Confident in the accomplishment of having raised tourism in Taitung County by 50 percent over the past four years, incumbent Taitung County Commissioner Justin Huang (黃健庭) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said he is certain to win re-election on Nov. 29.
The main obstacles for the development of the county have been the economy and transportation, Huang said in a recent interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), adding that he has solved both through the promotion of tourism.
The Taitung County Government is saddled with NT$10.2 billion (US$335 million) in personnel costs against just NT$1.6 billion in revenue, but the total amount of bonds floated over four years reached NT$1.7 billion, Huang said.
Not only has he accrued NT$1.2 billion less debt than previous commissioners, Huang said, he doubled construction contract costs to NT$1.5 billion.
Construction has caused dormant land values to rise and allowed the county government to sell land previously of no interest to buyers, Huang said, adding that with more land being used by the public, the county’s revenue has also increased substantially.
The old Taiwan Railway Administration’s Taitung Station had once been the busiest commercial district in Taitung City, but entered a decade-long decline, Huang said; however, he added that over the past four years, the district has once again become the cradle for a vibrant commercial zone for art and literature and home to a modern cinema complex.
Such a revival was due only to the county government’s continued efforts and dialogue with the TRA and the central government to use government land, Huang said, adding that the county has also worked hard at preparing funding requests for the central government to subsidize cultural creative industries in the area.
Funding for continued events and subsidies for Aboriginal villages in the county are also included in the central government subsidies, Huang said.
On government, Huang said his proudest achievement was that he made the county’s civil servants actually mean something.
On matters of infrastructure, Huang said that the electrification of the county’s railways — an initiative he pushed through while serving as legislator — had paid off, adding that during his term, he ensured that the Puyuma Express became operational.
With the Puyuma Express linking Taitung County to Taipei within three-and-a-half hours, it brought more investment and development in the tourism sector, Huang said.
However, he added, the county had also passed legislation regulating the increased development of such facilities to lessen damage to the environment, as Taitung’s scenery is also an attraction for tourists.
Huang also said that the hot air balloon festival, originally subsidized by the central government with an amount of just NT$9 million, had become a great success, succeeding the paragliding industry the county government had failed to make popular, Huang said.
“Poor counties have to make the best of what resources they have, and when used the right way, even counties of lesser wealth can reverse their fortunes,” Huang said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods