I am a public-school teacher and I will retire within the next 10 years. Regardless of which version of the pension reform act is passed, my pension is certain to shrink. Despite this, I give my full support to the ongoing effort to reform a pension system that violates the principle of intergenerational justice, in particular the part that is aimed at military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers.
A friend of mine 10 years my senior retired a few years ago. Not long after, we were making an appointment to meet, but he said it would have to be a bit later, because he had to first go and take care of something “that I feel a bit uncomfortable talking about.”
He was going to the bank to open the special savings account that would allow him to receive the preferential 18 percent interest rate on part of his savings.
This friend of mine is the kind of person who practices what he preaches, who is concerned for society and his friends. He is doing fine financially, but since this is the government policy in place, and although it made him feel uneasy, he still had to take advantage of the privilege, which would give him another NT$20,000 each month.
This is human nature, and there is no reason for us to criticize any individual who is taking advantage of the program. However, it is absolutely necessary that we discuss and criticize this kind of policy.
It is an indisputable fact that if the pension system is not reformed, it would create insurmountable fiscal problems before long. Even more important, if those of us who belong to my generation, and in particular military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers of my generation, continue to take advantage of this generous pension, the cost will have to be shouldered by today’s young generation.
This is a source of intergenerational injustice, and this is the reason that some young public-school teachers are standing up, expressing their support for reform and voicing their opinions about the teachers’ organizations that are engaged in the anti-reform campaign.
A few days ago, as the legislature planned to review the reform bill at a committee meeting, legislators and others intending to participate in the meeting were forcefully and violently stopped from doing so by anti-reform groups.
Some of the protesters and their organizations were clearly in it for their own selfish interest, and a while back, they even referred to themselves as the “800 Heroes” — after a group of soldiers who resisted the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937 — as they were protesting outside the Legislative Yuan.
Despite the illustrious name, they did not gather more than a couple of hundred protesters and failed miserably at winning public support.
Anti-reform groups keep repeating the principle of legitimate expectation, but to be honest, it is just a matter of not caring one iota about national finances or intergenerational justice, while refusing to accommodate even the smallest compromise on their own interests.
However, the highest responsibility for a government is to live up to and protect the legitimate expectations of the nation’s citizenry as a whole and not just the expectations of a small clique.
And another thing: The anti-reform protesters’ loud slogan about being opposed to vilification is becoming more laughable by the day.
Look at these so-called “800 Heroes” and the violence that occurred outside the Legislative Yuan: They are doing a pretty good job of vilifying themselves, and they still have the stomach to tell other people not to vilify them.
Chi Chun-chieh is a professor in the department of ethnic relations and cultures at National Dong Hwa University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval