During the past presidential election, I proposed making Greater Taichung Taiwan’s second capital. I suggested the first step would be moving the Legislative Yuan there.
In democratic countries, sovereignty lies in the hands of the people. The legislature is Taiwan’s highest government body and should reflect that fact. However, its location is worth discussing, and should not descend into debates about whether legislators are acting out of self-interest when they propose a change of venue. I convened a cross-party committee to plan the move, to oversee issues such as the new location, the design, the allocation of the relocation budget and the actual construction.
The Legislative Yuan is currently located in the former grounds of a Japanese colonial-era high school. Apart from costing more than NT$100 million (US$3.38 million) in annual rent, its current location is actually illegal, as the grounds should be allocated for a school. Relocation becomes not a matter of whether we should do it, but how.
Another consideration is that Taiwan’s national government agencies are all in the Taipei City area, which is vulnerable to nuclear disasters. After the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, the Tokyo and Osaka governments started transferring some of Japan’s major national-level functions to Osaka to make it a “backup capital.”
The Taipei Basin would be affected by a disaster at the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門) or the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in Wanli (萬里) — both in New Taipei City (新北市) — or even the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Ma-anshan (馬鞍山), Pingtung County.
Aside from these concerns, a shortage of land in Taipei, as well as overcrowding, high housing costs and constraints on the quality of life are also good reasons to relocate.
Relocating government departments would place less stress on Taipei, but doing so for many government departments would be relatively complicated and problematic, not least because it would involve also relocating many civil servants.
The Legislative Yuan, however, consists of only 113 individual legislators. Also, legislators should be serving people throughout Taiwan, so the move to Greater Taichung would make sense. In addition, the Legislative Yuan only meets for about six months of the year and, with the exception of government officials who might have to go there twice a week to answer questions, legislators would not have to be tied to its location.
Even more important is the issue of rezoning national land. Taiwan has yet to address the problem of uneven development, which has caused differential development between the northern, central, southern and eastern areas, as well as an increasing urban-rural gap. Rational discussion between legislators and various sectors of society is needed to find the best possible way of reaching the greatest and most beneficial consensus on how to use the relocation of the Legislative Yuan to bring about more balanced national development.
By moving the Legislative Yuan, it would be possible to come up with ways to develop national land that benefit everyone as well as to implement government renewal. Future government agencies could also be established in areas outside Taipei. The High Speed Rail has already made one-day business trips around the nation possible, effectively making Taiwan a city-state with Greater Taichung as its city center. New times call for new ways of thinking and new action. This is the only way Taiwan can experience new development.
Lin Chia-lung is a Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Drew Cameron
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017