Questioned by the government over the credibility of its latest survey on the public’s perception of corruption in public institutions, Transparency International said it is confident in the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) released on Tuesday.
“We have full confidence in the results of the GCB survey, including those for Taiwan,” Transparency International Secretariat research director Finn Heinrich said in an e-mail reply to an inquiry from the Taipei Times on Friday night.
“As is standard practice, the GCB survey data underwent a series of internal and external validity checks, including verification by an independent survey methodology expert,” Heinrich added.
Heinrich was replying to a question on how Transparency International would respond to Taiwan’s protest letter against a finding of the survey that suggested 36 percent of respondents in Taiwan said they had bribed contacts within the public sector.
The letter addressed to the Berlin-based organization’s managing director, Cobus de Swardt, was delivered by the nation’s representative office in Germany on Thursday.
The state-owned Central News Agency (CNA) had what it said was a “full text” of the letter in a report from Berlin early on Friday, showing it was a strongly worded protest.
Regarding the “unfair evaluation” of Taiwan in this year’s GCB survey, “we desire to protest in the strongest possible way,” the CNA report said.
One of the reasons for the discrepancy between the survey and a survey conducted by an independent institution in Taiwan last year — which found that 0.8 percent of respondents said they had paid a bribe, 2.5 percent said they had only heard of things like that happening and 96.6 percent said they never paid a bribe — was that the methodology used in the survey was “not scientific enough,” CNA reported.
Transparency International, a civil society organization with 90 chapters worldwide that was founded in Berlin in 1993 to expose corruption, releases its GCB survey annually to assess people’s direct experiences with bribery and detail their views on corruption in the main institutions in their countries.
According to the organization, the report this year draws on a survey of more than 114,000 respondents in 107 countries, with the survey questionnaire translated into local languages and used for face-to-face, computer-assisted telephone interviewing or online interviews depending on the country context.
The government said in its protest letter that the survey result was “subjective” and “arbitrary” and “not an objective comparison” of corruption in the 107 countries because the countries were surveyed by different polling institutions that employed different survey methods, the CNA report said.
“Taiwan is a country governed by rule of law. This is so unfair that Taiwan was placed in the same tier as most-corrupt countries. We demanded that you review the process whereby the survey was conducted and correct the ridiculous survey result about our country,” the CNA report quoted the letter as saying.
According to the GCB survey, countries with a bribery rate of 36 percent included Bolivia, Egypt and Indonesia, in addition to Taiwan.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) would not confirm the CNA report, saying only that the protest letter was written in German.
The survey on Taiwan was conducted by the Cass Research Centre, WIN/Gallup International Association’s China-based partner, using an online method, rather than Shanghai-based WisdomAsia undertaking the survey by telephone as stated in the GCB report, Heinrich confirmed in the e-mail reply.
Heinrich said that the mistake was “a result of miscommunication” between Transparency International Secretariat and WIN/Gallup International Association, which Transparency International works with on the global survey.
“We regret this error and will issue a correction in the online version of the Global Corruption Barometer report as soon as possible,” Heinrich said.
Asked why Transparency International did not have the survey on Taiwan implemented by a Taiwan-based polling company, Heinrich said WIN/Gallup International Association contracted its China-based partner CRC to carry out the survey because it does not have a local partner in Taiwan.
Particularly for online surveys, “this is common practice” and has been done by WIN/Gallup International Association for other surveys as well, including the Global Corruption Barometer 2010, Heinrich said.
The Global Corruption Barometer 2010 found that 7 percent of people in Taiwan who had used any of eight government services — police, judiciary, registry, land, medical, education, tax and utilities — over the past 12 months had paid a bribe.
SHOW OF SUPPORT: As a responsible member of the international community, Taiwan might collaborate with Manila against China’s aggressive actions, MOFA said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday hinted that Taiwan might join forces with the Philippines to protect navigational freedoms, days after Beijing blocked Philippine supply ships in the South China Sea. The ministry made the comment when asked whether Taipei would be willing to join forces with the Philippines to protect the latter from increasingly aggressive activities by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy and China Coast Guard. Taiwan “is willing to cooperate with any other nation with shared values in areas of common concern, including maintaining peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacfic region,” it wrote in a statement. A Chinese
‘LIKE A BLACK HOLE’: The figure is about 7% of China’s reported military spending, although diplomats and experts say that number is often opaque or not fully inclusive China spent about US$15 billion, or 7 percent of its defense budget, on exercises in the western Pacific last year, according to a previously unpublished Taiwanese estimate, showing Beijing’s investment in military activity around Taiwan and its neighbors. The internal research by the military, reviewed by Reuters, offers a rare look into a slice of China’s defense spending as Beijing has ramped up its military presence amid rising tensions in the region. China claims Taiwan as its own and is also locked in disputes with several nations over sovereignty of large parts of the South China Sea and the East China Sea. “This
‘GLOBAL THREAT’: MOFA said that it welcomes the ‘staunch US support’ and that ‘China again made spurious claims about Taiwan that do not accord with reality’ US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stressed the importance of stability in the Taiwan Strait, while a senior Chinese military official warned the US to stop “collusion” with Taiwan in a rare one-on-one meeting yesterday, both sides said. Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, the first US national security adviser to visit China since 2016, for three days of talks with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) and other high-ranking officials. Yesterday morning, Sullivan met with Zhang Youxia (張又俠), vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and China’s second-highest-ranking military official, at the Beijing headquarters of the commission.
PRESSURE: The Solomon Islands, acting under explicit instructions from Beijing, is aiming to prevent Taiwan from attending the next forum to be held in Honiara Australia has voiced support for Taiwan despite the Solomon Islands’ plan to undermine Taiwan’s status as an observer at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). The forum is one of the most important international organizations in the Pacific region, made up of 18 member states, including Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan’s Pacific allies, associate members and observers, along with “dialogue partners” such as the US, Japan, Canada and the EU. The 53rd edition of the forum opened in Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, yesterday. Taiwan has been taking part in the forum and related events as a “developmental partner” under the name Taiwan / Republic of