The three typhoons that recently hit Taiwan in quick succession sent food prices soaring to stubbornly high levels, but government efforts to determine if prices are being manipulated and track possible gougers have proven ineffective.
Premier Lin Chuan (林全) wants to track down people suspected of manipulating food prices, and prosecutors and police nationwide have been scrambling to inspect food markets and supermarkets for signs that prices are being artificially inflated and find those responsible.
Typhoons interrupt normal supply and demand. Fluctuating food prices are a given. Should unscrupulous resellers conspire to artificially inflate prices, the sky is the limit.
There is no easy solution. Food distribution is complex, and certainly more complicated than office-bound authorities can reasonably be expected to unravel. The government can send police to markets to keep an eye on prices, but how exactly are they supposed to do that?
If police officers do not know the typical prices of vegetables, they will certainly understand the ins and outs of supply and demand, or whether the prices being asked are reasonable, or indeed whether there has been illegal price manipulation.
Lin’s policy has turned out to be a lot of noise with little to show for it, except to force profiteers into hiding until the storm blows over. The failure to actually nab any profiteers has set the government up for ridicule.
To muddy the waters further, few things in Taiwan are untainted by politics. No sooner had the policy of going after suspected manipulators been announced than there was media speculation that it was all about bringing down former Yunlin County commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味), a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member who is chairman of Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Corp, the nation’s largest agricultural products distributor.
Political conspiracy theories such as this are of little help in stabilizing food prices. While the corporation controls the vegetable and fruit situation in Taipei, it does not have major influence in the nation as a whole. The idea that the government would topple Chang to stabilize food prices is far-fetched.
However, if the Taipei City Government cannot deploy farming experts to sort the situation out and the central government sends its own personnel, then this will give rise to such conspiracy theories.
It is undeniable that the distribution process is not entirely above board. Fair Trade Commission Chairman Wu Shiow-ming (吳秀明) has conceded that collusion between auctioneers and market manipulators cannot be ruled out.
The idea of unscrupulous elements working to manipulate food prices is not new, but we have seen precious little evidence that the government is actually looking into monopolization of the market.
Lin’s policy is just a repeat of former premier Hau Pei-tsun’s (郝柏村) efforts 20 years ago. It certainly would not be favored by any economist worth their salt.
This is more about political show. The government should work to release supplies held in cold storage onto the market, or increase food imports so that prices can stabilize and the gap between demand and supply can be brought to a more manageable size. This would reduce the profit margins of the wholesalers and discourage their disruptive behavior.
The government’s approach is extending the fluctuation in food prices. It is little wonder that some people have accused it of incompetence. This farce should be brought to an end; the government has to stabilize the supply, make it easier for farmers to replant their crops, remove obstacles to distribution, and turn its attention to solving the root causes of the annual problem.
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
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,
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
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
RSS