President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文)administration has been in office for two years, marking the halfway point of her four-year term. This is a good point at which to review her government’s preliminary achievements.
Although two years are not long enough to deliver spectacular results, they are long enough to see whether the government’s goals are really achievable, and whether its directions can meet the nation’s needs and live up to public expectations.
Having finished the first half of its term, the government can no longer claim to be an administrative novice and use that as an excuse for ineffective implementation of its policies.
Only by subjecting its methods of governance and their effectiveness to a more rigorous review will it be possible to rectify and adjust inappropriate policies and measures and gradually get them closer to perfection.
Two years in office should be enough for this administration to stop stumbling and achieve a steadier pace. By this stage, the government should be able to examine the nation’s political and economic environment, judge whether it has got bogged down in infighting, and work out what needs to be improved or changed during the rest of Tsai’s term.
The Tsai administration’s approval ratings have been in a prolonged slump ever since she came into office, showing that most people are not very confident about her ability to lead and govern the nation.
Although Taiwan’s last few presidents have all experienced such slumps in their approval ratings, if nothing they do can assuage the public’s discontent and raise their approval ratings, it clearly sounds the alarm bells and show that there are hidden worries about the nation’s governance.
The Tsai administration’s orientation is highly idealistic, but its slow and steady pace, lacking a strong leadership style, tends to reinforce the preconception that Tsai is excessively careful and meticulous.
Tsai’s election put the government back in the hands of the Democratic Progressive Party.
On the domestic front, the country suffers from a number of chronic ailments, such as lack of investment and weak domestic demand, which can only be cured through reforms.
Externally, it faces international geopolitical conflicts, unbalanced economic growth between different regions and the difficult question of how to wind up monetary-easing policies. Only by introducing vigorous reforms can the government hope to get out of these predicaments.
This means that the nation’s leaders must propose a comprehensive governance blueprint, and a clear and feasible road map for reform, while being seen to have a tenacious leadership style and staying resilient under pressure.
These are precisely the points on which Tsai’s delicate, gentle and attentive style of government over the past two years has been found lacking, and it is the main reason why her administration has become entangled in numerous issues.
To be fair, although Tsai’s public approval ratings are rather low and her personality does not stand out much, her government has over the past two years delivered quite a good scorecard that could provide a firm foundation for Taiwan’s economy to recover and thrive.
Its key reforms include implementing pension reforms and transitional justice, handling the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) ill-gotten assets and cutting taxes. It is also preparing amendments to the Company Act (公司法), which will soon be completed.
The government has done even better with respect to economic growth. GDP last year expanded 2.86 percent — the highest in the past three years. Exports grew 13.22 percent — the highest in seven years. Unemployment sank to 3.76 percent — the lowest in 17 years, while employees’ regular earnings increased 1.82 percent — the highest rise in 17 years.
Moreover, although the TAIEX briefly surged past 10,000 points several times in the past, this time it has stayed above that figure for almost a year, setting a new record, and it might become the normal state of affairs. Notably, during the two years of Tsai’s administration, the TAIEX has risen 34 percent, with shareholders on average making a profit of NT$500,000.
With such impressive figures, it would be fair to say that the economy has escaped from the difficulties it was in during the last part of the presidency of Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), where it was struggling to maintain 1 percent annual growth.
The strength or weakness of the economy has a big influence on whether the public supports the government or opposes it. One would think that the big improvements in economic indices would bring vistas of prosperity, but many ordinary people have not felt the benefits, as a result of which objective statistics are often dismissed as political fraud.
This paradoxical situation arises because, as globalization links countries and economies ever more closely together, production and supply chains are distributed globally out of cost considerations. This forces workers around the world to compete with each other on the same playing field, weakening the impetus for growth in wages.
Another aspect is the high rates of return on capital investment and high technology, which are far out of proportion with workers’ wages, forming a sharp contrast between different economic classes. However, you can get impressive numbers if you only consider the average figures. This is another reason why a lot of people are unimpressed or even angry about the average income figure announced by the government.
For example, last year, workers’ average regular monthly income was NT$37,703. However, about 3,051,000 of those employees — or about 34 percent of the nation’s workforce — make less than NT$30,000 per month and nearly 400,000 do not even get NT$20,000. And so, for these groups, official data showing an average monthly salary approaching NT$40,000 are just a numbers game that the government is using to fool the public.
All in all, over the past two years the Tsai administration has chosen to follow a moderate and steady path, seeking communication and compromise, while pushing for many reforms. Given all the obstacles, its successes are remarkable. However, there is no sign of a reduction in the number of people who are dissatisfied.
To close the gap between its achievements and approval rating, the government must direct its efforts toward increasing real income and create a comprehensive welfare system to provide care for the less well-off. This would make more people feel that they are sharing in these improvements and increase their approval of the government.
There have been clear improvements thanks to the reforms and the economic performance over the past two years, but the government must not be complacent. If it wants to win public recognition and approval, it should constantly think of ways to improve the lives of those who earn below-average salaries and show concern for their life situation.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming and Julian Clegg
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
RSS