Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections are taking place against a backdrop of a struggling economy marred by near-zero growth, stagnant wages and rising prices, a new report by the the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said.
The economy is also suffering from the looming threat of an energy shortage, low domestic investment and overdependence on China, and the economic problems are expected to be deciding factors in the elections, said the report, titled Taiwan’s Economy Amid Political Transition.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have shifted the focus of their campaigns away from the traditional question of Taiwan’s sovereignty, it concluded.
The report, prepared by commission staff and aimed at members of the US Congress, said that economic issues will now determine the election results.
It said that DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) generally advocates improving Taiwan’s domestic economy by expanding social welfare benefits, raising the minimum wage and promoting local sources of innovation.
However, KMT candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) seeks to prioritize Taiwan’s external economic relations, advocating further trade liberalization — especially with China — as a means of supporting export-led growth, it said.
“Stagnant wages, combined with unemployment in Taiwan’s largely high-skilled workforce, weak entrepreneurial innovation and low inbound investment, explain why Taiwan is in a period of slowing economic growth,” the report said.
“The severity of these domestic economic problems may explain why DPP candidate Tsai has maintained a strong lead in election polls,” it added.
Taiwan’s export-oriented economy has become dependent on China and vulnerable to fluctuations in Beijing’s economy, “contributing to a growth rate that has slowed to nearly zero,” the report said.
Further economic cooperation with a wider range of partners could help Taiwan diversify its export markets, identify solutions to its energy shortage and attract much needed inbound foreign direct investment, it said.
With Tsai generally expected to win the election, the report names five economists who will “likely take on prominent roles” in her administration.
US-trained economist Lin Chuan (林全), president of the DPP’s think tank, the New Frontier Foundation, would advocate for a comprehensive growth strategy that includes stimulating innovation, financial sector reform and diversification of free-trade partners, it said.
Another US-trained economist, Hu Sheng-cheng (胡勝正), is also expected to win a leading position in a Tsai administration.
Hu believes Taiwan’s economy has become too reliant on exports, saying that Taiwan should diversify by linking its high-tech sectors with more traditional industries, such as precision machinery, the report said.
Others named by the report as likely top advisers are finance expert Shih Jun-ji (施俊吉); Taiwan Institute of Economic Research vice president Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫); and Taiwan Think Tank chairman Chen Po-chih (陳博志).
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater