Recently, television news reports had a story about how the roofs of Taipei’s MRT stations were leaking after days of consecutive rain and how this shocked tourists from Hong Kong. After this, there was a report about the direct flights that have now started between Taipei Songshan Airport and Shanghai’s Hongqiao International Airport. These showed Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) with a huge smile on his face as he boarded the inaugural flight.
When reporters interviewed travelers, all of them said that the ticket prices were ridiculously expensive. However, neither Hau nor the chairman of China Airlines gave a straight answer when asked about ticket pricing.
Supporting the signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China is one of Hau’s major political platforms and he will this in his campaign to be re-elected as Taipei mayor. Hau’s greatest “achievement” so far has been the opening up of direct flights from Songshan to Hongqiao and this also just happens to be a litmus test for an ECFA with China.
However, Hau has also ignored the falling standard of living in Taipei and acts like leaking roofs at MRT stations and potholes in roads are not important. Hau is extremely proud of having established direct flights between Taipei and Shanghai and keeps boasting about how this will allow people to complete a round trip between the two cities in a single day. But can the convenience of a minority of our population make up for what he has done or failed to do, over the last four years?
People from Shanghai are accustomed to bright, flashy colors so they will probably find Taipei’s old looking and outdated cityscape and urban planning somewhat quaint. Hau should think about whether he can effectively secure votes by relying on China to yield benefits to Taiwan.
Is a total reliance on China really a good strategy when running for an election here where democratic procedures are used? The excessively high price of tickets for direct flights are a clear example of how the theory of relying on China actually damages both Taiwan’s standard of living and its consdierable democratic achievements.
Although it is incorrect to say that these high prices have been used to control the number of flights available as some people have suggested. Cross-strait flights should be just like international flights and based on the norms of a free market. Furthermore, if an ECFA was supposed to be signed based on the spirit of the WTO, a free market should define business dealings between Taiwan and China.
We should not see the emergence of a market where things are monopolized by privileged groups from Taiwan and China that can increase prices at will. This not only runs counter to social fairness and equity, it also harms the standard of living and welfare enjoyed by the citizens of Taiwan.
If we look at the way in which Taiwan’s Chunghwa Picture Tubes and AU Optronics Corp have recently been accused by US judicial authorities of forming international cartels, it is very hard to not blame airline operators from Taiwan and China for forming their own cartel.
The Control Yuan should therefore impeach those civil servants who have been remiss in their duties and encourage the Fair Trade Commission and Consumer Protection Commission to get involved in investigations, to provide administrative support.
If we continue to sit around and do nothing as prices for direct flights are seriously distorted and if we are unable to use democratic and lawful methods to resist such injustices, then we are tacitly approving an abnormal situation that is a direct product of the “normalization” of cross-strait trade relations. Opposition parties should pay special attention to this issue and get to the bottom of it so the public sees through the fake “peace dividends” certain political hacks from the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are harping on, while teaming up to make huge profits. These events also make it quite clear that an ECFA will probably involve more of the same in the near future.
Voters have an extremely important role to play. With the year-end five special municipality elections not far off, voters need to give Hau and his cronies a clear lesson and demand that they stop fawning on the CCP while trampling all over the achievements of which taiwanese are most proud, namely a high standard of living and and a young vibrant democracy.
Jay Fang is the chairman of the Green Consumers’ Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US