Taipei City is preparing for the Taipei International Flora Expo, to be held from Nov. 6 to April 25. The expo aims to showcase “the essence of gardening, science and environmental protection technology,” and to “combine culture and art as parts of eco-friendly living.” Besides these eloquent goals, the expo also represents an effort by Taipei City to compete with Kaohsiung, which hosted last year’s World Games, and Shanghai, which is hosting the World Expo.
However there seems to be one major snag: The city government is apparently alone in its enthusiasm. Taipei’s residents seem apathetic, quite a few people think the NT$12.8 billion (US$400 million) being spent on the expo is a waste of money and the city government’s plans and actions have been the target of wide-ranging criticism.
Although the city government said it wants to improve Taipei’s ecology and increase the green areas in the city, it has removed more than 1,000 trees from the Taipei Art Park and the Chungshan Park to make room for the expo. Removing trees to plant flowers and building a large temporary exhibition hall run counter to the goal of demonstrating ways to reduce carbon emissions. Allocating NT$12.8 billion budget to plant trees would have been a much more effective way to increase the city’s green areas and reduce carbon emissions.
The city government has also relocated 49 elderly families who lived close to the Yuanshan MRT station to make way for the exhibition hall. The forced removal of old and disadvantaged people for the sake of a temporary activity is not a very humanitarian act.
The Flora Expo also claims to emphasize the combination of culture and art. This will be done by arranging 6,000 art activities in conjunction with the expo. However, such a massive mobilization of resources for a temporary exhibition will ultimately limit many long-term, grassroots cultural activities.
The city government is also promoting urban renewal and beautification through a plan called Taipei Beautiful (台北好好看). Apart from making some remote corners of the city look a bit prettier, these efforts have only served to drive up local real estate prices. It has been calculated that the NT$12.8 billion could be used to build 4,100 apartments and solve housing problems for 15,000 people. Clearly, the city government is only concerned about superficial urban embellishment and is ignoring the substantive issue of how urban space is distributed.
The city’s residents and taxpayers have not been consulted in the decision to spend such a huge sum of money on this event, nor has there been any information about the city government’s plans after the expo closes. City residents do not know what ultimate purpose the exhibition has or what substantial changes the NT$12.8 billion will bring once the exhibition has closed. Huge sums of taxpayers’ money is being spent to create a superficial and temporary flash of beauty, only to create a feeling of political achievement and to bolster Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) chances of re-election.
The exhibition’s beautifully worded goals are there for rhetorical purposes only. The driving force is to create a huge commercial opportunity by attracting large numbers of tourists, with officials forecasting 6 million visitors — although few observers think it will attract many international tourists.
Taiwan cannot compete with China when it comes to hosting this kind of event, whether in terms of the money spent or scale. It would be ridiculous to compare the Flora Expo with the World Expo in Shanghai. Unfortunately, the areas where Taiwan can shine — innovation and democracy — are sorely missing from this event.
The expo is like a plant that has not been watered, and it will wither and die once the exhibition is closed. No matter how hard the city government tries, Taipei will never be a city of flowers.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS