After a disastrous month on the international stage, there are a million things to keep griping about, but in the meantime — and especially since soft power is mentioned so much in these conversations — it is worth looking at some progressive developments the nation has made in the past week that it could boast about to the international community.
Building on the strong push to reduce plastic use, the Environmental Protection Agency last week announced that Pingtung County’s Siaoliouciou Island (小琉球) is to become a demonstration site for plastic reduction and low carbon emissions.
The ecosystem-rich island sees about 1 million visitors per year, who leave behind 1,900 tonnes of garbage annually.
The program is comprehensive, with 19 action plans, including banning disposable tableware at restaurants and installing more water dispensers, while visitors are advised to bring their own toiletries.
Focusing on tourists is a great idea, as people who usually watch their plastic use might throw their usual routines out the window while on vacation. As a study by the Industrial Technology Research Institute showed, the average hotel guest produces two to three times the amount of trash they do at home.
The agency is also partnering with Chunghwa Telecom to send text messages reminding people to take their trash with them and to reduce their plastic use. This will hopefully cause people to watch their actions elsewhere in Taiwan without government interference, and if people develop the habit of doing so while visiting foreign nations, then it would create a great image of “green-traveling” Taiwanese tourists. Hopefully, this program will take off and become the norm at all domestic tourism sites.
Although it might not feel like it, the world sees Taiwan’s domestic achievements. For example, a Canadian lawmaker last month cited Taiwan among a list of examples while urging Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to ban single-use plastic products.
The promising thing is that business owners are also on board, as government encouragement and enforcement alone is not enough. Sixty hotels on Siaoliouciou have signed onto the program, which the agency have included in a list of environmentally friendly hotels. If you are planning a trip there, you might want to consider choosing one of the listed establishments to support the initiative.
In addition, a report published yesterday said that hotels are launching their own initiatives to promote green travel.
LDC Hotels & Resorts Group is offering a 10 percent discount to guests who bring their own toiletries, while Leofoo Tourism Group announced that starting next month, it would no longer provide single-use toiletries or refills for multi-night stays at its hotels unless guests specifically ask for them. One of its hotels is also to start offering discounts to guests who bring their own toiletries and reusable cups.
As always, the government and businesses can do their part, but it is ultimately up to the consumer whether they want to be lazy or do their part.
Finally, the implementation of the Patient Right to Autonomy Act (病人自主權利法) is under way, with the Ministry of Health and Welfare to complete a draft of regulations this week that are set to go into effect in January next year. The law would allow physicians to terminate the life of or withdraw life support for patients with five clinical conditions who have made the decision in advance, in what is being touted as the first of its kind in Asia.
Despite all of the bad news, Taiwanese should take a break from the negativity and allow themselves a moment of pride.
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
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) has formally announced his intention to stand for permanent party chairman. He has decided that he is the right person to steer the fledgling third force in Taiwan’s politics through the challenges it would certainly face in the post-Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) era, rather than serve in a caretaker role while the party finds a more suitable candidate. Huang is sure to secure the position. He is almost certainly not the right man for the job. Ko not only founded the party, he forged it into a one-man political force, with himself
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