanians and because they don't have journalism degrees. I would be banned because my undergrad degree is in history and political science and my doctorate is in law, and because I refuse to be a part of any racist or xenophobic organization, like those which campaigned to throw Gustavo Gorriti out of Panamanian journalism because he's Peruvian, and which would become the only officially recognized journalists' groups in Panama. This new proposal, which is part of the grist for my opinion page column, would surely make Mireya's late husband's good buddy Adolf Hitler proud.

These days our health coverage is merged into our science sections, and it happens that we have two important health stories in that venue this issue. The tale that has grabbed the most public attention, an unfortunate malfunction with a cobalt machine at the Instituto Oncologico, is covered by Willy Carrera. My addition to that section is on a more positive note — an alliance between the Harvard School of Medicine's network of teaching hospitals and the Hospital Nacional promises to make Panama Latin America's most important teaching center for emergency medicine.

Without any doubt, the most comfortable and interesting hat I wore for this issue was as a sports reporter, wherein a bore witness to the awesome ferocity of one Ana Pascal, Panama's newest world champion boxer. I also got to cover Richard Koster's reading from his new novel, "Glass Mountain," and to turn a dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Los Camisones, into our dining section report.

In our letters section, several Panamanian ex-presidents and former foreign ministers join prominent compatriots from across the national political spectrum to make a three-part environmental plea to George W. Bush. Our opinion section takes us to the Middle East, the United Nations and the fashion world.

The economic news from 9°N is mostly bad, including for this newspaper. Mireya was forced to back down on her bus fare increase, which most passengers took as bad news and the drivers received with displeasure. In our business section's lead story, Willy Carrera takes a look at how the crisis has affected Panama's important insurance industry.

Meanwhile, however, the book side of our business is slowly growing: we're distributing Pat Alvarado's children's book "Ben's Brigade," and we will be publishing a couple of her new works in the next couple of months. You can order "Ben's Brigade" through this website.