Thanks to improved management techniques during the 1980s, many countries reformed their administrations. These reforms followed two main tracks: organizational reform and streamlining the bureaucracy.
In the UK, the number of civil servants was cut from 720,000 to 460,000 between 1980 and 1998, a decrease of almost 37 percent. In the US, the number of civil servants in the federal government was cut from 3.03 million in 1993 to 2.66 million by 1998. Even Japan, where even private enterprise offers lifetime employment, a group of eight cities cut their bureaucracies by 50,000 people between 1997 and 1999.
BOOSTING BUREAUCRACY
In Taiwan, however, administrative reform is constantly obstructed by bureaucrats. During the 1990s, we only managed to freeze the provincial government and the Organic Act of the Executive Yuan (行政院組織法) was only passed last year, delayed by 30 years.
Instead of streamlining bureaucracy, the government has created four new special municipalities, which means that their civil servants can get a pay raise and the cities can increase their bureaucracies by 22,000 people. There is already a large number of superfluous employees, making it increasingly difficult to establish a mechanism for reducing the number of civil servants.
That is also why the benefits offered to Taiwan’s civil servants are among the best in the world.
BALANCE
However, the principle of balancing job security and pay says that with good job security, pay does not have to be that high, and, conversely, with high pay, you don’t need the most advanced job security.
Taiwanese civil servants have among the most secure jobs in the world, with a monthly pension and 18 percent preferential bank interest, giving them an income replacement ratio — the percentage of the working income needed to maintain a desired standard of living in retirement — of almost 95 percent, the best in the world and far ahead of most normal countries.
In some countries, the income replacement ratio for civil servants is between 50 percent and 60 percent. In Japan, for example, it is 34 percent, almost one-third of Taiwan’s, and in Germany it is 40 percent, less than half of Taiwan’s.
OTHER EXAMPLES
In France it is 51 percent, in South Korea it is 67 percent, and in Austria, where it is very high, it is still less than 80 percent.
This kind of comparison makes it even clearer how extremely liberal the compensation is in Taiwan. Even for the most privileged Taiwanese workers the income replacement ratio is not more than 46 percent, far behind the military personnel, civil servants and teachers with their 18 percent interest rate.
According to the -Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, salaries in the private sector have not risen for several years, but the regular salary of a civil servant in 2006 was NT$62,167, compared with a regular salary for a blue collar or service industry worker of NT$36,126.
Both job guarantees and salaries are high for Taiwan’s civil servants. As a result, the treasury is in crisis as personnel expenditures every year make up one-quarter of the national budget, among the highest proportions in the world.
This situation is nothing if not unconscionable.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
China’s supreme objective in a war across the Taiwan Strait is to incorporate Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic. It follows, therefore, that international recognition of Taiwan’s de jure independence is a consummation that China’s leaders devoutly wish to avoid. By the same token, an American strategy to deny China that objective would complicate Beijing’s calculus and deter large-scale hostilities. For decades, China has cautioned “independence means war.” The opposite is also true: “war means independence.” A comprehensive strategy of denial would guarantee an outcome of de jure independence for Taiwan in the event of Chinese invasion or
A recent Taipei Times editorial (“A targeted bilingual policy,” March 12, page 8) questioned how the Ministry of Education can justify spending NT$151 million (US$4.74 million) when the spotlighted achievements are English speech competitions and campus tours. It is a fair question, but it focuses on the wrong issue. The problem is not last year’s outcomes failing to meet the bilingual education vision; the issue is that the ministry has abandoned the program that originally justified such a large expenditure. In the early years of Bilingual 2030, the ministry’s K-12 Administration promoted the Bilingual Instruction in Select Domains Program (部分領域課程雙語教學實施計畫).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) earlier this month said it is necessary for her to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and it would be a “huge boost” to the party’s local election results in November, but many KMT members have expressed different opinions, indicating a struggle between different groups in the party. Since Cheng was elected as party chairwoman in October last year, she has repeatedly expressed support for increased exchanges with China, saying that it would bring peace and prosperity to Taiwan, and that a meeting with Xi in Beijing takes priority over meeting
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman for maritime affairs Rogelio Villanueva on Monday said that Manila’s claims in the South China Sea are backed by international law. Villanueva was responding to a social media post by the Chinese embassy alleging that a former Philippine ambassador in 1990 had written a letter to a German radio operator stating that the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) did not fall within Manila’s territory. “Sovereignty is not merely claimed, it is exercised,” Villanueva said. The Philippines won a landmark case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 that found China’s sweeping claim of sovereignty in
RSS