Why are the heads of Taiwan’s central and local governments so fixated on promoting the tourism industry, as if there were no other sectors worth promoting?
After former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was inaugurated on May 20, 2008, he proceeded to lift restrictions on exchanges between Taiwan and China, opening Taiwan’s doors to Chinese tourists. Scenic areas soon filled up with Chinese visitors, as did attractions like Taipei 101.
The mayors and commissioners of Taiwan’s 22 municipalities and counties followed suit by adopting policies and offering incentives designed to attract tourists from China. Since then, almost all heads of local governments have been prioritizing the tourism sector in their policies.
This trend is exemplified by newly recalled Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜). Economic policies proposed during his 2018 election campaign included building a Ferris wheel, a horse racing track and a theme park, developing medical tourism and attracting more visitors to places such as Cijin Island (旗津島) and the Love River (愛河).
Setting aside the question of how far he got with implementing these policies, remarkably more than half of his policy proposals dealt with tourism.
It is similar all over Taiwan. Almost every municipal mayor and county commissioner, including the heads of Tainan, Miaoli, Pingtung, Taichung and Hualien, have made tourism their top concern.
However, things took a turn for the worse at the beginning of the year when COVID-19 spread in Wuhan, China. Although Taiwan has done a good job controlling the virus, places and businesses all over the nation that depend on tourism, including night markets, tour bus operators, travel agents and hotels, have been hit hard by travel restrictions.
COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of the tourism industry by turning it from hero to zero almost overnight.
Taiwan has plenty of dynamic business sectors that have never been similarly favored by government authorities.
Politicians seem to have a very shallow understanding of business and industry. Taiwan’s stock market features businesses in the fields of finance, electronics, chemicals, information, communications, biomedicine, precision machinery, food, aerospace, renewable energy and construction.
Many of those businesses have managed to keep growing even during the COVID-19 pandemic, but none of them have received the attention they deserve. Instead, the central and local governments have not stopped blindly worshiping the tourism sector as their policy achievement savior.
On May 28, China’s National People’s Congress approved a plan to implement national security legislation in Hong Kong. This decision is likely to be a wake-up call for foreign-invested businesses in China to pack up and move to friendlier places.
This is the best opportunity for Taiwan in decades, and central and local governments should think about how to adjust their policies accordingly.
The nation should develop scientific and technological industries that suit the geographical characteristics of each region and build infrastructure to support them. Policy incentives could be offered to attract businesses to those areas, along with human resources, investment and technology.
This is the direction in which politicians and government officials should be thinking.
Joly Lin is vice chairman of Mennonite Christian Hospital and vice president of a company.
Translated by Julian Clegg
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
Taiwan ranks second globally in terms of share of population with a higher-education degree, with about 60 percent of Taiwanese holding a post-secondary or graduate degree, a survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed. The findings are consistent with Ministry of the Interior data, which showed that as of the end of last year, 10.602 million Taiwanese had completed post-secondary education or higher. Among them, the number of women with graduate degrees was 786,000, an increase of 48.1 percent over the past decade and a faster rate of growth than among men. A highly educated population brings clear advantages.
In the opening remarks of her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) framed her visit as a historic occasion. In his own remarks, Xi had also emphasized the history of the relationship between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Where they differed was that Cheng’s account, while flawed by its omissions, at least partially corresponded to reality. The meeting was certainly historic, albeit not in the way that Cheng and Xi were signaling, and not from the perspective
RSS