This year’s Taipei mayoral race is not your average local election. It is a contest of values — a debate over how Taiwan’s capital should navigate the road ahead.
When the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officially announced Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as its nominee, the first reaction of many was not about policy, but simply: This will not be easy.
Taipei has long been understood as a stronghold of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), with the nickname Tian Long Guo (天龍國) or “Kingdom of the Celestial Dragons.”
What we should be asking ourselves is not who is most likely to win the race, but rather how the political and economic structure of Taipei came about in the first place.
After 1949, large numbers of central government institutions, financial resources, tertiary institutes and state-run enterprises became concentrated in Taipei. More than just the formation of a central executive authority, this was the emergence of an entire system based on accumulated power, assets and class.
Those who secured early access to land, government housing, places in military dependents’ villages or property in core urban areas went on to amass enormous wealth in the coming decades as the capital developed.
In many cases, what changed people’s fortunes was not necessarily their abilities, but being in the right place at the right time.
Democratization brought in equal voting rights, but the underlying structures of asset ownership remained. As property prices have continued to rise, asset owners have seen their wealth increase, while the younger generation finds it harder to get a foot in the door.
As a result, today’s Taipei faces a contradiction.
Many people recognize that problems with soaring house prices, low wages, population outflows and class entrenchment are only getting worse. Yet, they fear major reforms because these could affect property values, assets and their retirement.
This is the essence of the Tian Long Guo grip on Taipei.
It is not just a product of arrogance, but of the sense of security that long-term asset accumulation has built. If a city offers nothing more than the preservation of asset values while young people’s hope for the future is gradually stripped away, then prosperity inevitably turns to stagnation.
Taipei has started to exhibit warning signs. Pressure on young renters is mounting, small families are struggling to settle down, and young entrepreneurs and technology workers are choosing to trade Taipei for Hsinchu, Kaohsiung and Tainan, or to move overseas.
In comparison, Kaohsiung and Tainan have, with the development of technology and semiconductor industries, have started to see young people begin to return.
What this represents is simple: A city’s future is never set in stone.
The real threat is not change itself, but the assumption that things would never change. Tokyo once slid into long-term stagnation thanks to an asset price bubble; Seoul has also developed a problem with generational conflict because of house prices and urban youth poverty rates.
No city can maintain prosperity by clinging to past accumulated assets and institutional dividends alone.
In this kind of tough constituency, someone who is willing to rise to challenge represents a welcome new attitude.
What Shen faces is not just an election battle, but the structural inertia of a system that has been operating for decades.
For a person who is willing to talk about risk and change to emerge in a city that has become fettered by its own false sense of security already represents the possibility of another kind of future.
What is important is not politicking or media attention, but whether someone can address the city’s real problems.
This mayoral election is less about who wins or loses, and more about whether Taipei can be reimagined as a city in which young people can dare to dream, work hard and believe in opportunities.
A real capital should not just be a place for vested interests to rest easy. It should also be a place for those who work hard to have the opportunity to get a foot in the door and carve a life out for themselves.
When a city protects only what is in the past, it starts to lose its grip on the future.
It is not old houses that age a city — it is when young people have no reason to believe that working hard still has any meaning.
Hsiao Hsi-huei is a freelancer.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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