The New Taipei City Government on June 17 said that it would not follow Taipei in upgrading the YouBike public bicycle rental service to “YouBike 2.0” when the contract expires in August next year. Instead, the city is to turn to Moovo — a dockless bike-sharing platform — developed by Singapore-based Moov Technology. New Taipei City Department of Transportation Director Chung Min-shi (鍾鳴時) said that the YouBike service would continue to be available to the public. The city government said it had paid NT$300 million (US$10.14 million) in 2018 alone to subsidize free YouBike rides for the first 30 minutes of every rental. Such an expense would not exist on the Moovo platform, because the city only needs to rent space to the company and does not have to pay for facility installment or the procurement of new bicycles. The sharing platform would handle all fees and charges, as well as profits and losses. That means three different public bike rental systems are to coexist in the greater Taipei area next year: YouBike 2.0 in Taipei, and YouBike and Moovo in New Taipei City. However, the governments and city councils of the two special municipalities hold differing opinions on the issue. The problem in Taipei is that if YouBike monopolizes the city, this could lead to difficulties in negotiating the price. The potential problem in New Taipei City, where as many as 100,000 bike rentals are recorded every day, is the uncertainty of whether the two YouBike systems can be connected and allow for rides between the two cities. Another worry for New Taipei City residents is that the city government might gradually wind down the old YouBike service and replace it with the Moovo platform. The New Taipei City government has said that all it needs to do is to rent out
According to the survey “Taiwanese Core Political Attitude Trend,” conducted by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center and released on July 3, 67 percent of respondents identify as “Taiwanese” rather than “Chinese,” the highest percentage since the center started surveying national identity. In terms of unification or independence, the survey showed that the proportion of people willing to “maintain the ‘status quo,’ [but] move toward independence” rose drastically, from 15.1 percent in 2018 to 27.7 percent this year. This unprecedented change in political attitude reflects mainstream public opinion support for “Taiwanese identity,” but it also implies a higher possibility that Taiwan will move from a two-party system to a system dominated by a single party. Does that mean that the main opposition party — the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — will never regain power and that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) can remain in power indefinitely? During 24 years of direct presidential elections, Taiwan’s two major political parties have seen their support rise and fall. As both parties have a solid support base, they have kept each other in check. Most KMT supporters acknowledge that there is a certain contextual relationship between the Republic of China (ROC) and China, and they also affirm the party’s contribution to Taiwan’s economic miracle. The DPP’s strongest support comes from millennial voters — generally defined as those born in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s — in addition to the so-called benshengren (本省人, those who came to Taiwan before World War II), who have been treated unfairly and unequally. The young generation supports the DPP on account of their abhorrence of the traditional bureaucratic system, and a yearning for democracy and freedom. The contrast between the two parties’ supporters is evident from the perspective of generational politics. Having lived through Taiwan’s economic miracle, a majority
In the middle of the night on June 30, the Chinese National People’s Congress Standing Committee published the Hong Kong national security legislation. Aside from publicly declaring its support for the people of Hong Kong, what other steps could Taiwan feasibly take as a strategic response? On July 1, the day of the legislation’s enactment, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) set the tone of the government’s response, saying: “This [law] is an imperial edict from an imperialist China to all citizens of the world.” This raises a question directly related to Taiwan’s national security: How to mobilize all external forces and muster the support of friends and diplomatic allies to build a unified front to pass laws that counter the significant global threat the Chinese legislation poses to human rights and security. The key section of the legislation is Article 38, which says: “This law shall apply to offenses under this law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region.” This chilling clause is far worse than anyone had predicted. Beijing has unilaterally imposed legislation that not only governs all Hong Kong residents, but also citizens of any country residing outside of Hong Kong who breaches its terms. Beijing might use every means at its disposal to enforce the law and extend that enforcement worldwide. It would not be possible to avoid falling foul of the law simply by leaving, or avoiding travel to, Hong Kong. Anyone who expresses dissenting views toward China’s or Hong Kong’s governments, who currently resides in, or travels to, a country which maintains an extradition treaty with China, could be extradited there. Beijing imposing all-pervasive security legislation comes as no surprise to people in the Chinese-speaking world, who are used to the Chinese
