The recently formed Alliance of Justice and Fairness, or the pan-purple alliance, yesterday presented its population policy, proposing ways to deal with the aging population and encouraging the government to give more rights to the foreign wives of Taiwanese men.
The alliance warned the public that their retirement plans were being jeopardized by the declining birth rate.
Alliance spokesman Wu Chung-tai (
Wu also presented government figures showing that the proportion of people aged 65 and over was set to rise from 8.8 percent of the total population in 2001 to 10 percent in 2007 and to 20 percent by 2025.
"Soon, increasingly numerous elderly citizens will be without enough children to support them, and the country does not provide them with a sound pension and care system. [Ensuring] a dignified life in retirement will become a serious challenge," Wu said.
Alliance convener Chien Hsi-chieh (
"Having children should be everyone's basic right, but now many Taiwanese dare not have children because of their poor living standards and the lack of a social security network. The responsibility for child care falls mainly on families, yet private child care and education are expensive," Chien said.
The alliance also expressed its concerns over so-called foreign brides -- women from Southeast Asia and China who marry Taiwanese men.
The alliance said the first step to help these women should be to describe them as "new female immigrants" instead of "foreign brides."
They also appealed to the government to establish comprehensive immigration policies and set up a department of immigration to deal with issues such as employment, education and social welfare for the women and their children.
"Last year these new female immigrants made up 25.9 percent of the women who got married in Taiwan, and the children that were born to immigrants made up 12.46 percent of total newborns," said Wu Wei-ting (伍維婷), CEO of the Awakening Foundation (婦女新知基金會), a member of the alliance.
"However, the government considers these women the responsibility, or liability, of individual families and refuses to give them the rights to which they are entitled," she said.
Wu Wei-ting urged the government to cancel the unreasonable limitations on the work rights of such immigrants, saying they should be entitled to all the rights listed in the Labor Standards Law (
She also suggested that the problem of domestic violence that many of these women face should be dealt with separately. Furthermore, when they divorce their husbands, courts should not always give the children to the husbands and the government should help ensure that the women are given visitation rights if they lose custody of the children.
The alliance, which was founded earlier this month, consists of well-known social groups and seeks to highlight a number of social issues in the run-up to the presidential election next year.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated
Myanmar has turned down an offer of assistance from Taiwanese search-and-rescue teams after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the nation on Friday last week, saying other international aid is sufficient, the National Fire Agency said yesterday. More than 1,700 have been killed and 3,400 injured in the quake that struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. Worldwide, 13 international search-and-rescue teams have been deployed, with another 13 teams mobilizing, the agency said. Taiwan’s search-and-rescue teams were on standby, but have since been told to stand down, as