Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) sparked a controversy for allegedly pressuring a police officer not to give her a parking ticket.
On Tuesday last week, she and her husband parked their vehicle in a no parking zone in a lane along Guangfu S Road in the capital before going into a restaurant. The officer’s body cam footage, which was later released, showed Hsu’s husband emerging from the restaurant and spotting the officer checking their vehicle’s license plate. The police officer told him that he would be receiving a parking ticket.
Hsu joined the men, pulled down her mask and identified herself, informing the police officer that the car belonged to her.
“I thought if the driver was around, you just gave a verbal warning? This is what other police officers told me,” Hsu said. “So do you go directly to handing out parking tickets now?”
Telling the officer several times to go ahead and write up the ticket, Hsu said: “We can settle this later.”
Her husband again urged the officer to give them the ticket, saying that it would put them in a “difficult situation” not to receive one, while the officer told them that giving them the ticket would put him in “an even more difficult” situation. The officer finally let them go without issuing the ticket.
Later, someone posted the incident on the Professional Technology Temple (PTT) online bulletin board, accusing Hsu of abusing her power, while the police officer was given two reprimands for “malfeasance.”
The incident fueled furious debate among politicians and the public, where deep-blue KMT members, such as Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), left messages of support for Hsu, while members of the public lambasted her for using her position to avoid being fined.
Hsu has so far not offered a formal apology for the incident, but said in a statement: “This has severely damaged my reputation and the situation has been extremely stressful. That’s why I intend to sue.”
That an incident involving a NT$900 ticket could turn into such a controversy reveals several issues:
First, the incident could give people the impression that politicians enjoy certain privileges. This would be a huge setback for politicians, who have been trying to polish their image over the past few years. They would like the public to believe that undue influence has long been abolished, that all are equal under the law, but Hsu has shown that corruption has yet to be completely uprooted.
Second, Internet users have interpreted Hsu’s “we can settle this later” to mean that she intended to talk to the officer’s supervisor, which purportedly was the reason he was reprimanded. After all, city councilors review police department budgets. The officer’s punishment is likely to lower the morale of other officers carrying out their duties.
Third, Hsu’s response following the incident has only reinforced the KMT’s negative image. As a rising star in the party, Hsu had a fresh image, but the support from deep-blue members only attracted deep-blue voters, while her ineffective apology and apparent lack of contrition have alienated everyone else.
KMT leaders — from KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) to Taipei mayoral candidate Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) — have remained silent. The incident has shown that Taiwanese prefer fairness and justice over corruption and abuses of power.
Even for something as trivial as a parking infraction, the wiser approach would have been to just accept the ticket and go.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past
President-elect William Lai (賴清德) is to accede to the presidency this month at a time when the international order is in its greatest flux in three decades. Lai must navigate the ship of state through the choppy waters of an assertive China that is refusing to play by the rules, challenging the territorial claims of multiple nations and increasing its pressure on Taiwan. It is widely held in democratic capitals that Taiwan is important to the maintenance and survival of the liberal international order. Taiwan is strategically located, hemming China’s People’s Liberation Army inside the first island chain, preventing it from