As Typhoon Nesat approached Taiwan on Saturday, it caused floods in Pingtung County. To make sure I could attend an international conference on Sunday, I traveled north from Tainan earlier than planned and stayed the night in New Taipei City.
With the typhoon landing on Saturday night, the wind grew.
I worried that there would be super-strong winds on Sunday and that it would be declared a holiday.
Local government leaders were doubtless worried that the typhoon would cause grievous damage and provoke public resentment, so, to avoid the traffic and safety problems that the storm might cause, all municipalities announced that work and classes would be canceled on Sunday.
However, when I got up early on Sunday morning, the sky was clear and sunny, with a mild breeze and no rain. At first I thought we must be in the eye of the storm, but after quite a long time the weather did not worsen and the sky was cloudless as far as the eye could see.
I checked for news about where Nesat was headed, only to find that it had already moved far away. Disappointingly, the international conference had already been called off.
If typhoon holidays were a bit more flexible, such disappointments could be avoided.
The money needed to invite international academics had already been spent, so if there were no worries about safety, it would make sense to go ahead and hold the event. However, the rules about typhoon holidays leave little room for maneuvering.
If the system remains unchanged, there will be no end to the problem of misjudged decisions about typhoon days off.
It would make sense for the economic functioning of society to improve the decisionmaking mechanism for typhoon holidays.
When local government leaders announce a day off because of a typhoon, they could add a supplementary notice saying, for example, that if there is no wind and rain at 7am the next morning and if people are not in danger, then different government departments can decide what to do. This would prevent mistaken or misjudged decisions about typhoon holidays.
This is by no means the first time that a misjudged decision has been made about a typhoon holiday. In the past, people have tended to blame inaccurate weather forecasts, in some cases leaving officials at the Central Weather Bureau with no option but to tender their resignations.
A more reasonable explanation would be that the weather is always changing, so that while some aspects of it can be predicted, others cannot easily be forecast with 100 percent accuracy. That is why atmospheric sciences speak of a “butterfly effect”: The idea that a butterfly’s wings disturbing the air in Beijing can affect the weather in New York.
One example of this unpredictability took place in southern Taiwan a few years ago when heavy rainfall set in early one morning, but local government leaders had not made a timely announcement that work and classes would be canceled.
The officials were immediately taken to task on Internet forums by people saying that the decision to announce a typhoon holiday had been made too late for them to act accordingly. Following that experience, decisionmaking on typhoon holidays has become increasingly “efficient.”
If announcements are made earlier, there are likely to be more instances of misjudged typhoon holidays. This is not a normal state of affairs, because besides the weather being difficult to predict 100 percent accurately, geographical factors make it even harder to make across-the-board decisions.
For example New Taipei City is far from Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung County, so the weather in these places can be different, making misjudgements even more likely.
Perhaps the public expects and depends on the government, including local leaders, to decide typhoon holidays as early and quickly as possible. This abnormal “public opinion phenomenon” is seen as normal in Taiwan, but this characteristic of our political culture is unique in the international community. For example, in the US and Japan — which are advanced countries — they only have rules for canceling lessons to ensure schoolchildren’s safety, not for canceling work.
An ideal system for making decisions about typhoon holidays should be flexible. It should allow individuals, departments and businesses to make their own decisions about whether to cancel work, depending on their particular weather conditions, rather than having local governments shoulder all the responsibility.
Local leaders are not weather experts, so more flexible systems for deciding typhoon holidays are surely the right way to go.
Yang Yung-nane is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Graduate Institute of Political Economy at National Cheng Kung University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
They did it again. For the whole world to see: an image of a Taiwan flag crushed by an industrial press, and the horrifying warning that “it’s closer than you think.” All with the seal of authenticity that only a reputable international media outlet can give. The Economist turned what looks like a pastiche of a poster for a grim horror movie into a truth everyone can digest, accept, and use to support exactly the opinion China wants you to have: It is over and done, Taiwan is doomed. Four years after inaccurately naming Taiwan the most dangerous place on
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
RSS