Taiwanese professional baseball has been doing badly lately after going through a series of scandals in recent years. However, the wonderful performance Taiwan’s team put in during the World Baseball Classic group qualifiers in Greater Taichung last week not only gave rise to baseball fever, it also signals that baseball is making a comeback.
However, one thing that deserves closer attention is the question of whether Taiwan’s baseball environment can resist the bad influence of match-fixing and gambling. If we want to safeguard players from such temptations, good pay is a necessity.
Starting in the 2010 season, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) adopted a free-agent system. After six years with local teams, players are allowed to move abroad and play for foreign teams, and after nine years they can become free agents, allowing them to sign with any national or foreign team to secure better pay.
This puts an end to the previous unfair system whereby clubs viewed players as their property and players had to serve a club throughout their playing career.
As a result of this change, more players are securing multi-year contracts, and more Taiwanese players based overseas are returning to play in Taiwan. If we add to this that US Major League Baseball (MLB) superstar Manny Ramirez is considering joining the CPBL, then pay is likely to increase.
The nine-year minimum period before a CPBL player can become a free agent follows Japan’s system. Compared with other professions, a baseball career is short. Statistics on Japanese baseball players show that an average playing career is nine years. This means that when most players become free agents, they are already nearing the end of their careers.
As Taiwan only has four teams and a small market, it is evident that this free-agent system is of limited benefit. Since players often lack personal representation, it is important to provide them strong backup to allows them to negotiate with clubs on an equal footing.
Players’ unions have the greatest potential of providing support for players. However, Taiwanese professional baseball is small in scale, as is the number of players, so there is no way players’ unions can become a mechanism capable of standing up to the clubs.
If we factor in resistance from the clubs, it is clear that players’ unions will have a hard time exerting any influence, and that equality between players and teams will be a hard thing to bring about.
The arbitration system is another important support system for players, but this also faces problems. When the CPBL was established, an arbitration committee was put in place to handle disputes and the CPBL charter states that it must be objective and neutral. The problem is that this arbitration mechanism was established under the authority of the league, and this is a serious cause for concern.
In addition, the appointment of the arbitration committee differs from that of US Major League Baseball, where judicial and labor bodies nominate candidates that are voted for by the players’ union and team owners. The US system also provides complementary measures such as arbitration hearings.
There are thus many questions over the neutrality of the arbitration process in Taiwan, and this is an area in desperate need of reform.
However, the effects of raising legal awareness among players will remain limited if players cannot control themselves. Strengthening discipline and a sense of honor among players is the only way to ensure players can resist all forms of temptation and external interference.
Wu Ching-chin is an assistant professor in the Department of Financial and Economic Law at Aletheia University.
Translated by Drew Cameron
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS