Less than two months after the new administration took power, the stock market is in free fall, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) approval ratings are slipping and former Control Yuan president Wang Tso-yung (王作榮) and former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) are taking turns in demanding Cabinet reshuffles, with Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Vanessa Shih (史亞平) one of those in the firing line. The government is experiencing a credibility crisis that the Cabinet cannot resolve with a few humble excuses.
The government’s problem is that Ma said too much during his presidential campaign. His election slogan promising immediate improvements made public expectations soar, when in fact Ma was overestimating the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) ability to govern and underestimating the global economic situation and the complexity of the domestic situation. The government still has to move into gear and the public no longer has confidence that Ma will deliver on his promises.
The government is trying every trick in the book to come up with a quick fix, but many of its economic measures require time, while others cancel each other out: Raising oil and electricity prices, launching a plan to increase domestic demand and promoting development will lead to inflation and higher commodity prices, while the central bank is raising interest rates in an attempt to decrease money supply and curb inflation.
While international oil prices keep rising, the government’s measures will not be able to restrict price increases and it is unlikely that commodity prices will fall and the stock index go up.
The government clearly does not have the patience to wait for its economic measures to have an effect and instead places its hopes for the economy on Chinese tourists. It is also planning to allow Taiwanese companies to set up 12-inch wafer plants in China, which will weaken the industry’s quality and also affect both national and global security.
The government’s problems clearly do not lie in isolated incidents. Rather, there is an inability to grasp overall social trends. At a time when a public consensus is missing and Ma has said the Suhua Freeway construction project will not go ahead until the environmental impact assessment has been passed, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said that sections of the freeway would be built.
When Cabinet policy is declared on the spur of the moment without going through a standardized administrative process, when policies are constantly changing and when public sentiment regarding the freeway construction is ignored, it is only natural that there will be public discontent.
The GIO director is only there to make the government look good, and Shih cannot change policy or decisions. It is not her fault that the Cabinet is mired in internal chaos, it is always a step behind in managing crises, that policy communication falters and that the government cannot grasp public sentiment. This is the responsibility of more senior officials in both the Cabinet and the Presidential Office.
The government’s most urgent task is to review the Cabinet’s performance. In addition to setting up standardized processes for decision making, the Cabinet should also be taught the meaning of the term “team work” and the ministries should discuss how to improve their understanding of public sentiment.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS