Self-styled citizen reporter Hung Su-chu (洪素珠), who last week made discriminatory remarks against an elderly waishengren (外省人, Mainlander) — a term referring to people who fled to Taiwan with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 1949 — has been criticized by all sectors of society.
Following the incident, KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) instructed her party’s legislative caucus to introduce a bill to the Legislative Yuan that would ban ethnic discrimination.
Hung’s move has been welcomed by the Presidential Office, which says it is glad to see that the KMT is willing to deal directly with ethnic equality and similar issues.
It also said that “Chairwoman Hung and the KMT together support the introduction of transitional justice so that liberty, democracy, fairness and human rights can be thoroughly implemented in Taiwan.”
“As for the legal bill that Chairwoman Hung wants to introduce, the KMT is welcome to promptly propose concrete content for all sectors [of society] to discuss,” it added.
It seems legislation banning ethnic discrimination is about to be proposed and passed in short order.
However, does Taiwan not already have laws dealing with this issue?
The answer is: It does.
Article 62 of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) states: “Any person shall not discriminate against people residing in the Taiwan Area on the basis of nationality, race, color, class and place of birth. Any person whose rights are trespassed due to the discrimination mentioned in the preceding paragraph can file a complaint to the competent authorities on the basis of the situations of the trespass, unless the matter is regulated by other laws otherwise. The competent authorities shall enact regulations that govern items, requirements for filing a complaint mentioned in the preceding paragraph, complaint procedures and the composition of a review committee.”
Article 81 of the same law states: “When the competent authority receives a complaint set forth in Article 62 and believes that the matters violate such a provision, it shall notify the person who violates the law to take necessary corrective action within the time prescribed in the order. If after the lapse of such period, the person still does not take necessary corrective action, he/she/it shall be fined between NT$5,000 and NT$30,000.”
Based on Article 62, the Ministry of the Interior on June 4, 2008, promulgated Regulation for Petitions against Discrimination against People Residing in the Taiwan Area (居住臺灣地區之人民受歧視申訴辦法).
To effectively handle such petitions, the ministry also issued main points for the establishment of a petition review panel.
The panel has held at least a dozen meetings and perhaps thanks to my position as chairman of the Taipei Pearl S. Buck Foundation, I have been invited to serve as a member of the panel. In that capacity, I have participated in the handling of at least two cases dealing with potential discrimination involving immigrants.
In addition to current criminal legislation, it seems that there is already legislation in place to deal with cases of insults against veterans without writing a law to ban ethnic discrimination.
As to whether the text of Article 62 of the Immigration Act is sufficiently comprehensive or if it needs to be reviewed, that is an issue that it is open to further discussion.
Yu Ying-fu is the chairman of the Taipei Pearl S. Buck Foundation.
Translated by Perry Svensson
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS