Following the forced demolition of two houses owned by the Wang (王) family in Taipei’s Shilin District (士林), the Taipei City Government has been criticized for its approach to urban renewal programs. Numerous protests have also erupted over other cases of land expropriation. In light of these incidents, serious thought needs to be given to the issue at their core, namely, how best to define public interest.
The public interest is an abstract and indeterminate legal concept. It should be formed and expressed through rigorous administrative processes in which information is freely available and members of the public have a chance to participate. In other words, public interest is a consensus that is arrived at through fair and open participation, communication and discussion.
In pursuit of the public interest, most advanced democracies have abandoned the traditional model in which a minority of experts had a monopoly on policymaking. Instead, they actively encourage public participation.
This reflects the acceptance of various knowledge systems, like traditional knowledge, and value choices, such as the idea that one’s land is one’s home. This more inclusive approach justifies and rationalizes the public interest.
In contrast, Taiwan has long been used to authoritarian rule. Our government and institutions have a cast-iron grip on decisions involving the public interest. As a result, scant attention is paid to the decision-making process — a state of affairs that hasn’t changed since the Martial Law era ended in 1987.
The government in Taiwan has long been in the habit of acting arbitrarily, forming and executing plans as it sees fit in pursuit of economic growth and efficiency.
Those plans could be operational, like the fourth phase of the National Science Council’s Central Taiwan Science Park; town plans, such as the one in Ji-an Township (吉安) in Hualien County; or land expropriation plans, like the compulsory purchase of farmland at Dapu Village (大埔), Miaoli County and Puyu (璞玉) and Erchongpu (二重埔) in Hsinchu County. They could also be plans for the reassignment of urban land, such as the site of the Nantun (南屯) Catholic church in Greater Taichung, or urban renewal plans like the Wenlin Yuan (文林苑) development in which the Wangs’ house was demolished.
The system gives the public little opportunity to participate and even when they can, it is just done to fulfill legal requirements and has very little real meaning. The Administrative Procedure Act (行政程序法) became law in 1999. Originally, it was supposed to mimic similar French and German laws by incorporating legally binding planning procedures. Later, however, the government deleted most of the relevant clauses on the grounds that Taiwan’s administrative system and culture were very different from those of France and Germany.
Although the Ministry of Justice later drafted regulations in this regard, the government and associated institutions remained unwilling to cede their powers. As a result, public participation remains no more than an empty slogan. When ordinary people are excluded from the process and find their constitutional rights being violated or denied, they naturally take to the streets to protest such unjust treatment.
Given the failings of the current system, it is important that legally binding planning procedures be incorporated into the relevant laws, so that all the people whose interests are affected can take part. The introduction of meaningful public hearings would allow all parties concerned to work out between them where the public interest lies.
Hsu Shih-jung is a professor in the Department of Land Economics at National Chengchi University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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
Ahead of US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) meeting today on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea, an op-ed published in Time magazine last week maliciously called President William Lai (賴清德) a “reckless leader,” stirring skepticism in Taiwan about the US and fueling unease over the Trump-Xi talks. In line with his frequent criticism of the democratically elected ruling Democratic Progressive Party — which has stood up to China’s hostile military maneuvers and rejected Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework — Lyle Goldstein, Asia engagement director at the US think tank Defense Priorities, called
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
RSS