This month, academics at a forum on climate change criticized the lack of national planning for land use over the past half century, which has resulted in ineffective national land management. Wise words indeed. But if the Cabinet really wants national planning for land use, it must stop the implementation of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “three cities, 15 counties” campaign promise to integrate Taichung City and Taichung County, Taipei City and Taipei County and Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County, giving them all special municipality status.
Ma’s credibility has suffered after breaking a series of election promises, including his “633” platform and goal of boosting the stock market beyond 10,000 points. To save his reputation, he is now preparing to fulfill the “three municipalities” promise, which he copied from former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Both Ma and Chen made the promise during their election campaigns. Although Ma is copying Chen, he would outshine Chen if he succeeded where Chen failed and would shake off his reputation for breaking promises.
Implementing this plan would, however, spell disaster.
A municipality holds provincial status — a step above county level — and the number and ranks of its government officials and its budget are much larger. For example, Taipei and Kaohsiung receive more than NT$50,000 per resident each year from the central government, while Taipei County, a relatively rich county, is allocated less than NT$22,000 per resident.
The expenditures of Taipei City, which has a population of 2.5 million, totaled NT$130.6 billion (US$3.92 billion) last year. For Taipei County, with a population of 3.75 million, the figure was NT$82.3 billion.
By this standard, the annual budget for Taipei County would surge to NT$150 billion after the administrative change.
No wonder Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) shed a tear when he heard Taichung City and Taichung County would be integrated first.
If Ma implements his promise, the population of the three metropolises will be 12 million, or 53 percent of the country’s population.
Today, the combined annual expenditure of local governments totals NT$731.7 billion. If the integration plan is carried out, the annual spending of the three main cities alone would reach NT$601.7 billion.
If the government’s budget remains unchanged, the other half of the population will be left with less than 20 percent of the budget for local governments.
If the budgets of other cities and counties are unchanged, the budget for the three main cities would exacerbate the gap between urban and rural areas and the polarization of society into lower and upper classes with a dwindling middle class.
To keep the budgets of other cities and counties unchanged, the government would have to add hundreds of billions in funds annually.
In addition, the mayor of the enlarged Taipei City would be too powerful. It seems likely that the nation’s population will continue to concentrate in urban areas, but if the biggest administrative region exceeds one-sixth of the nation’s population, it may be difficult to solve conflicts with the central government.
After the integration of Taipei County, the population of Taipei City would be 6.75 million, or 37.4 percent of the country’s population. The city’s annual financial costs would reach NT$341.5 billion, or 46.7 percent of local government expenditures. Tax revenues would be NT$709.8 billion, or 46.7 percent of national tax revenue.
By that time, Taipei would control half of the nation’s real strength — reminiscent of Russia under the Soviet Union.
In the past, national land planning has been too fragmented, with Taiwan Province making up most of Taiwan and special municipalities and provincial municipalities being divided into urban and rural townships. This complicated national land planning and regional development.
These problems should have been resolved by combining small cities and counties and putting special and provincial municipalities and counties at the same level. Unfortunately, the government and the opposition were too busy wrangling for power when amending the Constitution to address such matters.
It has been suggested that as the importance of big cities has increased, the state should promote them. Four metropolises in China — Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing — have been turned into special municipalities. Taiwan should learn from this example, some say.
But the area, population size and density of the whole of Taiwan are not much different from those of Beijing, Tianjin or Shanghai, and the county is not half as large as Chongqing. After the completion of the high-speed rail and the east-west expressways, Taiwan will be similar to a major Chinese metropolis. Copying China would not benefit regional development.
Although Ma fears breaking more promises and is struggling to improve his image, it would be better to break this promise to avoid the dire consequences.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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