A new year has started, bringing new aspirations for the months ahead. As people consider their personal resolutions, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) outlined those she envisions for the nation in her New Year’s Day address on Saturday.
Taiwan, in these early days of the year, finds itself in an enviable position. Economic growth last year likely reached an 11-year high, as the nation rocketed back into the ranks of the top 20 world economies. People were able to gather in the drizzle to watch the Taipei 101 fireworks even as a new Omicron-led wave of the COVID-19 pandemic surges across the globe.
Yet obstacles will of course arise, even if the world hopes for the resumption of normalcy after two challenging years.
In Tsai’s view, the main issues facing Taiwan are inflation, property prices and the potential of another outbreak. While the first two issues received much of the president’s attention in her speech, the third was conspicuously absent. Compared with last year’s address, when Tsai praised at length the successful COVID-19 policies that allowed a “normal lifestyle” to continue, little was mentioned beyond the “several months made particularly turbulent by the pandemic.”
Where some might have been seeking an indication that Taiwan is preparing to open up, there was little hope to be found. “COVID-zero” has been and remains an attractive domestic policy, especially with local elections scheduled at the end of the year, and as the economy surges onward little deterred and Omicron uncertainties abound.
People remain more concerned about other issues, foremost among them inflation, housing and social support. Tsai was ready to assuage these fears, dedicating ample time in her speech to touting price controls, wage increases, social housing progress, rent subsidies and support for families.
While she mentioned many of these policies last year as well, they did not take as much of the focus, indicating that after two years of COVID-19 dominating the airwaves, Tsai and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) appear poised to shift their rhetoric toward other issues.
These were summarized in Tsai’s “four pillars for stable governance” this year, which apart from strengthening the social security network, also include continuing global engagement, maintaining economic momentum and safeguarding national sovereignty.
Making progress in the Taiwan-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement and joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership received specific mentions, as did deepening New Southbound Policy cooperation and European ties on the heels of a good year for bilateral engagement.
However, most international headlines focused on Tsai’s emphasis on peace in the Taiwan Strait, a slight change from last year’s accusations of Chinese destabilization and appeals for dialogue. This tonal shift is not unprecedented, considering rising concern over the past year that conflict is more likely than ever. However, she also refrained from using the term “Republic of China” in favor of “Taiwan,” which has not gone unnoticed.
Yet if anything should set the tone for this year, it is Tsai’s assertion of Taiwan’s democratic credentials at the top of her address. Praising last month’s referendum as a mark of a mature civil society, she emphasized that “when we come together and have faith in our democratic institutions, Taiwan can overcome any challenge.”
This was likely a veiled response to dangerous Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) accusations that the DPP has a totalitarian grip over Taiwan. Yet maintaining faith in the democratic process remains more important than ever, especially as local elections and constitutional reform take the stage, not to mention the real authoritarian threat looming across the Strait.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs