The reason the corruption case involving former Taoyuan County deputy commissioner Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) has caused such alarm is that Yeh was also for a long period in charge of the Construction and Planning Administration. In this position, he passed countless urban planning and renewal projects, as well as land zoning changes for non-urban areas, many of which would have involved forced land expropriation.
Past land expropriation appeals have been mere formalities, mostly for show, so if the Urban Planning Commission has passed a motion, the subsequent land expropriation is practically guaranteed. A case in point is the verdict handed down by the Greater Taichung High Administrative Court on the Dapu Borough (大埔) demolitions in Miaoli County, the appeals for which were cursory at best, taking on average little more than five minutes each to go through.
It has been many years since martial law was lifted, yet the government has not changed in terms of its excessive use of land expropriation. If anything, things have become worse in the past few years. For example, in the period up until late December 2012, the government completed the expropriation of 95 zones, involving about 7,672 hectares.
Since then, zone expropriations have either already been completed or are planned for a considerable amount of land. This includes 1,168 hectares for the Danhai New Town phase-two project, 126 hectares for Taipei Harbor Bali District (八里), 104 hectares in Fuzhou in Banciao District (板橋) and 236 hectares for Station A7 in Linkou District (林口), all in New Taipei City; 3,316 hectares for the “aerotropolis” in Taoyuan County, including 500 hectares to build an overhead track in the county’s Jhongli City; 447 hectares for the Puyu project and 440 hectares in Erchong Pu, both in Hsinchu County; 154 hectares in Dapu; 110 hectares in Cianjhu Borough (前竹), 30 hectares in Jioude Village’s Wurih Township (烏日), 196 hectares in Taiping District (太平) and 251 hectares for the Shueinan Airport, all in Greater Taichung; 184 hectares for the special district for Taiwan High Speed Rail’s Changhua Station in Tianjhong Township (田中) in Changhua County; 83 hectares for the Yongkang Artillery School in Greater Tainan; and 105 hectares in Yilan County’s Wushi Harbor.
The above list is not exhaustive, it includes just those of which I am aware and amounts to 7,450 hectares of expropriated zones. The land taken in that short period is almost equal to the total of all the expropriations that preceded them. Neither does it include the equally shocking scale, which has not been calculated, of other projects, such as the third and fourth phases of the Central Taiwan Science Park expansion project, the relocation underground and to the east of a segment of railway tracks in Greater Tainan and the Changnan Industrial Park near Siluo Bridge. It comes as no surprise that many people have found themselves the victims of forced land expropriation on more than one occasion.
The above cases were all decided in the urban planning preparatory stages, after which these projects quickly morph into orgies of deal-making and bribe-taking between politics and business, various factions and individual government officials. In these circumstances, how can land expropriation be conducted in a legitimate manner?
Government officials are wining and dining and lining their own pockets and it is all done at the expense of the public. The government must put all land expropriation plans on hold and promptly set up a democratic procedure by which citizens can participate in urban planning and land expropriation cases.
Hsu Shih-jung is a professor in National Chengchi University’s land economics department.
Translated by Paul Cooper
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS