The uproar over the Wenlin Yuan (文林苑) project continues. I won’t add to the commentary, but will instead focus on housing justice, a key issue.
The reason this project has caused such a ferocious reaction is not that property rights are inviolable, nor is it only because of the forced demolition by the Taipei City Government.
A more important reason is that the government has long neglected to restrict real-estate speculation and allowed laws and policies that strongly favor developers. Furthermore, local governments have frequently used industrial zones and science parks as an excuse to expropriate land from poor farmers. Such long-standing violations of land justice have caused a buildup of resentment. In recent years, many students and academics who do not own houses have become involved in the struggle to protect land justice, and herein lies the key to the issue.
The project is in a part of town where land prices have soared because of proximity to an MRT station. This is why developers initiated the project. As with road construction in the past, the metro rail system has been a major factor in pushing up real-estate prices in Taipei. Public transport construction is funded by taxpayers, but the enormous profits accruing to the surrounding landowners go to a small group of people.
Given Taiwan’s low taxes, the profits from real-estate deals are a major reason why the tax system is unfair. A disproportionate part of the tax burden falls on wage earners, who help finance transportation infrastructure construction, while real-estate speculation makes owning a house a distant dream. Unfair taxes, combined with housing injustice, put a lot of pressure on wage earners.
This brings to mind a similar historical example. In the late 19th century, the mechanization of agriculture boosted wheat output in the US and reduced production costs, while the development of steamships reduced transportation costs dramatically. This made the price of US wheat in Europe very low, which made it increasingly difficult for many European farmers to make ends meet and in the end forced them to emigrate. The same ships that brought the wheat that destroyed their livelihoods carried the farmers to the US. Since the ships did not have to return empty, the shipping companies’ profits increased and further cut the cost of wheat transports, while the farmers became a major source of cheap labor in the US.
Today, the government uses taxpayers’ money to build the MRT system, a modern transport development, most users of which are wage earners with no chance of evading taxation. As the MRT pushes up real-estate prices, it is also pushing wage earners out of the city and forcing them to commute on the MRT.
A similar phenomenon occurred in London. To stop this from negatively impacting the city, the developers of big projects, assisted by the British government, are required to sell some apartments to people such as nurses, bus drivers and underground drivers, at low prices
However, this policy has not had much real effect. Taiwan’s problem is that our government will not even do that much. Instead, it chooses to strongly support land and money games. The profits from the land value increases end up in the pockets of developers and landowners, with no noticeable return to the public. The government doesn’t even dare to levy reasonable taxes on these exorbitant profits.
If the interior minister said the Wenlin Yuan project only appeared to be unjust, then the unfair tax system, government connivance in land speculation and the lack of public benefits must surely be concrete examples of housing injustice.
Li Shang-jen is an associate research fellow in the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry