The media have in the past few months frequently covered the destruction of rural landscapes due to ground-based photovoltaic systems development. The images on the news were truly shocking, and the possible ecological impact is even more worrying. It is obvious that the government’s policy regarding renewable energy development must be adjusted significantly. From a policy planning perspective, there is no problem with incentivizing the development of renewable energy generation, and the government’s focus on photovoltaics and wind energy is reasonable, considering Taiwan’s natural environment. The problem lies deeper, in the details of the policy and its implementation. At the early stages of policy planning, errors might have occurred due to an insufficient understanding of the situation, which might cause projects to fail. It is only natural that policies must be reviewed and changed, and concerning photovoltaics, there are several points that should be improved. First, the ratio between solar panels installed on the ground and on rooftops should be adjusted. The initial policy goal was to establish a total photovoltaic capacity of 20 gigawatts (GW) by 2025, with ground installations accounting for 17GW and rooftop installations for 3GW. However, the goal for rooftop installations was reached quickly, and the ratio was adjusted to 14GW for ground installations and 6GW for rooftops, with ample potential for further development. First, factory and residential rooftop units account for only a small share of rooftop solar panels, and there is also a lot of potential for more installations on public building rooftops, even though those were in the past few years strongly promoted by the policy. Second, compared with ground installations, rooftop solar panels have several benefits and should have been promoted more strongly. For example, in Taiwan’s sunny and rainy climate, solar panels on rooftops can also provide heat insulation and reduce the risk of rainwater leakage.
Since assuming office in 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has on multiple occasions strongly advocated a data security and national security policy. With all of the world’s major powers having adopted cyberwarfare strategies, there can be no question that data security and national security are inextricably linked. Last year, several of Taiwan’s state-run companies and many mid-sized and large manufacturers fell victim to ransomware attacks of varying severity, which in some cases resulted in the temporary suspension of business operations or large ransom payouts, laying bare the intimate connection between data security and economic security. A nation’s defensive capability against cyberattacks can be termed “national data security power.” The government’s data security and national security policies should focus primarily on upgrading that power. A nation’s data security power is almost entirely determined by the quality and quantity of its data security specialists, and the latter is closely related to the extent to which it possesses a flourishing data security industry. If a nation wishes to elevate its data security power, it must first cultivate a pool of data security talent that can help develop the sector. In the past few years, the government has been attempting to do just this. Taiwan now has a community of respected “white hat” hackers who regularly participate in the world-famous Capture the Flag competition, organized by DEF CON, an international convention for hackers and computer security professionals in Las Vegas, Nevada. Taiwanese teams frequently rank among the best in the annual competition. Some of Taiwan’s white hat hackers have established their own data security companies and are doing good business. Meanwhile, white hat hacker social media groups are popping up all over the place, which means that the pool of data security talent in Taiwan is likely to grow. Do these achievements mean that Taiwan has already built up formidable data
Aletheia University reportedly prevented retired professor Chang Liang-tse (張良澤) from accessing the Taiwanese Literature Archive at its Tainan campus by changing the lock on the building. From the perspective of an outsider, the university failed to properly communicate with Chang, and its statements disrespected the retired professor, who was named honorary director of the archive. However, the issue should also be viewed from the perspective of the school, which has faced a number of operational challenges. Two decades ago, private universities prospered. In 1997, Aletheia University established the country’s first Taiwanese literature department and the Taiwanese Literature Archive in what has become New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水). The archive was established 10 years before the government set up the National Museum of Taiwan Literature in Tainan in 2007. Aletheia University expanded its campus to Tainan’s Madou District (麻豆), and in 2001 relocated the archive there, before establishing its Taiwanese language department there the following year. Three years later, it also moved the Taiwanese literature department to Tainan. As the archive and the two departments were all in Tainan at that time, it was convenient for students to access data and do research there. The effects of the nation’s low birthrate hit private universities in higher education the most, and Aletheia University was no exception. Its Taiwanese language department stopped recruiting students in 2007 and its Taiwanese literature department returned to Tamsui in the hope of attracting more students. However, the literature department in Tamsui was greatly inconvenienced by the literature archive remaining in Tainan. As a result, Aletheia University is planning to move the archive back to the northern campus. Apart from facilitating student access to the collections, the university might be preparing a slow evacuation from its southern campus. In the past few years, the school paid little attention to the archive’s management, whereas Chang
