During a recent question-and-answer session on the legislative floor, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) used a popular catchphrase created by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami when asked to consider increasing the number of public holidays, saying he looked at the issue positively because people would enjoy “a little happiness in hand” with more work holidays.
Jiang then told lawmakers that he already had three proposals in mind. Without delay, officials at the Ministry of the Interior and Directorate-General of Personnel Administration soon gave several reasons to support Jiang’s stance.
The government’s response was expected when New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) criticism that the six-day Lunar New Year holiday this year was relatively short appeared to resonate with the public and prompted lawmakers to vie to make nine-day Lunar New Year holidays mandatory.
Leaving aside immediate opposition from leaders of business groups, who tend to bemoan the effects public holidays have on productivity and production, any increase in public holidays is attractive to most constituencies, which is why Jiang tried to get a step ahead of lawmakers by declaring his support for the issue with his three proposals.
This might enable the embattled premier to score some short-term political points, but it is actually of little help in improving the labor market in Taiwan, which is characterized by long working hours, low pay and informal working arrangements, each of which is a hindrance to “a little happiness in hand.”
The problem of long work hours alone no doubt deserves government attention more than the number of public holidays, especially for people who are not covered under regulations passed in 2001 mandating a five-day workweek, which apply to civil public servants, military personnel and teachers.
According to a report released by the then-Council of Labor Affairs, now the Ministry of Labor, in December last year, Taiwanese in 2012 worked an average of 2,141 hours, which was the third-highest annual average among 30 countries. The study did not include Hong Kong, which is also known for its extremely long working hours. Taiwan followed Mexico and Singapore, where people averaged 2,402 hours and 2,226 hours that year, respectively.
Taiwan’s average is much longer than the average of 72 countries — 1,915 hours per year — surveyed by UBS, a global financial service firm, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) average of 1,776 hours.
Taiwan is among the few Asian countries lacking a mandatory five-day workweek across all sectors, as set out in the “Forty-Hour Week Convention” adopted by the International Labor Organization in 1935.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics has found that about 90 percent of employees worked more than 40 hours a week in 2012 and about 10 percent worked more than 50 hours a week that year.
Along with the 2001 implementation of the five-day workweek in certain sectors, the then-revised Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) reduced regular work hours to 84 hours every two weeks, compared with the original 48 hours a week provision.
What does “a little happiness in hand” mean?
Murakami, a marathon runner, once suggested: “a cold beer after a hard workout.”
“If we don’t have this kind of a little happiness, life would be like a dry, arid desert,” Murakami said.
A little happiness in hand could be that simple.
In work-hour rankings, Taiwan was followed by South Korea, with an average of 2,090 annual work hours, according to the labor ministry study.
Same difference? However, it is worth noting that South Korea has the fastest-declining work hours in the OECD. Since 1991, 571 hours have been trimmed.
During the same period, there was a reduction of just 220 hours in Taiwan.
The government could expect more of itself.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS