On Feb. 11, Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中), deputy chairman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council, flew into Taiwan for a 10-day visit to southern areas. Zheng’s visit came less than a month after Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections, which were held on Jan. 14. Zheng used the trip to visit Taiwanese fishermen and fish farmers and hear their opinions first hand.
In the meantime, Taiwan’s governing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been busy appointing new Cabinet ministers and other officials, while members and supporters of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) keep arguing about why they lost the presidential election. Compared with the KMT and DPP, China’s quick and efficient moves are quite impressive.
Zheng’s visit was a bit different to some visits made by Chinese officials in the past. Accompanied by eight Chinese agricultural and fishery experts, Zheng did an intensive tour of farming and fishing villages in southern Taiwan, talking to farmers and fishermen and finding out what they really think.
In March last year, China signed a deal to buy NT$135 million (US$4.57 million) worth of milkfish from Greater Tainan’s Syuejia (學甲) District. China went out of its way to publicize the agreement, but it had no perceptible effect on the pro-independence parties’ vote count in last month’s elections. No doubt Zheng and his group want to find out why that happened, so that they can adjust their policies for dealing with Taiwan accordingly.
Although President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) beat his main challenger, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), by a considerable margin of nearly 800,000 votes, his support lagged far behind Tsai’s in many farming and fishing towns and villages. After investigating the reasons for Ma’s defeat in Greater Tainan and Pingtung, the KMT said that the government had invested a lot of resources in southern counties and cities, and that the reason why this investment was not reflected in the vote was that it had not been promptly and effectively publicized.
However, this explanation does not ring true. In fact, in the run-up to the elections, government departments and the KMT churned out so much information about the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement and the benefits they say it has brought to the farming and fishing sectors that voters could hardly have missed it.
The government and KMT came up with plenty of impressive figures, such as the threefold increase in the export volume of groupers and how this adds up to a sixfold increase in the export value of the fish. One would think that good news like this would win the KMT government a lot of support from farmers and fishermen in southern Taiwan, but it didn’t work out that way.
There are a few issues that explain why these gains did not translate into voter support.
First, those who have really benefited from growing exports of fish are a small number of businesses and breeders, not the great majority of fish farmers.
Second, although Taiwan has gained concessions from China in the form of reduced import duties, producers have not got their share of the benefits.
Third, the big fanfare China made about how much money it was spending to buy milkfish from Taiwan offended Taiwanese people’s sense of dignity.
Fourth, while milkfish is one of the main kinds of fish farmed in Taiwan, producers have for a long time faced problems such as the middlemen’s control of marketing and difficulty in developing overseas sales, as well as the fact that milkfish is rather bony, but government authorities have not paid much attention to these problems or offered much assistance.
Even when China’s direct purchase agreements with producers were widely reported in Taiwan’s media and observers made critical comparisons with the Taiwanese government’s performance, the Taiwanese authorities still did not take any action to alleviate fish producers’ hardship. These problems all merit serious attention from officials and politicians.
Farmers and fishermen have long been plagued by the problem of imbalance between production and sales. Besides, farming and fishing villages face a lot of social problems that the government should take seriously, like children being left in the care of their grandparents, a big gap between urban and rural incomes and living standards, marriages to immigrant spouses, poor access to medical and educational resources and so on. It is not enough for politicians to make big promises to rural areas when elections are approaching, such as pledging to buy farm produce at favorable prices and increase allowances and subsidies, as a means of showing how much they care about farmers and fishermen.
There is a serious outflow of young working people from fishing villages these days. People who make their living from the sea have to work on the open sea year after year. Most fishing families are not wealthy and face uncertainty in their lives.
This makes it hard for fishermen to find Taiwanese partners who can adapt to life in fishing villages, so those who want to raise a family often turn to marriage brokers to arrange a match with an overseas partner.
It has become commonplace for people in coastal farming and fishing villages to marry foreigners. Because of language barriers and differences in culture and lifestyle, many overseas spouses are not able to provide a suitable home education for the next generation, and these “new Taiwanese children” tend to be at a disadvantage when they go to school. Despite having settled in Taiwan, foreign spouses find that they are always seen as “them” and not “us,” and this gives rise to various social problems.
Another problem is the widespread lack of medical resources, as a result of which people living in outlying farming and fishing villages do not have access to the same quality of healthcare that city dwellers enjoy and it is hard for them to improve their situation.
Addressing all these worrying problems in farming and fishing villages calls for greater investment of personnel and resources. Unfortunately, the government has never been seen to care a great deal about them or to help out in a tangible way. Prior to elections the authorities appear very enthusiastic, but once the voting is over they lose interest altogether. With that kind of attitude, how can politicians expect to get farmers and fishermen on their side?
“Deep cultivation” is the one and only way of fostering popular support. Chinese officials have demonstrated a proactive attitude and flexible methods in their strategic dealings with Taiwan, while our government is stuck in a formalistic mindset where high official rank and academic learning are the things that count.
Observing these contrasting approaches, one cannot help but feel anxious about Taiwan’s future. The government should set about developing southern Taiwan in accordance with the conditions of each locality.
The right policies will allow agriculture to develop in step with industry and commerce, forming a three-horse team that can take southern Taiwan’s economy forward into a prosperous future.
Du Yu is chief executive officer of the Chen-Li Task Force for Agricultural Reform.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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