In elections in democracies, the public is king and any candidate vying for public office is tested over and over again, and if they pass, they gain support. That is the natural way of things. However, when seven big business organizations arranged a forum to discuss Taiwan’s economic development and invited the three presidential candidates to participate, labor rights groups protested outside the venue and criticized the candidates for attending a “slave interview.” The clash clearly showed that the nation is divided into separate worlds.
A divided nation is nothing new, and it is a long-term trend brought on by globalization. However, over the past eight years, the situation has become increasingly intensified in Taiwan.
For example, at the forum, the main themes set for the candidates by the organizers were regional economy, cross-strait relations, energy and innovation — these are all issues related to Taiwan’s economic development, which is an issue that it is far better to discuss than to ignore, so why did the forum provoke such criticism?
According to the labor rights groups, they held a national affairs meeting for workers last month, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was the only party not to send a representative, yet when the business groups wanted an “interview,” every party suddenly found the time to attend.
If one agrees that this is not an excessive complaint, then the emotions are understandable.
The easiest way to explain how the nation has gotten into this situation is “structural problems,” which is not wrong, and it also seems to be something that faces the least pressure to be resolved.
However, when the next president takes over this mess, he or she is going to have to take the structure apart, piece by piece, and if that preparation is lacking, their candidacy is meaningless. To stop the structure from toppling over, it is going to be necessary to look at how it is put together in the first place and then carefully fix that with a nip here and a tuck there.
The reason that the wealth gap, class and generational problems have all exploded is that one mistaken policy has been piled atop another for too long. For almost eight years, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been sitting around doing nothing, and instead of solving problems, he has compounded them. This is the public consensus and there is no need to further belabor the issue.
Among the more deep-rooted reasons for these problems, there is one crucial issue that has received less attention, but needs to be singled out: educational reforms are in jeopardy.
Not only does this have a direct impact on the ability of the economically disadvantaged and other disadvantaged groups and regions to rely on education to improve their situations, it increases the burden of survival on the disadvantaged as the poor get poorer and generational poverty becomes hereditary.
When hope of improving the situation evaporates, it is easy to see that demands are likely to become more radical.
Does the educational system have an inappropriate influence on the national economy? This is an ironclad fact. Go back to 1994 and the 410 Educational Reform Alliance and its call for the establishment of more high schools and universities, and to 1996 when it was implemented by the Cabinet’s Educational Reform Evaluation Committee.
This is reflected in several indicators and, according to studies conducted by National Chengchi University professor of education Prudence Chou (周祝瑛), the number of schools exploded from 27 universities —14 public and 13 private — and 77 junior colleges in 1984 to 148 universities — 51 public and 97 private — and 15 junior colleges in 2007. The number of university students also increased from more than 173,000 in 1984 to 1.12 million in 2007.
The expansion of the university system had a negative impact on technical and vocational schools, while at the same time the inflation of expectations of university students meant that they became unwilling to accept mid-level positions. This resulted in a lack of manpower, as many university graduates lacked the skills to find a job and ended up unemployed.
According to Ministry of Education data, almost two-thirds of students from disadvantaged households entering vocational high-schools attend private schools. High tuition fees put them in debt even before they enter the job market, and their studies do not necessarily lead to a job upon graduation, which only aggravates the vicious circle.
Some European countries place such importance on technical and vocational education, both big countries such as Germany and small ones such as Switzerland, that it becomes a source of national strength and industrial development.
In 2008, 67 percent of Taiwan’s 20-year-olds received higher education, compared with Germany’s 21 percent and 18 percent in Switzerland. By 2013, IMF data shows that GDP per capita was US$20,930 in Taiwan, US$44,999 in Germany and US$81,323 in Switzerland. These statistics explain the blind spot that Taiwan has suffered from for so many years.
The educational reform problem has not been created by any one person, but by society as a collective. However, when the reason is clear, the government must come up with a remedy and correct the situation.
The inept Ma administration has only provided piecemeal, mistaken solutions: When they saw that schools had problems finding students, they asked Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to allow greater numbers of students to study in Taiwan. What Taiwan, a place full of vitality, needs is to free itself is a formalistic view of educational background, but that is being completely ignored by the government.
Perhaps the problem is that the academic achievements of many politicians are very different from their academic credentials.
All presidential candidates should learn from this and focus on correcting structural problems and remove the barriers between the two worlds in Taiwan.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
On Sunday, 13 new urgent care centers (UCC) officially began operations across the six special municipalities. The purpose of the centers — which are open from 8am to midnight on Sundays and national holidays — is to reduce congestion in hospital emergency rooms, especially during the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year. It remains to be seen how effective these centers would be. For one, it is difficult for people to judge for themselves whether their condition warrants visiting a major hospital or a UCC — long-term public education and health promotions are necessary. Second, many emergency departments acknowledge
US President Donald Trump’s seemingly throwaway “Taiwan is Taiwan” statement has been appearing in headlines all over the media. Although it appears to have been made in passing, the comment nevertheless reveals something about Trump’s views and his understanding of Taiwan’s situation. In line with the Taiwan Relations Act, the US and Taiwan enjoy unofficial, but close economic, cultural and national defense ties. They lack official diplomatic relations, but maintain a partnership based on shared democratic values and strategic alignment. Excluding China, Taiwan maintains a level of diplomatic relations, official or otherwise, with many nations worldwide. It can be said that
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
RSS