Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday called the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and participants of the Sunflower movement “sinners” for damaging Taiwan’s economy.
He said that under their blind obstruction, the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement fell through.
The agreement and other proposals he made were prioritized around Taiwan and beneficial for the public, but the DPP, with its anti-China sentiment, “opposed [them] for the sake of opposing,” he said at a conference held by the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation in Taipei, adding that the agreement was a lost opportunity.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
During his eight years in office, the number of births defied expectations and increased by 15,000 per year, while last year, there were only 181,000 births, he said.
The national birthrate is low, yet President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) says Taiwan’s economy is the best it has been in 20 years, he said, adding that Tsai “feels good about [herself], but the people feel bad.”
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘), a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential hopeful who spoke at the conference, said that his motivation to run for president is to help the younger generation.
Young people around the world are facing a number of challenges, but while many people only see their anger, he sees their despair and dejection, he said, adding that the government is allowing them to just “sit around and wait.”
Responding to Ma’s comments, New Power Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said on Facebook that the low salaries and high housing prices caused by the Ma administration’s “incorrect policies” were the “real sinners” for depriving the younger generation of a future.
Taiwan’s GDP rose 30.6 percent from NT$13.15 trillion to NT$17.18 trillion (US$425.5 billion to US$555.9 billion) during Ma’s presidency from 2008 to 2016, Huang wrote.
The average monthly wage during that period rose from NT$36,383 to NT$39,213, at a rate of “only 7.7 percent, far lower than the GDP growth rate,” Huang said.
If inflation is taken into consideration, then real wages were nearly stagnant, he added.
Tsai said it was irresponsible of Ma to blame the Sunflower movement and the DPP for the poor economy.
Ma’s comments “erased” the efforts of Tsai’s government and the public over the past three years, the National Development Council said.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
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