Resigning to take responsibility for a problem or policy failure is seen as an admirable gesture, just as mobs baying for heads to roll or the death penalty to be carried out are often considered acceptable responses to a crisis or tragedy.
However, both merely serve as smokescreens to hide and deflect, often obstructing more constructive and effective solutions.
Then-minister of economic affairs Lee Chih-kung (李世光) resigned on Aug. 15 to take the blame for a natural gas supply disruption to a major power plant in Taoyuan that led to power outages in 17 cities and counties.
Weeks of hot weather had pushed power consumption around the nation to record highs this summer, while the collapse of an electricity transmission tower in Hualien County during a typhoon and problems at several power plants had left the nation’s electricity reserves at historic lows.
None of these were Lee’s fault, nor the fault of the ministry’s policies in the year that he had been in office. In the case of the gas disruption, it was human error compounded by system failures.
Yet a human sacrifice was needed to placate an irate public and industrial sector that have long been accustomed to cheap power and reluctant to reduce their demand for ever more air conditioning to stave off the summer heat.
Now Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) is vowing to resign if air pollution nationwide is not reduced by 20 percent by May 20.
His surprise announcement at a news conference on Thursday capped two months of increasing calls for the government to amend the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法), several policy announcements by the EPA about curbing pollution and fining polluting factories, and days of severe haze and poor air quality around the nation.
Lee Ying-yuan said the billions that the EPA has invested in policies aimed at reducing pollution have led to a gradual improvement in the situation, but if the number of days when the air quality index reaches unhealthy levels does not drop by 20 percent, he would step down to take responsibility.
It was a powerful moment of political theater, but basically pointless.
Efforts to combat air pollution in Taiwan over the past two decades have led to major improvements in air quality — as anyone who can remember summers in Taipei in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when some days were so smoggy that Yangmingshan and other mountains around the city were hidden from view, while Kaohsiung was wrapped in an industrial haze most days of the year.
However, efforts to further curb pollution have been hampered by a confluence of factors: the growing reliance on coal-fired power plants amid efforts to shutter the nation’s nuclear power industry, a reluctance to tackle pollution by large-scale manufacturers for fear of hurting economic development, an ever-increasing number of vehicles on the road, and the weather — both in the form of low-pressure vortexes that trap bad air above the big cities, and in wind patterns that blow China’s heavily polluted air over this nation.
The conflicting imperatives of Cabinet ministries have contributed to the mess: The EPA is under orders to cut pollution and protect the environment, while the Ministry of Economic Affairs is supposed to protect and promote the manufacturing sector and the nation’s development.
This Gordian knot was clearly shown on Thursday, for even as Lee Ying-yuan was making his resignation vow, Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) was warning that anti-pollution policies needed to be carefully evaluated in terms of how they might hamper Taiwan Power Co’s ability to supply electricity.
Stable electricity supplies, clean air, a protected environment, economic growth: These should not be “either or” options.
What is needed is hard work, realistic goals, a willingness to make and accept tough choices, and the combined efforts of the government, business and the general public — not grandiose resignations.
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
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS