A fight over whether Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an's son got special treatment to win a US exchange spot has turned into a wider clash between the KMT and the central government, and it is bad news for Chiang's clean-hands image.

• Chiang Wan-an's eldest son was picked as a Taipei US exchange student, raising claims of special privilege and a failure to step aside from a conflict of interest.
• The Taipei city government accused the education ministry's K-12 agency of digging into whether the son qualified for Jianguo High School as an overseas-Chinese student.
• The K-12 agency says it never opened any inquiry, and the Cabinet says Taipei has offered no proof and no correction, leaving rank-and-file civil servants smeared.
• The KMT calls the anti-corruption agency and Control Yuan probes a case of "the state machine being switched on" against Chiang.
• Anti-corruption officials counter that the conflict-of-interest law covers officials whose agencies supervise the body in question, whether or not they personally touched the case.

Outlook: Expect the anti-corruption agency and Control Yuan to press ahead with their review while both sides keep trading accusations in public.