President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) directed the National Security Council (NSC) yesterday to join up with relevant administrative agencies in forming a special panel to study population issues.
Chen gave the directive after listening to reports by a team of his economic advisers at the team's fourth meeting since its formation earlier this year.
In addition to reviewing the current domestic economic situation, Chen's economic advisers touched on the issues regarding the aging of the local population, the steady decline in the birth rate, the influx of foreign workers and the development of the elderly health-care industry.
Noting that population issues are crucial to the nation's long-term development, Chen said that a greying population, a dwindling birth rate and the influx of foreign workers will all have profound impacts on the nation's economic and social development, as well as on education and national security fronts.
"With people aged 65 or over accounting for more than 9 percent of the local population, Taiwan is now an aging society. Many issues, such as the mandatory retirement age, job opportunities for retirees and care for the elderly, are worthy of study," Chen said.
In his view, Chen added, many existing labor and health insurance regulations should be updated to allow for the retirees to re-enter the job market and receive better health-care and medical services.
Chen said that he looks forward to seeing the establishment of a sound part-time work system to help enhance productivity.
As Taiwan is at the juncture of an economic transformation, Chen said, administrative agencies should pool their resources with education and business institutions to strengthen vocational training and upgrading manpower quality to stem further rises in the domestic unemployment rate.
Stressing that globalization is an irreversible trend, Chen said that Taiwan must face up to its challenges on not only the trading front but also in accelerated cross-border capital and manpower movement.
"Cultivation of quality manpower is key to tackling globalization challenges and the threat from the rise of China as a new economic power," Chen said.
During the meeting, Chen also said that the government must take effective steps to address unemployment issues, as the jobless rate reached a high of 5.21 percent last month.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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