The Hong Kong consultancy that produced a report that prompted President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to order a three-month judicial and governmental review of corruption earlier this week said yesterday the scores should not be interpreted as meaning Taiwan is more corrupt than China.
Bob Broadfoot, managing director of Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), also said the corruption index cited by Ma included perceptions both of the nation’s leadership and the opposition leadership.
“The score where Taiwan scores worse than China is on perceptions [of foreign executives] regarding the national leadership,” Broadfoot wrote yesterday in an e-mail to the Taipei Times. “The interpretation, therefore, should not be that corruption is worse in one place than the other, but that executives in Taiwan have a less favorable view of the island’s national-level political leaders (including opposition heads) when it comes to corruption than executives working in the Mainland view China’s national-level leaders.”
Broadfoot also said the index did not include corruption in the police, judiciary, financial sector or civil service, in which perceptions in Taiwan were better than in China.
On Wednesday, Ma surprised reporters by presiding over a press conference at which he expressed strong “distress” and said the nation’s achievements in democracy and its core values had been “tarnished.”
“Taiwan’s degree of corruption was unexpectedly worse than that of mainland China,” Ma said.
Ma said most of the corruption had occurred under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration and vowed to address the problem.
He ordered the government and judiciary to launch a probe into “major” corruption cases and produce a report within three months detailing the cases and proposing measures to fight corruption.
A day later, the legislature’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee tasked Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) with creating an anti-graft commission, with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) saying the president had declared war on corruption. Chiu called on the state public prosecutor-general to step down to allow for faster proceedings against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) said she was as distressed as the president about corruption in the former administration and that her ministry was hard at work on the special probe ordered by Ma.
The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy’s annual report surveyed more than 1,700 foreign business executives in 16 countries.
In the category of perceptions of corruption among the nation’s leadership, Taiwan scored 6.47 on a scale of zero to 10, while China scored 6.16.
On why perceptions of central leadership corruption could be more favorable in China, Broadfoot said: “The problem of corruption [in China] is perceived to be more serious at the local and provincial level. National level leaders are considered ‘cleaner.’ In Taiwan this is not the case.”
He speculated that frequent allegations of corruption in Taiwan by politicians could be reflected in the survey results.
“It could well be that rival politicians in Taiwan are so busy calling each other corrupt that they are responsible for creating the impression that our survey reflects,” Broadfoot said.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
A bipartisan group of US representatives have introduced a draft US-Taiwan Defense Innovation Partnership bill, aimed at accelerating defense technology collaboration between Taiwan and the US in response to ongoing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The bill was introduced by US representatives Zach Nunn and Jill Tokuda, with US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and US Representative Ashley Hinson joining as original cosponsors, a news release issued by Tokuda’s office on Thursday said. The draft bill “directs the US Department of Defense to work directly with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense through their respective
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
RSS