As you read this, 85-year-old Chiang Bei-bei’s (蔣伯伯) ramshackle house in Taipei’s Huaguang Community (華光社區) will have been pulverized by bulldozers sent by the central government. Like many other residents of the community, Chiang barely ekes out a living and the government’s decision to raze the community to erect a glitzy neighborhood condemns him to destitution. While business tycoons and the central government pour millions of dollars into China’s Sichuan Province following Saturday’s earthquake, the fate of Chiang and others is ignored.
No sooner had the magnitude 6.6 quake hit Yaan City than the Executive Yuan, along with tycoons like Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Want Want China Times Group chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), announced they would make donations to help with relief efforts and reconstruction. Gou and Tsai alone donated more than US$10.5 million, with actors, singers and other business leaders also making contributions.
While this outpouring of generosity is commendable, it raises serious questions about those people’s priorities. Just as with the 2008 quake in Sichuan, what the Chinese government needs is emergency aid in the form of food, medicine and expert medical teams — not money, which it has plenty of.
Even more disturbing is that not a single one of those donors has bothered to say anything about, let alone provide just a fraction of the money they are sending to China, to help destitute people in Taiwan. The destruction of Huaguang, the forced relocation of its predominantly elderly residents, the lack of proper assistance from the government and the fines that this same government has imposed on those people, is just one among many examples in Taiwan of situations where desperate people should receive help.
Many of the residents, including Chiang, are not entitled to social assistance and are being forced to move into social housing in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港). In most cases, their meager earnings are insufficient to cover the NT$13,000 rent, while the small businesses that they operated are now uprooted.
For the rich and powerful, the residents of Huaguang are nothing. In fact, their presence on this prime plot of land in the heart of Taipei stands in the way of further riches. Those who have extended a helping hand are mostly students, social organizations and private individuals.
While the wealthy donate to China, it is artists like film director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), who last week donated his NT$1 million (US$33,520) in prize money from the National Cultural Award to help finance reconstruction of the partially demolished Losheng (Happy Life) Sanatorium in New Taipei City (新北市), who man the front lines in the local war between the haves and the have-nots.
Of course, the large donations to China have a self-serving component, as it ingratiates the tycoons with the Chinese authorities and opens the door to large investments in future. Which is why the wealthy cannot be bothered with the fate of Taiwan’s own poor.
This is shameful. Taiwan is, by any metric, a modern and wealthy country, and the refusal by the government and the more fortunate to help those in need flies in the face of the very values that underpin society. One-tenth — one-hundredth — of the money generously donated to Sichuan to help its people recover from a natural catastrophe would go a long way in helping people like the displaced residents of Huaguang, the victims of human agency, live their last few years in dignity rather than destitution.
Gou and Tsai, whose interests in China are well known, are not alone in this. There are plenty of extraordinarily rich people in Taiwan who could make a difference, but who are not lifting a finger.
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reach the point of confidence that they can start and win a war to destroy the democratic culture on Taiwan, any future decision to do so may likely be directly affected by the CCP’s ability to promote wars on the Korean Peninsula, in Europe, or, as most recently, on the Indian subcontinent. It stands to reason that the Trump Administration’s success early on May 10 to convince India and Pakistan to deescalate their four-day conventional military conflict, assessed to be close to a nuclear weapons exchange, also served to
The recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India offers a glimpse of how China is narrowing the gap in military airpower with the US. It is a warning not just for Washington, but for Taipei, too. Claims from both sides remain contested, but a broader picture is emerging among experts who track China’s air force and fighter jet development: Beijing’s defense systems are growing increasingly credible. Pakistan said its deployment of Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighters downed multiple Indian aircraft, although New Delhi denies this. There are caveats: Even if Islamabad’s claims are accurate, Beijing’s equipment does not offer a direct comparison
After India’s punitive precision strikes targeting what New Delhi called nine terrorist sites inside Pakistan, reactions poured in from governments around the world. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) issued a statement on May 10, opposing terrorism and expressing concern about the growing tensions between India and Pakistan. The statement noticeably expressed support for the Indian government’s right to maintain its national security and act against terrorists. The ministry said that it “works closely with democratic partners worldwide in staunch opposition to international terrorism” and expressed “firm support for all legitimate and necessary actions taken by the government of India
Taiwan aims to elevate its strategic position in supply chains by becoming an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for Nvidia Corp, providing everything from advanced chips and components to servers, in an attempt to edge out its closest rival in the region, South Korea. Taiwan’s importance in the AI ecosystem was clearly reflected in three major announcements Nvidia made during this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. First, the US company’s number of partners in Taiwan would surge to 122 this year, from 34 last year, according to a slide shown during CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech on Monday last week.
RSS