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After Donald Trump became the US president, some of the country’s oldest allies believed that they could anticipate his next move. The billionaire’s approach was unorthodox for sure, but there was a certain logic. Many realize now that their thinking was not only misguided, but that they do not have much power to influence him. There is also a growing dread that the embattled leader will stop at little in a brutal fight to get re-elected in November. Polls show him badly trailing his Democratic rival, former US vice president Joe Biden. The geopolitical consequences of any sudden decision in the next four months, from yet another escalation in the conflict with China to more trashing of NATO, could reverberate beyond whoever winds up winning. From Berlin to Tokyo, officials speaking on condition of anonymity acknowledged a few truths. One is that when it comes to dealing with a president who likes to shock to gain the upper hand, even friends are caught off guard. Another is that trying to stay out of harm’s way is one way to avoid being targeted, but it is by no means enough. Flattery works, but it will only get you so far. Perhaps most critically, they said that multilateralism, as it was conceived in the post-war era with the likes of NATO and the UN, has been so compromised that it might never recover. According to an official close to the leader of one big G7 economy, governments have come to realize that in their dealings with Trump, they can only be reactive. It is impossible to plan ahead with a leader who behaves in such an erratic way, the person said. Leaders from the G20 are bracing themselves for the US president to become even more unpredictable. From Trump calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “two-faced” after a
Hispanic supporters of Donald Trump sat around the cabinet table, lavished him with praise and promised: “We will rebuild America with you, and we will make America great again.” For a moment, in his self-affirming White House bubble, it seemed as though the US president remained master of his destiny. Yet when reporters questioned him, Trump answered only one. Then he was done. A White House staffer bellowed forcefully at the assembled media: “Let’s go. Let’s go. Keep going. Let’s go. Come on, we’re done. Let’s go.” It was a sign of how the president has become less indulgent of unfriendly media questions than when he thought he was riding high. Trump is in trouble. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 130,000 people in the US, tens of millions have lost their jobs and there has been a tectonic cultural shift for racial justice. Opinion polls suggest that he is the worst-placed incumbent since then-US president Jimmy Carter was hammered by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, leaving his Republican party somewhere between anxiety and panic about November’s elections for the White House and the US Congress. “The mood is like probably what it felt like when you were on the Titanic,” former US representative Joe Walsh said. “These cowardly Republicans in the Senate and House know Trump’s going to get destroyed in November, but they’re tied to him and they’re gonna go down with him and they have no choice, and I think they realize that.” The sinking ship metaphor comes up again and again among Republicans interviewed by the Guardian and other media outlets. Biden leads Trump by 52 percent to 40 percent in a poll conducted late last month by the Guardian and Opinium Research. Numerous other polls agree that the Democrat has a double-digit lead and, crucially, put him
The US House of Representatives on July 1 passed by unanimous consent a bipartisan bill that would penalize Chinese officials who implement Beijing’s new national security legislation in Hong Kong, as well as banks that do business with them. The following day, the US Senate unanimously passed the bill, which was later sent to the White House, where it awaits US President Donald Trump’s signature. The bill does not spell out what the sanctions would look like and Trump has yet to sign it into law, but Reuters on Thursday last week reported that five major Chinese state lenders are considering contingency plans in anticipation of being cut off from US dollars or losing access to US-dollar settlements. The article said the worst-case scenario that the Bank of China is considering is a run on its Hong Kong branches if clients realize it would run out of US dollars. Some Chinese banks are working to address clients that borrow US currency to purchase aircraft and machinery, and to meet other manufacturing needs. Legal experts have warned of another potential scenario — possibly the most severe punishment — in which the bill gives the White House the power to prevent financial institutions in Hong Kong from clearing some US dollar transactions through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, if the transactions involve Chinese officials or others blamed for destroying Hong Kong’s autonomy. Brussels-based SWIFT is a cooperative organization established in 1937. It provides safe and secure financial transactions and clearance services for member banks in 198 countries. The US has great influence over the nonprofit cooperative, to the point that it is able to monitor fund flows by individuals and between organizations, as well as restrict US dollar clearances by some countries. If banks in Hong Kong are suspended from SWIFT’s US dollar
Two and a half years ago, following the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to put the highly contentious fight in historical perspective. “Nothing is broken about our democracy... we have big arguments over a lot of important things,” he said. McConnell went on to reference other difficult times, including the emotional 1960s debates over civil rights, where he said the US ultimately came out “in the right place.” This is critical context for American friends in the Pacific. The political turmoil the US is now going through is not so extraordinary. It is the way we hash through political differences. The larger the gap between the political positions, the louder the disagreements. Differences in one area, even over something as big as management of the COVID-19 outbreak, however, will not necessarily lead to breaks in other areas, especially when it comes to foreign policy. In fact, despite political differences on a wide range of issues, there is bi-partisan consensus on China policy. Leaders of both major parties agree that we have entered a period of strategic competition first officially outlined — to its enduring credit — by the Trump administration. This does not mean a Joe Biden administration would not conduct China policy differently. A President Biden will have his own strategy. And it will certainly include pursuit of a more cooperative relationship with China. It’s hard not to see Democratic environmental constituencies, for example, pushing him to work with Beijing on climate change. In practice, as in the Obama years, this may entail an effort to accommodate unrelated Chinese interests — like in the South China Sea. But a visit like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made to China in February 2009 when she said the US would not allow human rights issues
In protest of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) nomination of former Presidential Office secretary-general Chen Chu (陳菊) as Control Yuan president, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators late last month occupied the legislative chamber on the eve of an extraordinary session. The protest was seen as the party’s attempt to pull itself back together after having lost its direction in the campaign for this year’s presidential election. Despite the KMT caucus’ claim that the protest would last for three days and three nights, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators broke into the legislative chamber within 24 hours, mocking the KMT for not being able to protest without air conditioning. Even some pro-blue camp political commentators criticized the attempt. Strategically, the occupation was important. The KMT hoped to use this protest over the Dragon Boat Festival holiday to reverse its unfavorable situation, while KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) used his legislative role to supervise the scene, as he wanted to use this key event to establish his authority. The KMT should have emphasized that as Tsai has pledged to downsize the nation’s five-branch system to a three-branch system by abolishing the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan through a constitutional amendment, it is unnecessary to nominate a Control Yuan president or members, or at the very least it is unnecessary to fill all its vacancies. The party should have also urged the DPP to allow its lawmakers to vote on the nomination freely without exercising party discipline, and it should have suggested that Tsai replace Chen with lawyer Yu Mei-nu (尤美女). Unfortunately, not only did the KMT not sense the strategic significance of the protest and hold on to the end, it also lost its power to manipulate the political agenda. Why then should Taiwanese care about the party’s survival? Chiang is the first KMT chairman after former president Lee
Emotional education The Ministry of Justice recently proposed a draft amendment to the Civil Code that would lower the nation’s legal age of adulthood from 20 to 18, so that 18-year-olds could enjoy the same rights that people over the age of 20 have. The part of the draft that has attracted the most attention is the article that would allow a person to marry at the age of 18 without parental consent. Since the release of the draft, many parents have expressed concern that their children would still be too mentally immature at that age and that they therefore might be incapable of making such a permanent decision. There is much room for improvement in the emotional education provided by Taiwanese high schools. In junior and senior-high schools, student counseling courses focus on instruction in occupational exploration, family education and self-understanding. After the new curriculum guidelines were launched last year, there has been a big increase in the proportion of gender equality education, which has compressed the space for students to receive emotion-related knowledge at school. No wonder the draft has raised questions. However, the only way to solve a problem is by facing it head on. If the government is willing to address parents’ concerns and anxiety about their children by enhancing the emotion-related instruction at school, it could fundamentally improve teenagers’ ability to be responsible for themselves. As a junior-high school student, I hope that lowering Taiwan’s legal age of adulthood will become a consensus among all parties. Hopefully the government will be able to continue to push for emotional education, so that society at large will put greater trust and confidence in teenagers. Tseng Ching-yao New Taipei City Inaccurate information As a communication professional teaching future generations of communicators the “tricks of the trade,” I found the article about the King Car Cultural and Educational Foundation survey on media
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Global banks risk being caught between Beijing-backed penalties and sanctions being debated in the US as Hong Kong’s autonomy becomes a volatile point of friction between the two superpowers. The vast scope of the new security legislation imposed on the territory has taken businesses by surprise, but perhaps no part is more worrying for global lenders than its Article 29. It forbids sanctions, blockades or hostile activities against the territory and China at a time when the US is inching closer to enacting rules that would require banks to comply with sanctions against Chinese officials and entities. Running afoul of the legislation put companies at risk of fines or losing their license to do business. There is concern on the “risk of becoming a political football,” said Tamer Soliman, a Washington-based partner and global head of the Export Control & Sanctions practice at law firm Mayer Brown. “We’re currently advising a number of clients who are concerned with how broadly certain aspects of the National Security Law could be construed, and how that may come into play in local implementation of the HKAA generally,” he said, referring to the US’ Hong Kong Autonomy Act. Article 29 is part of a package of legislation enforced by Beijing to rein in criticism of its rule. The legislation is upending how justice is administered in the territory, and has further raised tensions between the US and China. Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 on a “one country, two systems” framework to maintain its freedom of expression, capitalist financial system and independent judiciary for at least 50 years. The crackdown in Hong Kong has drawn criticism from Washington, including the legislation that provides for sanctions against financial institutions working with Chinese officials who are determined by the US to be interfering with Hong Kong’s limited autonomy. “This
