The continued privatization of one of Taiwan's most accessible and desirable beaches is casting a cloud of doubt over the central government's commitment to making Taiwan an "Island of Tourism."
Just a few weeks ago, Taiwan's Minister of Transportation and Communications, Yeh Chu-lan (
The goal, he said, was to change Taiwan from an "Island of Industry" to an "Island of Tourism" -- to move it in a direction that is more attractive to domestic and international travelers.
But near Taiwan's southernmost tip in Kenting National Park (
For them, it is the story of Long Beach (
The result is that a town that's regarded as Taiwan's best beach resort is also a place where tourists have been chased off the best beach and in some cases assaulted by security staff from the Chateau Beach Resort (
"We grew up here and we've always based our lives around Long Beach," said a hotel owner surnamed Chen, who was born and raised in Kenting. "Now, no one can go there."
Chen and other Kenting residents have already endured two and a half years of conflicts, petitions and passive wondering about the fate of their treasured beach.
The corporation has used a variety of measures to keep the resort beach free of unwanted guests, including barbed wire fences and security guards. On several occasions, the guards have assaulted prospective beach goers. At other times, Chia I even laid claim to the ocean itself, chasing surfers out of the water with jet skis.
Last week, Chia I officials told the Taipei Times that these and other problems of the last two years were regrettable but hinted at a resolution.
Repeatedly referring to the National Park beachfront as "private property," they revealed plans to reopen Long Beach next March as the first pay beach ever to exist in Pingtung County. At present, however, the beach remains much as it has been for the past two years, closed off, empty and strewn with flotsam.
How it happened
The progression of events that would eventually block the beach began in October 1996, when the Forestry Bureau opened public bidding on a defunct hotel (the Kenting Binguan
Two months later, the rights were awarded to Chia I Industrial for an initial payment of NT$80 million plus an annual rent of roughly NT$6 million.As things currently stand, Chia I's lease is divided into terms of eight years and is extendable up to five times, effectively granting Chia I use of the property for a total of 48 years. The agreement will end in 2044.
The style of lease -- taken from Hong Kong -- have been commonplace in Kenting National Park over the past few years. Other non-beachfront hotels, like the Caesar Park and the Howard Beach Resort, have received similar commitments as incentives for development.
Though both the Forestry Bureau and officials at the Chateau insist that a public notice was made at the time Long Beach was rented, Kenting's borough chief, Tsai Cheng-jung (
"There was a community protest at the time they started building [Masalu]," recalled Mrs. Chen. "A crowd of the local people protested the construction, but [Masalu] brought in a lot of rough looking guys with tattoos and scars, and since the people here are pretty timid, the protest broke up pretty quickly."
Masalu was an ocean amusement park that was part of Chia I's original two pronged development strategy for Long Beach. As an enterprise, however, it was both illegal and a disaster. The boardwalk, floating wharf and several other facilities undertaken by the NT$300-per-entry park were all accomplished without the necessary permission of the National Park's head office, which must approve any construction project on park land.
The specter of Masalu's intimidation policies -- another of which was the barbed wire later strung built around the beach -- has hovered over Kenting ever since. "This is where we live and we can't go anywhere else," said one resident who had refused to take place in any of the local protests and didn't want to be named. "We don't want to create any problems. Of course we want the beach to open, but we grew up here. Our children go to school here. Is it any wonder that we don't want to make too much noise?"
The Chateau Beach Resort, which was refurbished out of the shell of the Kenting Binguang, was Chia I's legitimate development project of 1998.
At present, the owners of the 139 room oceanfront hotel control Long Beach, and for most of the past two years only its guests, who pay a minimum of NT$5,000 a night, are allowed beach access.
Chateau officials believe that Masalu operated in violation of the law and were very careful to disassociate themselves completely from Golden Sky (
Tu Chen-chung, a vice president at Chia I, stated that the land for the ocean park was "lent, not rented" to Golden Sky by a former Chia I board member without the express permission of the entire Chia I board. Tu said the individual is no longer associated with Chia I and that Golden Sky has since been dissolved.
Ostensibly, with the Chateau in control of Long Beach, things should have gotten better. Though the hotel took down some of the barbed wire, it did not reopen the property. Instead, the resort posted round-the-clock uniformed security guards at all points of beach access.
In the year that followed, the Chateau guards repeatedly came into physical contact with tourists. "There were so many instances of people who wanted to go down to the beach and got beaten up by the guards," lamented Tsai.
Carson Tsao (
Tsao went on to describe some of the nominal improvements. In response to the local community's protests, beach access for Kenting residents has been restored, he said. Also, Long Beach was briefly opened as a NT$100 per entry pay beach from September through October 15.
Kenting residents, however, feel that the measures are at best half-hearted.
"We can go down to the beach, but the feeling still isn't good," said Chen. "The guards always give us some trouble and ask to see an ID. Also, we can't go swimming."
"One time I went down to the beach and the guard came out to stop me," reported one female Kenting resident. "When I told him I was local he let me on, but when I turned around I saw he was carrying a baseball bat. I haven't been back since."
Speaking in defense of the Chateau, Tsao said the hotel is obliged to impose restrictions according to its contract with the Forestry Bureau. "If anyone drowns or if any other accidents happen on this beach, we will be held legally responsible," he said.
Forestry Bureau officials confirmed this and said the liability clause is an important part of the Chateau's lease.
Next March, Tsao said, the Chateau plans to reopen Long Beach as the first ever pay beach in Pingtung County. He explained away the interim delay of five months saying that the hotel needed time to obtain a pay-beach operating license from the Pingtung County government and that the winter season was generally not very profitable.
Residents still unhappy
Along with around 200 other Kenting residents and small business owners, Chen has signed a petition that was produced by an ad-hoc self help committee organized by Tsai.
Now 50-years-old, Tsai is another lifelong resident of Kenting. His father once ran a grocery store in the town, and he now runs his own restaurant. So far, Tsai has sent the petition to Chia I, the Kenting National Park, the national Forestry Bureau and several other government bodies.
So far, it has achieved only a few conciliatory gestures, the putative opening of the beach to Kenting residents and a promise to reopen it as a fee-for-entry beach.
The offerings have prompted Tsai to take a "wait and see" attitude for the time being, but many other residents are not appeased.
"I can't believe they still want people to pay," said Chen. "[Tourists] will just go somewhere else" -- like Hsiaowan (
To date, the Kenting townsfolk have received no assistance from the National Park in their quest to reopen Long Beach. At the Kenting National Park headquarters, the Forestry Bureau's rights to Long Beach are viewed as a foregone conclusion.
"That is [the Chateau's] land. They rent it from the Forestry Bureau," said Kenting National Park Secretary Lee Teng-tsu (李登仔), who is third on the totem pole at park headquarters. Asked whether he was concerned about the closing of Long Beach, he replied, "No, not really."
Historical divisions
The Forestry Bureau's claims to the Kenting Binguan, Long Beach and numerous other properties inside Kenting National Park extend back to at least the late 1960s, when the bureau was given domain over the much of the Hengchuen (恆春) peninsula, the region which includes Taiwan's southern tip, by Taiwan's provincial government. At that time, the national park system had not yet been established. It would not be established by the time the Forestry Bureau opened the Kenting Binguan for business in the late 1970s.
When Kenting National Park eventually became Taiwan's first national park in 1984, the park administration had to contend with the Forestry Bureau, two other government bureaus and the thousands of residents who farmed, lived and ran businesses on what had suddenly become national park land.
So while most of the Hengchuen peninsula was transferred to the governance of the national park, a considerable amount of land, like Long Beach, retained its original status under grandfather clauses of Taiwan's National Park Law.
In practical terms, the problem of bureaucratic overlap between the National Park and the Forestry Bureau was further magnified by the vast chasm that separates them on the organizational chart of the Executive Yuan.
While Kenting National Park is a sub-agency of the Ministry of the Interior, the Forestry Bureau belongs to the Council of Agriculture. In other words, they have little to do with each other.
Resolution unlikely
In lieu of any sudden developments, the fate of Long Beach then remains with Chia I, which plans to continue development of its new property in two stages. The first will be next March's opening of a swath of beach to those willing to pay an admission fee. The second is the construction of a second hotel of 200 rooms on the land vacated by Masalu.
More important perhaps than either the fate of Chia I, the Chateau, or Long Beach however, is the precedent that the Long Beach case will set for the future development of tourism in Taiwan.
At a recent tourism conference in Taiwan, visitors from Japan, the US, Canada and Australia all commented that travelers from their countries would likely be dissuaded by beaches that charged admission and that private ownership of national park land in their countries is unheard of.
In the end, Chen, the Kenting hotel proprietor, may have summed up the Long Beach dilemma best when he said: "This is all of Taiwan's problem."
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