The number of people living below the poverty line has reached its highest level ever, signaling the fragile state of the economy and that the recovery could be benefiting some more than others, a report said.
In the second quarter of this year, 264,000 people nationwide were found to be living on less than NT$9,829 a month, the Chinese-language Commercial Times said, quoting from a Ministry of the Interior report.
The number was an increase of 9.77 percent, or 26,000, from the same period last year. Since 2000, more than 100,000 people have fallen under the poverty level, reports have said.
Observers said the figure was surprising, given signs that Taiwan’s economy could grow more than 6 percent this year as export orders pick up and unemployment falls.
Originally set to be released on Thursday, the report also said the figure meant that an estimated 108,000 families were currently living below the government-defined poverty level, an increase of 11 percent since last year.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) called the numbers the latest confirmation of Taiwan’s widening income gap and proof that government policies over the last two years have benefited big businesses at the expense of the working class.
“If a company like Foxconn sneezes, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration catches a cold,” DPP spokesperson Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said. “We’ve been warning all along that these figures are the natural result of the government’s policies.”
The DPP said it hoped the numbers could increase pressure on the government to agree to opposition party demands that the legislature more stringently review the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed with China in June.
The agreement, which lowers cross-strait trade tariffs, has led to concerns that it could lower middle-class salaries and impact small and medium-sized enterprises because of an influx of cheaper goods from China. Last month, an internal report given to legislators by the Legislative Research Bureau showed that the ECFA could widen the income gap after taking into account Hong Kong’s statistics after signing a similar tariff agreement with China.
Playing on such concerns, the DPP has recently released a series of TV advertisements, saying that passing the ECFA could result in Taiwan following in Hong Kong’s footsteps.
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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