On the final day of the past legislative session, the legislature finally passed four maritime-related bills. The legislation covered the establishment and governance of a maritime commission, a maritime conservation administration and a national maritime research institute as part of the commission, as well as placing the Coast Guard Administration under the management of the commission.
The legislation is a significant step toward unifying the management of Taiwan’s diverse and complex maritime affairs. However, it would be a mistake to believe that Taiwan is making great strides toward becoming a true maritime nation — and the public must pay close attention to the next stage of the process.
Oceans perform a variety of functions, including climate regulation and oxygen production. Oceans are also habitats for marine life that provide a bountiful supply of food and medicines.
The annual economic output of the world’s oceans has reached US$2 trillion. With land-based resources being depleted daily, there has been a global surge toward “ocean enclosure” activities and land reclamation projects that seek to expand the exclusive maritime territory of countries. This has led to unending conflict, with the South China Sea disputes being an obvious example, the importance of which cannot be underestimated.
The WWF estimates the value of the global maritime economy to be about US$2.5 trillion and that on average it grows by 11 percent each year. It predicted that by 2020 the annual value of the world’s maritime economy would exceed US$3 trillion. Furthermore, 61 percent of current global economic output is closely connected to seas, oceans and coastal areas.
Developed economies have consequently been focusing development of the maritime economy according to their own unique characteristics. For example, the Japanese government has focused on development of four main areas: ports and commercial shipping; coastal tourism; fisheries; and offshore oil, which account for 70 percent of the economic output of Japan’s maritime industry.
The US’ maritime economy is valued at US$258 billion, the equivalent of about 4.4 percent of its GDP, which surpasses its agricultural sector. In the US, development is focused on mineral extraction, tourism and sea-based transport.
China in recent years has been actively expanding its maritime economy, which in 2013 was valued at over 5.4 trillion yuan (US$869.8 billion), or 10 percent of its GDP.
What has Taiwan been doing regarding the development of its own maritime economy? Taiwan lacks a comprehensive and sustained set of basic information on its maritime economy, including information on the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of the fishing industry and its associated net worth.
The nation has also failed to establish a maritime economy production chain and industry database, which could be used for academic study and policy reference. In addition, the government has yet to identify any specific areas of the maritime industry for development.
Taiwan has not even managed to integrate the most important scientific research: The government has not even stated which organization is to be responsible for taking the lead in this area. Furthermore, responsibility for the areas of fisheries conservation and fisheries subsidies is spread across different governmental departments and is not properly integrated.
Taiwan is rich in resources and as such is advantageously placed to develop its maritime industry, yet, most Taiwanese are unfamiliar with the sea and have displayed a total lack of ambition in exploiting the treasures of the ocean.
The establishment of an organization directly responsible for the maritime industry has been delayed repeatedly, and it still is not capable of full and effective integration. For example, the Fisheries Agency and the Fisheries Research Institute are both managed by the Council of Agriculture, while Taiwan’s marine research vessel is managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The council established the new Agricultural Technology Research Institute, adding to existing needless redundancy between agencies.
Every time an election comes around, each candidate goes out of his or her way to stress how much importance they place on maritime affairs, even coming up with stirring slogans such as “maritime nation,” or “maritime national rejuvenation,” while making promises to look at the allocation of land rights.
However, experience has shown that this is nothing more than a strategy to win over more votes, targeted at specific groups of the electorate. No specific planning is carried out and consequently, nothing is achieved. This means that, to this day, Taiwan is still unable to call itself a maritime nation.
If those in power do not change focus thoroughly, even the passage of the four maritime bills might not allow Taiwan to recast itself overnight into a maritime nation.
Lee Wu-chung is a professor of agricultural economics and a former director of the Yunlin County Department of Agriculture.
Translated by Edward Jones
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of nuclear reactors from 40 to 60 years, thereby providing a legal basis for the extension or reactivation of nuclear power plants. On May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators used their numerical advantage to pass the TPP caucus’ proposal for a public referendum that would determine whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should resume operations, provided it is deemed safe by the authorities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) has
RSS