The Taiwan Renewal Party (台灣維新黨) was formally founded yesterday, announcing aims to restrict the central government’s power and reform taxation.
The party would push for a tax-sharing system similar to that introduced by Germany and later adopted by China, Taiwan Renewal Party convener Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) told a news conference in Taipei to mark the party’s founding.
Local governments would ideally receive half of profit-seeking enterprises’ income tax and business tax — which currently go to the central government — allowing them to promote more policies and developments, Su said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
This would incentivize local governments to attract investment, thereby boosting local economies, said Su, a former Tainan County commissioner who left the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in March last year.
The Taiwan Renewal Party would seek to restrict the central government’s jurisdiction and give local governments more autonomy, he said.
For instance, the six special municipalities could hold district director elections and allow each district to have more say on its own affairs, rather than have the mayor distributing all the resources, he said.
National affairs are decided by a handful of policymakers and young people often feel powerless and depressed, as they are not given the opportunity to use their talent to benefit the nation, he said, adding that if a proportional representation system were adopted for local elections, capable young people would be more motivated to enter politics.
The party would nominate at least 10 candidates for next year’s legislative elections, Su said.
He said that he did not form the party in pursuit of power or profit, but to reform the nation.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) during her first presidential campaign in 2012 raised the idea of a “Taiwan consensus,” but did not define what she meant by “consensus,” he said.
The consensus is that Taiwan, or the Republic of China (ROC), is an independent nation, the future of which should be decided by its 23 million people, he said.
More than 80 percent of Taiwanese accept either the ROC or Taiwan when referring to the nation, so people should not dwell on the matter, he said.
Most people care about how the economy can be reinvigorated and how underprivileged people can be cared for, Su said, adding that he and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) think similarly in this regard.
Asked if he would support Gou if he ran for president, Su said that he welcomes all like-minded candidates.
The Taiwan Renewal Party’s ideals partially align with Gou’s, as he also wants to restore the ROC’s glory and find an answer to people’s frustrations, Tsai Chin-yu (蔡沁瑜), deputy chief executive of Gou’s Yonglin Foundation, said at the event.
Asked whether his party supports Tsai’s re-election bid, Su said: “We are just small potatoes, so does it matter?”
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
RSS