Following allegations that former Taoyuan County deputy commissioner Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) had solicited bribes from Farglory Group, the Taoyuan County Government immediately dismissed Yeh from his position and canceled its contract with the group to build an affordable housing project in Bade City (八德). It did so in the hope of stopping the corruption scandal from spreading further, but the case is still likely to have a massive impact on not only the government’s housing policy, but also on Taoyuan County, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the year-end elections.
The affordable housing policy was initiated by Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) on March 3, 2010, when he was premier. It was intended to curb soaring housing prices, as the low and middle classes complained that they could not afford to buy a home. The Construction and Planning Agency therefore initiated a development project at the A7 Station of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT line. It was the first time the government had used pre-sales for a development project in order to attract private capital to build affordable homes and an industrial district. Although the project was endorsed by the government, the initial price per ping (3.3m2) of about NT$180,000 (US$5,980) was not very attractive compared with prices for real estate nearby. Critics said the price was too high for affordable housing and the government responded by slashing it to NT$150,000 per ping.
When the government cut the price, the developer’s profit shrank and it had to rely on building materials, construction and the floor space it was allocated to make up for the difference. The quality of the housing suffered as well.
Eligibility for the houses was restricted to young people above the age of 20 who do not own a home and whose household income falls below 50 percent of the national average. A 40 ping apartment would cost about NT$6 million, or about NT$7 million fully decorated. According to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics’ data for 2012, the lowest quintile of income earners have a disposable income of about NT$300,000, and the next quintile has about NT$560,000. Households in these two groups would still have to go without food and drink for 22 and 12 years respectively to be able to buy a unit of this “affordable housing,” making it an unattainable dream. In short, the government’s affordable housing policy has not solved the public housing problem.
Most importantly, when the Farglory bribery allegations surfaced, they exposed the network of contacts between officials and businesspeople. Affordable housing, which was supposed to be a cooperative project between the government and the public, has instead become a plot hatched by government officials and businesspeople to enrich themselves. This has struck a fatal blow to the credibility of affordable housing and the future prospects of other such projects. No one knows what will happen to the Bade City project now that the Taoyuan County Government has canceled the contract with Farglory Group.
The network of contacts between government officials and businesspeople exposed by the Farglory case involves many other construction projects, and it is very likely that the case will continue to expand. Coming in the wake of the corruption scandals involving former Cabinet secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世) and former Taipei City councilor Lai Su-ju (賴素如), this is a major blow to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) focus on clean politics and could have a negative impact on his and the KMT’s support ratings.
As for the year-end local elections, the KMT enjoys stable support in Taoyuan County and New Taipei City. The corruption scandal has thrown a spanner in the works for Taoyuan County Commissioner John Wu (吳志揚), and the KMT might come in for a tough fight as it faces an uphill battle in four of the five special municipalities.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS