On June 29, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) announced a plan to reform local government that conflated the issues of regional planning and redrawing of administrative boundaries while failing to address tiers of local government. The plan’s proposal for two provinces, six special municipalities and seven districts (or counties) will not be beneficial for rezoning purposes for the following reasons.
First, the continuing distinction between Taiwan Province and Fujian Province means that Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties cannot be fully integrated with Taiwan proper and will remain outlying islands in administrative terms. The Cabinet’s plan to instead create a Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu zone is impractical for all this will do is lump three disadvantaged island counties together. The three island groups are far from each other, with jurisdictions at separate ends of the Taiwan Strait, and share no direct transportation or economic links. How can they be meaningfully integrated into a single region?
Second, the division into seven districts is too fragmentary, while establishing six special municipalities will exacerbate imbalances in regional development and retard regional integration.
During the Japanese era, Taihoku Prefecture was made up of Taipei City and County, Ilan County and Keelung, but the recently proposed upgrades will only affect Taipei City and County and Keelung. Hsinchu City and County, Taoyuan County and Miaoli County were all part of Shinchiku Prefecture, but the proposed upgrade will only see Taoyuan County upgraded to a municipality.
Taichu Prefecture used to include Taichung City and County, Changhua County and Nantou County; the proposed merger between Taichung City and County into a special municipality leaves the other areas out. Similarly, Tainan Prefecture included Tainan City and County, Chiayi City and County and Yunlin County, but Tainan City and County are the only beneficiaries in the new plan. Finally, Takao Prefecture included Kaohsiung City and County and Pingtung County but the current proposal will see Pingtung County left out.
Third, there are differing development issues for urban and rural portions of upgraded districts. Applying the standards of Taipei City and Kaohsiung City to upgraded rural and urban townships will ignore special governance needs of remote rural areas. Newly arrived civil servants may not understand problems that can only be solved through exercising local autonomy and resident participation. Looser regulations on autonomous organizations would be necessary to deal with this.
The system of special municipalities and provinces used when the Nationalists governed China must be scrapped. Taiwan should be divided into four provinces — eastern, northern, central and southern. Funding should be evenly distributed between them and no distinction made between municipality and county.
The three western provinces should have the capitals Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung respectively. Matsu, Kinmen and Penghu, meanwhile, should be incorporated into the northern, central and southern areas based on geographical, transportation and economic factors. Planning for these areas would then be integrated with Taiwan proper.
The best way to implement local autonomy would be to allow each city and county to decide which level of autonomy their townships should have according to degree of urbanization.
Lastly, opinion from outside government should be included to build a consensus. We can’t let a few people in the central government draw up maps behind closed doors.
Tseng Chien-yuan is assistant professor of public administration at Chung Hua University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
RSS