Opponents and supporters of a sunset clause dating from former Taipei mayor Hau lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) administration which allows people to donate land earmarked for public infrastructure projects and receive floor space in new buildings in exchange, yesterday demonstrated outside Taipei’s Regent Hotel, where Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was attending a forum on “residential justice.”
Under the clause, people who trade in private land to be used in public projects are awarded 50 percent of the floor space in construction projects for free, but must pay for the remaining 50 percent.
Taipei Department of Urban Development statistics show that the floor space landowners acquired from the Taipei City Government from 2008 to 2014 averaged 3.2 times the size of land they donated.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The provisional clause has a term of validity of three years and is set to expire on June 29, when people will be left with only the option to pay — instead of donating land in exchange — for the amount of floor space they want.
Ko expressed concerns over the quantity of private land the city is set to expropriate for building public infrastructure, saying that the cost of expropriation has been estimated at NT$2 trillion (US$66.33 billion), which is about 15 times the city’s annual budget.
However, a proposal tabled by Taipei City Councilor Yeh Lin-chuan (葉林傳) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to retain the clause has gained the majority backing of 51 out of the 61 Taipei city councilors.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP) staged a demonstration outside the hotel, calling on the city to abolish the clause as scheduled.
SDP spokesman Chen You-sin (陳又新) said brokers with insider information sometimes buy land from less-well-off people who have land designated for public infrastructure projects, at prices much lower than its market value and sell it to construction firms, raking in huge profits.
National Committee member Miao Po-ya (苗博雅) said the Taipei City Council in 2014 unanimously passed a resolution stipulating that people who want to acquire floor space after June 29 must pay for it in full.
The rule change would mean the city government would be able to collect more fees from its land exchanges with builders, which it can invest in other city projects, Miao said.
Saying that 40 of the councilors who signed Yeh’s proposal were active during Hau’s term, she asked them to publicly explain their U-turn or withdraw their backing of the proposal.
Abolishing the system would prevent some landowners from losing money in their deals with brokers and resolve the problem of construction firms hoarding land designated for public use, Housing Movement spokesman Peng Yang-kai (彭揚凱) said.
In a separate demonstration, a group of landowners decried the scheduled abolition of the system.
National Landowners Self-help Group secretary-general Lee Chi-yu (李奇昱) said that existing rules only allow Taipei residents whose land is on roads measuring 15m or wider to be compensated in the case of an expropriation.
However, the majority of private land is on lanes measuring 8m or less where infrastructure — such as cables and underground water and gas pipes — are concentrated, Lee said.
“For more than 50 years, these landowners have been denied compensation and now the city government is planning to close the window of opportunity for us to receive compensation,” he said.
The city is to collate the opinions it gathered yesterday and come up with a conclusion in 10 days, before it briefs the Taipei City Council on its decisions, Ko 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