In the 1990s, when I was living outside Kaohsiung, the locals sardonically summed up the central government’s regional policies with a play on the term for male chauvinism: “Stress the north, ignore the south.”
It’s now been over a decade since Tainan, Kaohsiung city and county, Taichung and Taipei County were upgraded to special municipalities in December 2010, with Taoyuan following suit in 2014. At present, some two-thirds of the population is contained in these six large administrative areas.
After the change, some 61 percent of the central government funds for local areas went to the municipalities, with the share of monies to the counties and other administrative entities falling to 24 percent. The counties were deeply in debt at the time, with Yunlin unable to pay its government salaries.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
They remain deeply in debt, local government debt being one of the ways the old party-state controlled local governments and prevented them from becoming areas in which an independent politician could forge a power base and challenge the party. Local government debt is a feature, not a bug.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), had hoped to use the upgrades to take advantage of the problems of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and get KMT politicians into office in what were widely perceived as likely DPP strongholds, like Kaohsiung. It was also a cynical political move to keep KMT mayors in office by postponing elections to extend their terms.
After the smoke cleared, as many pointed out, Taipei quietly retained its dominance over the nation’s budget. Since all the municipalities got more money, Taipei got a budget boost without having to do anything at all. By 2014 it was getting twice per resident what New Taipei City, Yilan, and Changhua were getting out of the central government development budget. The smaller municipalities got only modest boosts because they merged cities and counties which already had separate budgets.
Photo: CNA
Not only do municipalities get larger budgets, they may also contract for more debt, with Taipei city naturally being able to access more debt than any other entity.
DEBATING UPGRADES
Why do I continue to live in Taichung and subsidize the Celestial Dragon Kingdom’s lavish lifestyle? Probably because I feel sorry for those poor denizens of Taipei, having to live in that weather. Let them have a few trinkets in compensation, I say.
The end of last year saw debates over elevating Changhua County and Hsinchu city and county to municipality status. Changhua, currently by population the largest non-municipal administrative entity in Taiwan, has been perennially proposed for upgrade to municipality status.
The county government pointed out that at 1.25 million its population already qualifies it for such a status. It formally launched its campaign last October.
The current proposal for Hsinchu, which will take a couple of years to bear fruit, call for Hsinchu county and city and perhaps Miaoli County to become a single municipality, since the Hsinchu area does not host a large enough population.
One reason given is because the Hsinchu-Miaoli area is dotted with science parks and tech factories that have to navigate the complications of working with facilities located across several administrative entities. This was rather dramatically demonstrated last summer when the Miaoli county chief locked down migrant workers during the COVID-19 outbreak in the Jhunan (竹南) industrial district, but other tech factories and areas followed different policies.
Though the idea for the Hsinchu merger was the brainchild of Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) of the DPP, Hsinchu County Commissioner Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) and Miaoli County Commissioner Hsu Yao-chang (徐耀昌), both KMT, have signaled interest and willingness to discuss a merger.
TWO DISTRICTS?
If the Miaoli-Hsinchu proposal goes through, Changhua follows as it almost certainly will sooner or later, and current ideas to merge Chiayi and Yunlin bear fruit, the entire west coast will consist of municipalities.
That will be a good thing, from the standpoint of future independence.
It has long been recognized that the administrative levels of “province,” municipality, and county are ill-suited to an independent Taiwan nation. Over the years there have been many calls, especially from the pro-independence side, to introduce a system of states or similar larger administrative entities in Taiwan.
Turning everything into municipalities does that without disturbing the Constitution or offering obvious independence intent, but it is a stealth necessity for independence, nevertheless. It continues the long process of quietly submerging the Republic of China (ROC) into Taiwan, an inevitable outcome of a Taiwan-centered democracy. Years ago former vice-president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) proposed forming two administrative districts, the nation’s mountainous areas comprising one, and its outlying offshore areas the other.
If the west coast is divided into nine municipalities, that will occur almost inevitably. Nantou would become an isolated and impoverished county adrift off a sea of well-funded municipalities. Yilan, Taitung, and Hualien, whose combined population barely reaches a million, would almost by default become a “mountain district” that would pair very naturally with Nantou, if communications between them could be improved.
It is also possible that Nantou will end up part of the Changhua municipality, however. After all, one way to make its debts quietly disappear is to subsume them into a larger administrative entity.
At that point Taiwan’s administrative map would have reverted to the old Qing map, with the western flatlands comprising one administrative area, and the mountains outside that.
LOCAL DEMOCRACY
DPP Legislator Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), who introduced the bill to amend the municipalities law to permit Hsinchu city and county to form a municipality, argued that basing the rule on population was outmoded, given Taiwan’s population growth woes.
If that becomes the practice, I expect Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung (whose population has been more or less stagnant for 40 years and is smaller than Changhua city’s) to eventually form a coastal municipality, or be swallowed up in some other way.
In the ROC system, a municipality is the equivalent of a province, and the elected mayors have the right to appoint local officials, making every local office merely the spoils of victory, a loss for the nation’s democracy.
That implies that in a few years, if municipalities dominate, every local official on the west coast will be a political appointee. The checkerboard of green and blue that so brightly colors local democratic practice will be replaced by rotating carpets of dull monotones.
As we create a nation of larger political entities, let’s not forget local democracy. The legislature needs to amend the municipalities law to re-introduce elections for at least local mayors and township officials.
After all, it’s the least Taipei can do for us.
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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