The letter circulated by Huawei Technologies Co was blunt. Canada was becoming dangerously entangled in the diplomatic feud between Washington and Beijing, it said, and there was only one answer: for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to free the state-championed tech giant’s chief financial officer and let her go back to China. It sounds like a warning from the Chinese government. In fact, the June 23 letter to the prime minister was signed by a who is who of 19 prominent Canadians — among them a retired Canadian Supreme Court justice, a former attorney-general and several former ministers and ambassadors. Within 24 hours of it making headlines in Canada, Huawei executives were sharing the four-page note with journalists abroad. The letter was meant to propose an answer to the plight of two Canadians who have been accused by China of espionage and whose grim captivity for more than 18 months has left the nation aghast. Instead, it appears to have hardened Trudeau’s resolve, backed by an electorate that is no longer in a mood to see the government cut deals with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). A series of polls in the past few months show public opinion in Canada is shifting against China. Policy is changing, too. Trudeau’s latest approach is a break with his own policies and those of past governments that focused on courting stronger trade and commercial ties. Early this month, his government became the first to suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong in response to China’s new security legislation for the territory. Trudeau also rejected the idea of a prisoner swap for Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) — eldest daughter of the company’s billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei (任正非) — saying an exchange would “demonstrate to China that they can just arrest Canadians and get what they
A Briton who has lived in Taiwan for 10 years has gained renown for drawing detailed maps of Taiwanese cities. Artist Tom Rook gained a following in 2013 when a magazine posted an interview with him online. By the next day, the magazine’s post had been shared more than 1,000 times, and Rook’s Facebook page was inundated with comments and friend requests. The Taipei Times first reported on Rook in 2015 (“The accidental illustrator,” Sept. 9, page 12). Rook’s drawings are so special because he looks at cities from a unique perspective, whether he is sketching a 3D streetscape as a 2D engineering drawing or recreating a scene from history, such as an abandoned sanatorium or a pre-war cityscape. Sometimes, Rook draws a section of a city that especially captures his imagination, such as New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) or Taipei’s historic Dadaocheng (大稻埕) area. In a recent interview, Rook said people tell him that they connect with his maps on a personal level, such as recognizing on his maps the places where they grew up or got married. Rook’s maps, with their ability to evoke a sense of nostalgia, easily lend themselves to rendering Taiwan’s unique history and identity, fostering a national consciousness and claiming a beachhead among tourists. A walk along the main streets of Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) might not differentiate itself from a walk in any other major city, but meandering through the small alleyways of the city’s older areas reveals surroundings that are uniquely Taiwanese. Mismatched buildings, small shops selling traditional goods, tucked-away temples, weaving pathways, buildings so close they nearly touch and walls draped in hanging plants are just some of the sights that characterize Taiwanese alleys. Arguably, these are the alleyways where Taiwanese culture takes shape, and it is the historically mismatched spaces taken as a whole
It is exciting that Taiwan has finally eliminated foot-and-mouth disease and is qualified to export pork. However, pig farmers, the government and the media should consider whether Taiwan really can, or needs to, export pork products. In the past, Japan was the major market for Taiwan’s pork exports. Like Japan, Taiwan has limited land and a high population density, but Japan imports pork instead of raising more pigs. The reason is simple: The cost of raising pigs is too high. The direct costs include hog feed and human labor, but there are also the indirect environmental costs. These costs are just as high in Taiwan as in Japan. Climate change and water shortages are causing a global food crisis, which also affects the availability and cost of animal feed. The major ingredients in Taiwan’s hog feed — corn, soybeans and wheat — are mostly imported, meaning that the costs will continue to rise. As Taiwan’s environmental regulations tighten, the environmental costs will represent a larger part of a farmer’s expenses. Using recycled kitchen waste could be a solution for rising direct and indirect costs. After being sterilized, kitchen leftovers make an ideal hog feed, not only reducing the cost incurred by imports, but also alleviating the burden on environmental agencies in dealing with organic waste. The wastewater treatment facilities on pig farms could help handle the kitchen leftovers. The government has been promoting the generation of electricity from a biogas produced from pig manure and urine, but electricity generation on many farms has shown low efficiency using these anaerobic fermentation systems. However, research has shown that when one-tenth of the wastewater of pig manure and urine is kitchen leftovers in the fermentation process, the biogas production doubles. Agricultural authorities have been concerned about the high levels of fat and salt in kitchen compost, which makes it unsuitable for
