The 11th Legislative Yuan on Wednesday ended its first session, passing new laws against fraud, including amendments to provisions of the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法). The new laws were passed quickly after three readings and without much debate.
The Executive Yuan had passed the draft laws in May and sent them to the Legislative Yuan for review. The Legislative Yuan passed the bills after three readings in just two months, demonstrating a high level of consensus on the issue and marking a new milestone for regulations against fraud in Taiwan.
However, this also highlights how dissatisfied Taiwanese are with widespread fraud activities. How will the new laws be implemented? How can fraud activities be effectively managed and eliminated in this era of transnational social platforms?
It is up to ministries to formulate sub-laws and develop supporting measures. The Cabinet expects the laws to be implemented without difficulty, but surprisingly, not until next year.
After a law is enacted or revised, administrative agencies and businesses need to go through an adjustment period, allowing the government and the public to adapt to changes in the legal system and facilitating compliance with the law. And yet, fraud-related issues have plagued the public for a long time.
Fraudulent advertisements have run rampant on digital platforms with little regulation for more than 10 years. After passing the new laws, the government should combine its power and resources to quickly establish supporting legal systems, eliminating fraud activities at the source to build a more reliable digital environment.
Taiwanese cannot wait until next year.
Lo Cheng-chung is a professor and director of Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Financial and Economic Law.
Translated by Nicole Wong
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS