Taiwan is no stranger to extreme weather. The 2001 typhoon season, which lasted from about May to December, comes to mind. That was the year Typhoon Nari did a U-turn as it headed toward Okinawa, parked over open water to gain strength and finally inundated Taiwan as it slowly drifted southward. It was the seventh of nine typhoons to hit Taiwan that year, striking just two months after Typhoon Toraji caused flash floods in Hualien, Taitung and Nantou counties that killed more than 200 people and caused nearly NT$7.7 billion (US$240.2 million) in agricultural and infrastructure damage.
Torrential rains brought by Nari caused roughly NT$2.9 billion in damage and claimed 100 lives, with most of the fatalities taking place in and around Taipei City. The city’s MRT system was severely damaged because of flooding, with entire lengths of track completely submerged. Parts of the system were down for as long as six months and it took millions of dollars to clean up the mess.
Then, just over a year ago, Typhoon Morakot struck southern Taiwan, doing more damage than any typhoon in the nation’s history. The category-1 storm killed more than 800 people, burying whole villages in mountainous areas of Kaohsiung County under tonnes of rock and mud, cut off towns and destroyed bridges. The fiscal hit was huge — more than US$6 billion in damage. A year later, affected families are still trying to cope with the aftermath, with many forced to relocate to areas without jobs and others mourning the loss of loved ones.
Against this backdrop of growing climactic disaster in Taiwan, the sheer scale of the global weather crisis has been particularly notable this year.
Flooding in Pakistan has been so bad that nearly 20 million people have been affected. World Bank and UN officials say that the international aid trickling in is nowhere near enough for the monumental task of helping millions of flood-affected families.
Indian Kashmir has also been hit with flash floods this year that have killed hundreds in the heavily visited area of Ladakh. On the other side of the Himalayas, in China, July floods triggered landslides in Sichuan and Gansu Provinces that took out high-rise buildings and resulted in the deaths of hundreds. The flooding of the Yalu River, which demarcates the border between China and North Korea, destroyed crops in a country that faced a devastating famine in the 1990s, forcing “dear leader” Kim Jong-il to once again beg for food aid from his large neighbor to the north.
With all these weather-induced crises, it is not unreasonable to ask how well prepared Taipei City is. Worryingly, it turns out that the city is spending its emergency funds on flowers, and dubiously priced flowers at that.
On July 19, Taipei City Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Councilor Wu Su-yao (吳思瑤) accused the city of spending more than 70 percent, or NT$500 million, of its secondary reserve fund — to be used in case of emergency — on preparations for the Taipei International Flora Expo. That is on top of the NT$9 billion already being spent on the expo.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) added that the city government had better pray there are no emergencies or disasters in the second half of this year, because it has no money to deal with any unforseen eventualities.
Although it has been a relatively storm-free typhoon season this year, it is not over yet. It seems a dangerous gamble to bet all of the city’s emergency money on flowers while crossing one’s fingers and hoping no major typhoons hit the Taipei area.
Unfortunately, Taipei Mayor Hau lung-bin (郝龍斌) is only now beginning to wake up and smell the crisis he helped create.
The government and local industries breathed a sigh of relief after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co last week said it would relinquish surface rights for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) to Nvidia Corp. The US chip-design giant’s plan to expand its local presence will be crucial for Taiwan to safeguard its core role in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and to advance the nation’s AI development. The land in dispute is owned by the Taipei City Government, which in 2021 sold the rights to develop and use the two plots of land, codenamed T17 and T18, to the
US President Donald Trump has announced his eagerness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un while in South Korea for the APEC summit. That implies a possible revival of US-North Korea talks, frozen since 2019. While some would dismiss such a move as appeasement, renewed US engagement with North Korea could benefit Taiwan’s security interests. The long-standing stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang has allowed Beijing to entrench its dominance in the region, creating a myth that only China can “manage” Kim’s rogue nation. That dynamic has allowed Beijing to present itself as an indispensable power broker: extracting concessions from Washington, Seoul
Taiwan’s labor force participation rate among people aged 65 or older was only 9.9 percent for 2023 — far lower than in other advanced countries, Ministry of Labor data showed. The rate is 38.3 percent in South Korea, 25.7 percent in Japan and 31.5 percent in Singapore. On the surface, it might look good that more older adults in Taiwan can retire, but in reality, it reflects policies that make it difficult for elderly people to participate in the labor market. Most workplaces lack age-friendly environments, and few offer retraining programs or flexible job arrangements for employees older than 55. As
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
RSS