Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) yesterday acknowledged that economic benefits have not trickled down to the lower levels of society and that the government must do more to improve social justice.
The economy is recovering, he said, adding, however, that stagnant salaries made many people “feel nothing” about the improvement.
“The government must put the emphasis on social justice and encourage a creative economy in order to create more jobs and increase salary levels,” he said when meeting representatives of this year’s Contribution to Creative Employment Award at the Presidential Office.
Siew said last year’s economic growth reached a new high of 10.82 percent. Despite the impressive figure, the fruits were not shared by everybody, he said.
Those who have a job, but have yet to find an ideal one, would “feel nothing” about the economic recovery, he said.
Nor would those who have a job, but see their monthly salaries stagnate, he said, adding that those who did not benefit from the growth would also “feel nothing” about the economic recovery.
Siew said although the government has handled the global financial crisis properly, the focus now should shift to social justice and sustainable development of the economy so that the economic benefits could be felt by the general public.
To that end, Siew said the legislature has passed the Social Assistance Act (社會救助法), which will add more people to the number of low-income households eligible for public aid.
The government must also make efforts to take care of the disadvantaged, including those who cannot afford property or the education of their children, he said.
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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