Nature has not been kind to Taiwan and Japan this month. Japan has suffered calamitous flooding and the BBC asked how 200 people could have died in a country with such a great reputation for disaster prevention, despite prior warnings.
Meanwhile, as Typhoon Maria swept past northern Taiwan, politicians and government departments were mainly concerned about how their response would play out in the Nov. 24 local elections, which was followed by public bickering, the likes of which we have seen so often before.
Let us remember what happened when Typhoon Nari battered Taiwan in September 2001, turning the Taipei MRT tunnels into sewers and nearly overflowing the flood barriers along the Tamsui River and its tributaries that are supposed to be effective for at least 100 years. Some buses could not run because of bridge closures.
In the 17 years that have passed since then, Taiwan has seen governments come and go. Tens of billions of New Taiwan dollars have been spent on flood control projects, but with much less heavy rain than Japan has experienced lately, they all turn to mush.
It only takes a short burst of heavy rain for water to build up on road surfaces, making them difficult to drive on. The basic drainage systems do not work properly even on ordinary weather days, but all officials can do is to keep parroting banalities like how extreme weather has become the normal state of affairs.
This time around, swarms of people started their typhoon holidays an hour early, causing traffic snarl-ups in Taipei and New Taipei City and making commuters look more like refugees.
You have to wonder what would happen in the event of a nuclear accident. Could people really be evacuated as they are in scripted drills?
A friend from Osaka, Japan, who often does volunteer work in Taiwan told me that the idea of “typhoon holidays” seems very odd from a Japanese perspective.
He said that when something like a typhoon happens in Japan, civil servants all have to go to work and perform their duty of safeguarding people’s lives and property. At the very least, they have to inspect their workplaces, fix any damage and clean up any mess.
However, administrative reform has become a stale joke in Taiwan. When a natural disaster happens, how often does the administrative system operate at least normally enough for people to be able to contact the authorities?
There is also the factor of national attitudes about self-discipline and keeping order. When floods like those caused by Typhoon Morakot in 2009 happen again, or if there is another typhoon as powerful as Nari, will the government be able to keep the damage to a minimum?
Politicians only know how to use typhoon holidays to bash their opponents and grab votes, and a large percentage of the public think they have won a prize when they get a typhoon holiday.
Then there are the vegetable profiteers and resellers who make a fast buck out of bad weather, and civil servants who take the chance to sneak away from their post.
As for the media, instead of pondering whether Taiwan can effectively protect against natural disasters and climate change, they always get hung up on the silly question of who got the issue of typhoon holidays right or wrong.
When the next natural disaster comes around, they are likely to argue about it again. It is a national pastime that people never tire of, but it is not a healthy one.
Chang Hsun-ching is a writer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017