Taiwanese President Ma Ying jeou was as surprised as the Japanese by the size of the contributions made by his people.

But, in the wake of Taiwanese society s outpouring of sympathy for Japan, he has adjusted his stance.

Ma had been tilting his government s policies increasingly toward China, concluding a bilateral framework agreement on economic cooperation.

The Ma government has also been kept on its toes by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party s call for the phase out of nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025.

This is the ob gen argument, first put forth in a 1994 paper by Yiying Zhang and her colleagues on the genetics of obesity in mice, which concluded by extrapolating their findings to human beings.

Understandably, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has taken the stand that Taiwan should seek closer ties with ASEAN countries rather than depend too much on Mainland China, but Ma does not see the two efforts as being mutually exclusive.

That mission s highlight was my dialogue with Taiwanese President Ma Ying jeou, who stressed the importance of connecting Taiwan to the China ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) in the light of warmer relations developing between the Mainland and Taiwan.