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As crunch UN talks to reverse the accelerating destruction of nature loom, indigenous communities are sounding an alarm over proposed conservation plans that they say could clash with their rights. The COP-15 UN biodiversity summit in Kunming, China — provisionally slated for early October — will see nearly 200 nations attempt to thrash out new goals to preserve Earth’s battered ecosystems. To limit the devastating effects of species loss caused by pollution, hunting, mining, tourism and urban sprawl, the draft treaty proposes to create protected areas covering 30 percent of the planet’s lands and oceans by 2030. On Monday last week, global leaders from more than 50 countries pledged at the One Planet Summit to back the plan, which could become the cornerstone of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in China. However, the past experience of indigenous populations has made them wary of the proposal. Earlier efforts to create protected areas such as national parks sometimes led to their eviction from ancestral lands. “By just setting a target without adequate standards and commitment to accountability mechanisms, the CBD could unleash another wave of colonial land grabbing that disenfranchises millions of people,” Rights and Resources Initiative coordinator Andy White said. For example, when the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was dramatically enlarged in 1975, the Bambuti community lost more than access to the forest. A whole culture intertwined with nature perished. “We no longer have access to medicinal plants,” Integrated Programme for the Development of the Pygmy People regional director Diel Mochire said. “Our diet changed. In the forest, we had easy access to resources. Now we have to buy everything.” The first conservation-related evictions date back to the 19th century, when the US government violently expelled Native Americans from lands that became the Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks. “That model was
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is about to disturb Russia’s laziest month. As in Soviet times, the New Year holiday stretches halfway through this month, allowing time for Russians to drink, eat oranges and watch nostalgic 1970s romantic comedies. Politics usually gets put on hold — but perhaps not this year, with Navalny’s planned return from Berlin today, following his poisoning in August last year. The end of last year signaled that this edition of January would be different, because we Russians learned that Navalny, the country’s main opposition leader, was the target of a murder plot that was almost certainly carried out at the Kremlin’s behest. Instead of protecting us, the FSB, the Russian intelligence service and successor to the KGB, has been busy trying to eliminate the regime’s opponents. An investigation conducted by journalists from Bellingcat, The Insider and CNN has provided a clear picture of the Kremlin’s operation to poison Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok during his trip to the Siberian city of Tomsk in August last year. It is Navalny’s luck that the FSB’s former mastery of the dark arts has atrophied over time. The operation failed and Navalny is now openly — and sometimes almost comedically — exposing his assailants, one of whom, believing that he was speaking to someone in the “system,” revealed operational details of the plot over the telephone. It was Navalny, who recorded the call. What more should be needed to provoke public indignation? Surveying my colleagues at the independent TV station Dozhd, most agreed that Navalny should be last year’s Person of the Year. His fearless quest to hold the powerful accountable has earned the respect of thousands, if not millions. However, in another survey, just 61 percent of Russians report having “heard something” about Navalny’s poisoning and only 17 percent said they had been
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Wednesday announced the public locations that a doctor and his girlfriend who were recently diagnosed with COVID-19 had visited after being infected.Contact-tracing efforts have helped Taiwan stay a step ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, but is all the information that gets released to the public about infected people necessary? A New Zealand pilot who was diagnosed with the virus made international headlines after he in December last year visited public places following his mandatory three-day quarantine, spreading the infection to others. Although the CECC did not publish his name, announcing his nationality and employer was enough for people to track down his identity and plaster the Internet with his picture. The CECC might have wanted to inform members of the public about a heightened risk of infection in some public places at certain times. However, some people directed their anger at all New Zealanders, or even all foreign residents in Taiwan. The information released by the CECC also led to a Taiwanese woman being attacked on social media after she was mistakenly identified as the woman who the pilot allegedly had an extramarital relationship with. In the same month, a Filipino migrant worker also made international headlines when he was fined NT$100,000 for briefly stepping into the hallway of his quarantine hotel. His actions might have put workers at the hotel at risk, but he did not pose much risk to the public beyond that limited group. The report merely served to demonize an already marginalized group of people. Comments on Chinese-language news about COVID-19 cases among migrant workers have often been xenophobic, with people lambasting the government for allowing them into the country and accusing them of sapping medical resources. It is questionable why the nationality of a person infected with COVID-19 has to be revealed,
The year 2020 will go down in history. Certainly, if for nothing else, it will be remembered as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuing impact it has had on the world. All nations have had to deal with it; none escaped. As a virus, COVID-19 has known no bounds. It has no agenda or ideology; it champions no cause. There is no way to bully it, gaslight it or bargain with it. Impervious to any hype, posturing, propaganda or commands, it ignores such and simply attacks. All nations, big or small, are on a level playing field when facing it. They either handle it or grapple with the consequences. However, for Taiwan, China and the US, three nations that have had a complex triangular relationship since the end of World War II, there is more. For them, it will also be remembered as the year of new exposure and unmasking; it has proven to be a turning point in their relationships. As the source of the virus, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the most unmasked. At first, its leaders, in true authoritarian fashion, tried to hide its existence. Just as with SARS, they hoped to contain the damage before it would spread far and wide, and the virus would realize its danger. That failed. As COVID-19 spread, the next step was to try to shift the blame to its neighboring nations and hide the body count while punishing whistle-blowers. The true number of deaths in China is still unknown and will probably never be known. The PRC has published figures, but they are unreliable; the credibility of the PRC is gone. How could the most populous country in the world, where the virus originates and which has allowed it to spread, rank 82nd among all nations
Responding to recent tragedies on university campuses, the National Taiwan University (NTU) Student Association proposed an “accommodated study” system — a mechanism allowing students to apply for specially adapted course requirements and student guidance from specialists — and a university affairs meeting on Saturday last week passed a resolution adopting it. When students experience mental illness or have serious emotional trouble that affects their studies to the point of keeping them from completing their course requirements, the system would allow them, through an interview and evaluation by specialists, to be granted adapted requirements. These could include extended deadlines for handing in coursework or the permission to take a break halfway through an exam, thus giving students with mental illness equal study opportunities. The changes would greatly benefit the students. However, a society that has a poor understanding of mental illness, even stigmatizes it, complicates running such a system effectively without complementary measures. In clinical situations, we often encounter students with depression whose emotional troubles prevent them from studying as well as their classmates. Consequently, their professors and classmates look down on them, or regard them as peculiar. We also encounter students with suicidal ideation who are told to be more strong-willed, but this can hurt students even more by making them feel that they are not strong-willed enough. In view of this, the NTU Student Association, as well as proposing this “accommodated study” system to the university, could also link up with psychiatric services and specialist organizations such as the Mental Health Association in Taiwan to launch two campus awareness campaigns. The first campaign would help the campus learn about depression, and its purpose would be to destigmatize it. The campaign would tell everyone that people who are depressed have an illness in the brain that makes it difficult for them to regulate their emotions,
Is Trump going away soon? There is talk in the media about whether US President Donald Trump’s supporters will continue to side with him after the recent assault on the US Capitol by mobs of his most ardent (okay, “worst”) allies. That Trump urged these people on his now defunct Twitter account has led to charges of insurgency against the US government, and might end his presidency on a very humble note. Scores of his former supporters have walked out of the government, and I have seen not just a few ordinary US citizens who voted for him in 2016 now denounce him. Even the likes of senior US Cabinet members and a few US lawmakers have spoken out against Trump for his at best histrionics, and worse, revolutionary dissent. And so, people are asking: Now that Trump’s time is over, will virtually all of his followers desert him? I have news for concerned US citizens considering this: No, this will not be happening soon. I have witnessed such political leanings and outward agnosticism and attacks on the government since I was a child in the US. My own brother was one such objector. I can firmly say that these people are not going to change, such discord and disunity is in their blood. So make no mistake: Trump is not disappearing. We will soon see his book outlining his outrageous heterodoxy, and it will be a bestseller among his adherents. And in any case, if it is not to be Trump, there are plenty of others lined up behind him (read: Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Kelly Loeffler, Josh Hawley, etc). These people may not fit one important point of what Trump supporters are — lacking a college education — but they happily meet the other qualifications: They have proven
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The fate of Tokyo’s postponed Olympics is once again mired in doubt after Japan declared a second state of emergency for metropolitan areas as COVID-19 cases soar to new levels. Japan is one of several countries where the virus has made a comeback in winter months, with Tokyo finding a record 2,447 cases on Thursday last week. The discovery of a new and possibly more infectious strains in the UK and South Africa has also alarmed governments around the world. With fewer than 200 days left until the opening ceremony, the situation has revived questions about the feasibility of safely holding even a limited version of the quadrennial games. While Japan’s infection count has been well below other rich industrialized nations, the pandemic has been a persistent cloud over the Olympics since they were delayed almost a year ago. The restart of sports events around the world and development of vaccines have provided some optimism, but organizers have said that the 2020 Olympics will be canceled — not delayed — if they cannot go on as scheduled. That said, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga reiterated that he was determined to hold the Games, even as he announced the new restrictions. “Under the state of emergency, the idea is that it will likely take a long time to contain the pandemic,” said Kenji Shibuya, professor and director of the Institute of Population Health at King’s College London, and an outspoken critic of Japan’s coronavirus response. ‘NOT REALISTIC’ When asked whether March was an appropriate time to decide on holding the Games, and details on how if they proceed, he said: “It’s not realistic that they can come up with measures by March.” Set to last for a month, current emergency restrictions are narrowly focused on reducing infections at bars and eateries, while events have been spared from across-the-board cancelations. However,
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel steps down in September, she will leave behind a conservative party that has been a practically unchallenged political force in Germany for 16 years and leads political polls by a towering 15 percentage points. And yet the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) might thank her today by electing as its new leader one of her longest-standing political rivals, a man who represents a return to the pre-Merkel past not just in terms of ideological values, but also style of leadership. Millionaire lawyer Friedrich Merz, who was sacked by Merkel as the leader of the CDU’s parliamentary group in 2002, is the favorite among party supporters to take the center-right into the federal elections on Sept. 28 that will decide who succeeds Merkel as Germany’s chancellor. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) have nominated German Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz as its candidate; the Greens are expected to put forward one of coleaders Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock. Among the wider population, Merz is seen as a divisive figure harking back to the CDU’s neoliberal era, someone more likely to drive centrist voters loyal to Merkel into the arms of the Greens or the center-left SPD than his CDU rivals Armin Laschet and Norbert Rottgen. At the party’s digital congress yesterday and today, the future leadership of the CDU is to be decided by 1,001 delegates from the party’s local, regional and state associations, who have to square ideological nostalgia with realpolitik. ‘RETURN TO PAST’ Merz remains the candidate to beat. “A CDU led by Friedrich Merz will mean a CDU in opposition, but that is the price a lot of delegates seem willing to pay to get back to the unfiltered CDU of old,” said one member of parliament and Rottgen supporter. Laschet, the folksy state premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, appeared the obvious continuity
During a five-nation visit to Europe by Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) in September last year, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas upbraided Wang to his face for issuing a thinly veiled threat to the Czech Republic. “Threats have no place here [in Europe],” he said. Maas also called on Beijing to rescind Hong Kong’s new National Security Law, implement universal suffrage in the territory and uphold its “one China, two systems” framework that guarantees a “high degree of autonomy.” It was a refreshing moment of candor for a political bloc that all too often looks the other way for fear of upsetting the leaders of the world’s second- largest economy. Could it be that European nations are finally prepared to stand up to Beijing’s bullies? Sadly, the answer is no. On Dec. 30 last year, the EU and China concluded in principle a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. For a political bloc that purports to care about democracy and human rights, the timing could not be worse; for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the deal is a major diplomatic coup. During the seven years of negotiations leading up to the agreement, China’s behavior has steadily deteriorated to the extent that an increasing number of political thinkers are drawing parallels with 1930s Europe’s slide into fascism. In the past year alone, the world has witnessed a marked increase in Chinese military aggression toward Taiwan, its comprehensive crushing of Hong Kong’s freedoms, an ongoing mass incarceration of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, and stepped-up cultural genocide in Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Then there was Beijing’s cover-up of the COVID-19 pandemic, its grotesque opportunism following the virus’ spread to the rest of the world, and its continued efforts to browbeat the Australian economy in revenge for the Australian prime minister calling for an open investigation into
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has conveyed in no uncertain terms that the time for ambiguity and confusion about the status of US-Taiwan relations has come to an end. The pronouncement by Pompeo codifies a pattern that US President Donald Trump’s administration has already made a de facto reality: a new era of engagement with Taiwan. While the Democratic Progressive Party and several minority parties in Taiwan welcome this move, there is still resistance to this development by some in Taiwanese politics. The past few years have brought many positive changes to diplomacy for Taiwan — more progress has been made during this period than in any year since 1979, when official relations with the US were discarded in the interest of engaging with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The repercussions of this decision have been myriad, both for Taiwan and the US. However, there is now the possibility of having a new policy regarding Taiwan relations that spans multiple administrations in the US. When undue diplomatic restrictions are normalized in geopolitics, it becomes difficult for countries to know what problems their global counterparts are facing, and to be able to exchange and cooperate freely in order to solve them. Embedded within the concept of the liberal world order we live in is the idea that we are a community of nations, with mutual and interacting interests. When we arbitrarily add friction to diplomatic channels, it not only harms the interests of individual nations, but also faith in the global order. Considering this, the change in US Department of State policy is not only good for US-Taiwan relations, but for international relations as a whole. The loosening of engagement policy is important because it initiates a change in Taiwan-US relations on a practical diplomatic level. The US’ Taiwan Travel
