For many, the three-week-long Sunflower movement epitomized the younger generation’s anxiety and frustration over their uncertain future, but for Alliance Cultural Foundation chairman Stanley Yen (嚴長壽), it represented a major turning point for the nation as a whole.
“Taiwan is at a critical crossroads as it continues to be crippled by a widening poverty gap, a rapidly growing national debt and a government in which politicians improperly allocate public resources to pander to certain voters,” Yen said in a recent interview with the Chinese-language newspaper Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper).
Yen, who is the president of the five-star Landis Taipei Hotel and the author of an inspirational book, Be the Change (你就是改變的起點), said the uneasiness felt by the country’s youth is understandable.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
“With representative politics not functioning properly and the media one of the main causes of social chaos, this generation of young people are often left powerless and frustrated,” Yen said.
To overcome the predicament, Yen said that people of all ages should increase their civic participation and use their votes to prod those in power to push for change.
“They should roll up their sleeves and get involved,” the 67-year-old said.
Yen likens Taiwan’s current malaise to Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang’s (蔡國強) famous installation, Head On, which features 99 life-sized replicas of wolves leaping en masse into a glass wall.
“Taiwan seems incapable of learning from history, with the government repeating the same mistakes. Many of its policies have the effect of hurling the administration and the nation against a wall and leaving us with broken arms and legs,” Yen said.
Citing as an example the notorious “22K curse” — which refers to the NT$22,000 (US$725) starting salary for university graduates — Yen said that he had warned the government before it began in 2009 subsidizing businesses that hired new graduates at NT$22,000 per month that the policy might turn young people into cheap labor.
“I told the government that the subsidy scheme would be a waste of money … and that money would be better spent subsidizing internships offered by master craftspeople in rural areas, as this would not only broaden young people’s horizons, but also help them develop a sense of belonging to this land,” Yen said.
“The government continued with its plan and dragged down average starting salaries for first-time jobseekers,” Yen added.
Another example of poor policymaking was the government’s expansion in 1996 of the number of colleges in the country, which caused universities to lose their value, and led to the marginalization of vocational education courses and the severe depreciation of college diplomas, he said.
“The recent surge in students studying tourism and hospitality management is equally worrying, since it could cause an oversupply of labor in that industry,” Yen said.
The entrepreneur said that he is also concerned about the government’s improper allocation of national resources.
“For instance, the monthly subsidies for elderly farmers have created a large number of ‘sham farmers’ and increased the nation’s financial burden,” Yen said.
“The National Health Insurance [NHI] system, which is supposed to support people who are critically ill or financially disadvantaged, is spending most of its resources on unnecessary medications and influenza treatments,” Yen added.
He also criticized the government’s failure to exclude the wealthy from benefits, saying that even he was once notified to collect a welfare subsidy for the elderly.
“I declined to take the money, but these mistakes seriously widen the government’s fiscal deficit. The combined outstanding debts owed by government branches at all levels exceeded NT$6 trillion [US$30 billion] last year and that debt has increased annually by an average of about NT$200 billion in recent years,” Yen said.
“Future generations will be forced to shoulder this enormous financial burden,” he added.
As for the controversy over nuclear energy, Yen said the current generation has exploited and squandered the nation’s natural resources in its slavish pursuit of GDP growth, which has only made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Our legacy to future generations will be nuclear waste and a ravaged environment, Yen said.
“If you are unhappy with the nation’s politics, you should use your votes to show your discontent and to force politicians to do their jobs,” he said.
People worried about the nation’s future should push for education reform and help the young become more competitive, Yen said.
“It is not as difficult as you think to identify and resolve problems,” Yen said. “However, we need a concerted effort between the government, political parties and the public to jointly oversee and carry out the reforms.”
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