There is an excess of “mausoleums” in the nation, and the establishment of more such facilities would only result in a waste of resources, artist and writer Yao Jui-jung (姚瑞中) said yesterday of promises that are often made by candidates during their campaigns to build science, industrial and cultural parks.
Yao, author of Mirage — which discusses defunct infrastructure built by central and local governments, said that candidates from both the pan-green and pan-blue camps have pledged to build 106 science, industrial and cultural parks if elected, but a substantial proportion of existing parks have either recorded a low utilization rate or are not delivering the economic benefits that they had been expected to.
He said that science and industrial parks usually cost a considerable amount of money to build and occupied vast spaces, but many have become defunct since companies have reservations about setting up shop in the facilities or have moved their operations elsewhere.
The Hualien County Environmental Technology Park overseen by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is a case in point, he said.
Completed in September 2008, the 22-hectare park in Fonglin Township (鳳林) was built with the hope of pursuing sustainable development and developing “green” industries. The facility is equipped with some of the nation’s most advanced environmental protection technologies and cost NT$864.4 million (US$27.75 million).
In its prime, the park had 17 companies operating on its site, but one by one, the companies moved out of the site before the end of 2011, he said.
He called on authorities to formulate regulations to govern firms which purchase land inside such facilities, but have not yet started operations, saying that a law should be in place to ensure that idle land is resold to companies who have an actual need to set up operations. He said that with the cost of raw materials and manpower in China on the rise, the central government should capitalize on the opportunity by offering incentives to stimulate local and international firms’ interest to set up operations in the parks.
Central government agencies, such as the National Development Council, should impose a cap on the number of parks allowed to be built rather than allowing local governments to take on one construction project after another, he added.
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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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching