President Ma Goes With the Flow

choi

Taiwan | When the Wind Blows; The president bows to street protests against nuclear power. Economist, May 3, 2014
www.economist.com/news/asia/2160 ... wer-when-wind-blows

Quote:

"As for where Taiwan’s politics go from here, street protests are now not only a hallmark but a deciding factor. * * * The new style of demonstrations at first took the DPP by surprise * * * a party that itself grew out of an earlier generation of protest

"The street protests [in Taiwan presently] reflect widespread disillusion with the weakness of Taiwan’s political institutions, yet they have undermined them still further. Mr Ma is a lame duck with two years to run. More and more, Taiwan’s future could be decided on the streets.

My comment:
(a) Judging from the text, the title refers to the phrase:

see which way the wind is blowing: "to determine what is the most expedient thing to do under the conditions at hand"
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, 2002.
idioms.thefreedictionary.com/see+which+way+the+wind+is+blowing

* Less likely are the two additional phrases:
(i) straw in the wind: "something that shows you what might happen in the future <There were straws in the wind that suggested a strike was likely>
Usage notes: usually used in the plural, as in the example"
Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms, by Cambridge University Press, 2003.
idioms.thefreedictionary.com/straw+in+the+wind
(ii) which way the wind is blowing: "how something will probably develop <It wasn't hard to tell which way the wind was blowing when * * *>"
Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms, 2003.
idioms.thefreedictionary.com/which+way+the+wind+is+blowing

(b) "Taiwan has three ageing nuclear plants. The strike came in response to the construction of a fourth, Longmen, not far from Taipei."

Longmen is pinyin. In Taiwan, officially it is

Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant  龍門核能發電廠
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungmen_Nuclear_Power_Plant
(formerly Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, often abbreviated as, in Chinese, 核四)
(c) Few people in Taiwan are satisfied with the constitution and laws Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek brought to Taiwan. The longer I stay in YS (it has been three decades), the more I wish Taiwanese were more mature--more Americanized--such as not to blame the government for everything.  (In other words, if one does not want a nanny state, he should not push the government for compensation when his house burns down. Buy insurance in advance.)