It’s hard to tell which is more embarrassing — that hundreds of Taiwanese would prostrate themselves before a wealthy Chinese tycoon so they could receive a “red envelope” from his hand, or the fact that after two-and-a-half years in office, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has failed to look after the economic well-being of its own people.
A visit to Taiwan this week by Chinese recycling magnate Chen Guangbiao (陳光標), ostensibly on a “thanksgiving” tour to hand out an estimated NT$500 million (US$17.2 million) to Taiwan’s poor, initially sparked controversy when it was revealed that said envelopes were embossed with the inscription “the Chinese race is one family (中華民族一家親).”
Whether this was intentional or not, this gratuitous inscription raised the twin specters of “Han” chauvinism and the Chinese Communist Party’s united-front tactics, this time not by throwing money at Taiwanese corporations, but rather at its underprivileged.
To be fair, once we look past his proclivity for ostentation, Chen has already donated millions of dollars to China’s destitute, which is a testament to his generosity. That said, despite a relative shift in wealth across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan’s GDP per capita is still five times higher than that of China and the latter has hundreds of millions of people who have yet to be lifted out of poverty.
A survey by Allianz Group in October showed that at the end of 2009, the average Taiwanese household had about NT$2.2 million in financial assets, the third-highest in Asia after Japan and Singapore, and 18th globally, with close to 40 percent of the population (or more than 9 million people) belonging to the wealthy middle class.
As such, it is hard to discount altogether the possibility that, to some extent, Chen’s goodwill has a political — namely “one China” — element to it. Otherwise, if he felt the need to help people outside China, why not give that money to the countless destitute in Cambodia or North Korea?
Chinese nationalism masking as philanthropy aside, Chen’s visit sheds light on a far more immediate problem, one that is purely domestic in nature. As a modern, developed and wealthy nation, there is no reason why hundreds of Taiwanese should have to rely on foreign largesse to make ends meet. Try as it might to blame the global financial crisis to justify budget cuts, the Ma administration’s justifications sound hollow when we take into account its profligate spending on such projects as the Taipei 101 New Year’s Eve fireworks, which cost NT$60 million, and this year’s Republic of China centennial celebrations, of which the total cost is estimated at NT$3.2 billion, or more than six times what Chen is expected to dole out during his visit.
This is not to say that fireworks and celebrations should be canceled altogether, but simply to point out that a nation that can afford to spend such amounts of money on visual extravaganzas does not — should not — have to depend on external generosity to address the basic needs of its citizens. If assistance from the wealthy class were needed to help the poor, surely finding willing donors in Taiwan shouldn’t be that difficult, as Taiwan has more than its share of those.
In its Global Wealth 2010 Report, the Boston Consulting Group put Taiwan at No. 10 in the number of millionaire households as a percentage of total households, with about 230,000, or 3 percent, in 2009. (To put things in perspective, the World Wealth Report 2010 by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth and Capgemini SA estimated that in 2009, China, with 1.3 billion people, had 477,000 millionaires).
Large purchases of Taiwanese electronics by Chinese delegations in the past two years, added to rising export figures to China and the region, have failed to be accompanied by wage improvements in the middle and lower classes. The benefits of rapid economic growth in the wake of the global crisis have not trickled down and have largely remained in the hands of the wealthy few, a phenomenon not unlike that observed in Hong Kong and which could become even more pronounced as a result of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed between Taiwan and China in June. The Boston Consulting Group report also showed that the number of millionaire households in Taiwan in 2009 rose 22.1 percent from the previous year, at the height of the global financial crisis, a trend that is expected to accelerate following the entry into force of the ECFA.
No outsider should be responsible for mitigating the effects of an increasingly inequitable society, as wealth distribution, especially in a rich country like Taiwan, is solely the remit of the government.
In the end, Taiwanese have every right to interpret Chen’s largesse with skepticism, if not rancor, especially if it is part of a political scheme. However, even more aggravating is that in allowing this individual to embark on his “thanksgiving” tour, the Ma administration doesn’t seem to realize that such benevolence should not be necessary in the first place. Why hundreds of destitute families in Taiwan have to rely on a Chinese tycoon is a question Ma and his entourage should seriously ponder.
J. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Forward Forum in Taipei, former Singaporean minister for foreign affairs George Yeo (楊榮文) proposed a “Chinese commonwealth” as a potential framework for political integration between Taiwan and China. Yeo said the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is unsustainable and that Taiwan should not be “a piece on the chessboard” in a geopolitical game between China and the US. Yeo’s remark is nothing but an ill-intentioned political maneuver that is made by all pro-China politicians in Singapore. Since when does a Southeast Asian nation have the right to stick its nose in where it is not wanted
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has released a plan to economically integrate China’s Fujian Province with Taiwan’s Kinmen County, outlining a cross-strait development project based on six major themes and 21 measures. This official document by the CCP is directed toward Taiwan’s three outlying island counties: Penghu County, Lienchiang County (Matsu) and Kinmen County. The plan sets out to construct a cohabiting sphere between Kinmen and the nearby Chinese city of Xiamen, as well as between Matsu and Fuzhou. It also aims to bring together Minnanese cultural areas including Taiwan’s Penghu and China’s cities of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou for further integrated
During a recent visit to Taiwan, I encountered repeated questions about “America skepticism” among the body politic. The basic premise of the “America skepticism” theory is that Taiwan people should view the United States as an unreliable, self-interested actor who is using Taiwan for its own purposes. According to this theory, America will abandon Taiwan when its interests are advanced by doing so. At one level, such skepticism is a sign of a healthy, well-functioning democratic society that protects the right for vigorous political debate. Indeed, around the world, the people of Taiwan are far from alone in debating America’s reliability
As China’s economy was meant to drive global economic growth this year, its dramatic slowdown is sounding alarm bells across the world, with economists and experts criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for his unwillingness or inability to respond to the nation’s myriad mounting crises. The Wall Street Journal reported that investors have been calling on Beijing to take bolder steps to boost output — especially by promoting consumer spending — but Xi has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth, seeing it as wasteful and at odds with his goal of making China a world-leading industrial and technological powerhouse, and
RSS