As the saying goes: “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” One day before handing over the EU presidency to Portugal on Dec. 30 last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Beijing and Taiwan’s pan-blue media greeted the news with wild jubilation, declaring it a second crushing trade deal victory after China signed on to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on Nov. 15 last year. However, Taiwanese should know that the day before the Chinese Communist Party and the EU inked the agreement, US president-elect Joe Biden’s national security adviser-designate Jake Sullivan posted the following message on Twitter: “The Biden-[US vice president-elect Kamala] Harris administration would welcome early consultations with our European partners on our common concerns about China’s economic practices.” The EU’s snub of Biden’s transition team has reportedly gone down badly in Washington. Xi and Merkel have lobbed a stun grenade into Washington, the impact of which is comparable to the convulsions caused by the British government’s disregarding of then-US president Barack Obama’s opposition to Britain joining the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015. The AIIB incident roused Washington from its slumber and forced US policymakers to engage in serious introspection over its erroneous long-standing policy of engaging China. This led to Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and “rebalance to Asia” policies, and a determination to contain Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions. Therefore, one can see that containment and “decoupling” are not exclusively “Trumpian” ideas, but were in fact initiated by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. US President Donald Trump’s administration simply enacted the policies with more enthusiasm and gusto. If the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment compels the incoming Biden administration to more completely understand the reality of the threat posed by China, dispense with past appeasement
On Jan. 2, the New York Times published an article titled “How Taiwan Plans to Stay (Mostly) Covid-Free,” which asks the question: How much longer can Taiwan’s good fortune last? The article describes Taiwan as a “twilight zone” of an “alternate reality” where life goes on as normal amid a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on so many countries around the world. By March last year, the COVID-19 pandemic had reached New York City and I, as a doctoral student at New York University, continued living in the city for another five months before returning to Taiwan. A range of epidemic control measures — including mask wearing, social distancing, meticulous handwashing and even sealing off the city — were employed by the local authorities. The measures certainly had an effect in reducing the impact of the initial wave of the pandemic. Comparing the respective successes that Taiwan and New York City have had in combating COVID-19, sealing ourselves off from China should be the primary means of pandemic prevention and control ahead of these other measures. As a matter of course, mainstream media outlets around the world should adopt a skeptical attitude toward any information and news emanating from China. Right from the start, when news of a mysterious novel coronavirus outbreak in China’s Wuhan first came to light, the Chinese government began to spread misinformation. Chinese officials initially claimed that there was no human-to-human transmission. When that became untenable, they said there was only “limited” human-to-human transmission. When that was proved to be demonstrably false, officials began to push the line that the epidemic was “preventable and under control.” China’s “preventable and under control” pandemic has now infected more than 92 million people, caused almost 2 million deaths and incalculable global economic losses. The New York Times is one of the oldest publications within the US’ fourth
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US president-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday next week has raised hopes that his administration would “make America lead again.” If the US is to transform its rivalry with China into constructive competition, this is the right approach. However, whether Biden can restore and sustain the US’ global leadership depends on how effectively he mends domestic fractures and addresses deep-seated misgivings about globalization held by segments of the US electorate. Biden has repeatedly pledged to restore the US’ international reputation and global standing, which were severely damaged under US President Donald Trump. To that end, he would quickly rejoin multilateral institutions (such as the WHO) and international agreements (beginning with the Paris climate agreement) from which Trump withdrew the US. These pledges point to a vision of the US back at the head of the liberal international order, a position from which it can more effectively compete — and cooperate — with China. However, there is good reason to believe that many Americans do not want their country to lead again. Biden’s electoral victory in November last year fell short of the decisive repudiation of Trump and his toxic brand of populism that liberals expected. Yes, Biden won over 81 million votes — more than any US presidential candidate in history. However, Trump received more than 74 million — the second-highest number on record — and increased his share across minority groups, compared with 2016. This is despite an unprecedented parade of scandals and a disastrously mismanaged pandemic. What explains Trump’s enduring popularity? One explanation, advanced by Peter Singer in November, is that nearly half of the US has “lost its soul.” This diagnosis is certainly true of the most disturbing elements of Trump’s voter base, which includes the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who stormed Capitol Hill on Wednesday last week. Even those who
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