In his Independence Day-eve address at Mount Rushmore, US President Donald Trump paid tribute to each of the four political giants of US history whose images grace the mountain. He also lauded national heroes from the worlds of science, entertainment, sports and the military. US presidents have unique opportunities to affect not only the lives of contemporary Americans, but also the course of human history. All face the challenges of their time, but this US president holds office at a moment in history that might prove comparable with either the beginning of World War II or the end of the Cold War. The existential danger and historic opportunity emanate primarily from the People’s Republic of China, established and ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The peoples and economies of the world are deeply mired in a global COVID-19 pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China, and was disseminated internationally not by the random, innocent mistakes of local officials, but by the deliberately deceptive actions of the CCP — the same pattern of behavior that disserved the world in earlier epidemics and pandemics. With nations distracted, Beijing is vigorously at work consolidating and spreading an even more deadly virus — that of communist totalitarianism. The immediate victims of the subjugation are Muslim Uighurs, Buddhist Tibetans, Christians, spiritualist Falun Gong, and political dissidents and independent thinkers. Radiating out from China, the targets of Beijing’s ideological and military aggression are Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Western world appears united in condemning Beijing’s blatant attempt to impose its dictatorship on Hong Kongers. The US Congress has risen to the challenge: The House of Representatives and the Senate unanimously passed legislation to impose sanctions on Chinese officials involved in crushing Hong Kong’s semi-autonomy. US Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican who cosponsored the legislation with US Senator Chris Van Hollen,
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has restarted the aging Taichung Power Plant’s No. 2 coal-fired generator, even though most people in Taichung are against it. It is alarming to see the government abuse its power like this by trampling on public opinion and harming the health of people who live in central Taiwan. Tsai told Taiwanese that they did not need to worry about having enough electricity while the government built a “nuclear-free homeland,” but it turns out that she is building a “coal-burning homeland” and giving Taipower Power Co (Taipower) free rein to damage people’s health. Tsai is always talking about how Taiwanese should let the world see the nation and saying that “Taiwan can help.” Does she really think she can help the world by burning bituminous coal? Does she want the world to see Taiwan as incapable of saving electricity and reducing carbon emissions, but able and willing to cause pollution? Restarting the No. 2 coal-fired generator is not in tune with public opinion, nor is it in tune with a worldwide trend of protecting the environment and cutting carbon emissions. It is a devious and retrograde thing to do. According to a public opinion poll from Tunghai University’s local self-government research center, less than 20 percent of respondents said they agreed that the Taichung Power Plant should restart its two aging coal-fired generators. Further analysis shows that only 23.1 percent of men, 29.7 percent of people aged 30 to 39 and 33.7 percent of pan-green camp supporters are in favor of restarting the units, while the overall average was just 19.1 percent. This shows that support for restarting the units is low across all of these groups. The overall percentage of people opposed to restarting the units was 67.3 percent. These figures prove that there is no clear divide between pan-blue and pan-green camp
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The Chinese government’s increasingly tight grip on Hong Kong is undermining the former British colony’s position as a regional financial hub, analysts and investors say. In its latest move to clamp down on Hong Kong, which has been a center of resistance against the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Chinese government last month introduced sweeping national security legislation that criminalizes protest and dissent. While the target of the legislation might have been Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, which has been protesting in the streets of the territory for a year, it has also spooked a business sector already nervous about Beijing’s control. Amid a broader move toward Singapore as a regional hub for multinational companies, money has been quietly leaving Hong Kong since late last year — although the territory’s monetary authority disputes this. Now, investors are also worried about the reaction of the increasingly belligerent administration of US President Donald Trump, which could put tariffs on Hong Kong or sanction its rulers. The Australian government is also considering its options, which include canceling a free-trade agreement struck in February and joining with other western countries in accepting refugees from Hong Kong — a move that could turn the territory’s decline in population into a full-blown exodus. “We have expressed deep our concerns in relation to the security laws and their application in Hong Kong,” Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Simon Birmingham said last week. “We desperately wish to see Hong Kong retain its status as a location where under the ‘one country, two systems,’ the basic law is respected — it continues to be upheld by an independent judiciary, that we want to see those key principles retained because that’s what’s made Hong Kong such an important center for commerce and investment across our region,” Birmingham added. Hong Kong has been a trade center
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