Taiwan played a great game when the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading around the world early last year, but it dropped the ball in the ninth inning.
During the six weeks since a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert was implemented in the middle of May, the most worrisome sources of cluster infections have been hospitals, dormitories of migrants workers at technology factories and stallholders at traditional markets.
Markets are a weak point because people tend to visit them weekly, bringing them into contact with crowds of people. It is also difficult to sterilize food sold in markets, as is routinely done with the equipment in hospitals and clinics.
Moreover, markets mostly rely on cash transactions, increasing the risks of infection.
To trace the movements of those who later test positive for COVID-19, city and county governments have implemented a contact registration system in most public places, including supermarkets and traditional markets. To reduce physical contact and improve tracking efficiency, they have replaced paper registers with QR code scanning that sends a user’s information via a text message.
The National Communications Commission budgeted NT$300 million (approx. US$10.7 million) for the system, with telecoms providing the text message service for free.
However, even during the current serious outbreak, there is puzzlingly no significant trend to move from cash to electronic transactions. Even in Taipei and New Taipei City, other than convenience stores and supermarkets, most vendors and small shops only take cash and do not accept any form of electronic payment.
Last year, I submitted several letters and articles to the media, in which I said that cash is hard to sterilize, so we should seize this opportunity to popularize mobile payment. Most people have by now realized that cash is like a petri dish for transmitting bacteria and viruses. There have been media reports about vendors and other people spraying cash with alcohol, heating it in an oven or disinfecting it with ultraviolet light, but few people have tried these methods, and even if they work, they are not cost-effective.
As for why small traders do not use electronic payment, the main reasons are likely that elderly people would find it difficult, and that payment processing fees would be incurred.
In many of the cases in which market vendors have caught COVID-19 from an unknown source, shoppers and vendors alike wonder why they were infected despite wearing masks. The loophole in these cases may well be the use of cash.
Technology acceptance models indicate that to make the public more willing to use a new technology, besides making users aware of its usefulness and convenience, environmental factors must also be taken into account. If elderly people can learn how to use text messages under the government’s disease prevention directives, surely they can also learn how to use electronic payment.
If the government can provide strong support and public information at this crucial time, and coordinate with electronic payment service providers to reduce or suspend their processing fees, it would probably make stallholders and other small businesses more willing to use the technology.
Judging by the way in which mobile payment utilities have developed in the past, if electronic payment providers or the government were to provide incentives and subsidies, it would create an even greater incentive and, hopefully, close this loophole in disease prevention.
Lei Lih-wei is an associate professor at Chihlee University of Technology.
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
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
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
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of