Taiwan is rightly proud of its progress over the last few decades out of third-world poverty to something approaching first-world status. However, there are still areas where you have to wonder if Taiwan has made any progress at all – it’s treatment of overseas workers is one of the main ones.

Last weeks riot by Thai workers in Kaohsiung highlighted the plight of about 300,000 legal overseas workers (mainly from Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam). Some of the things the workers in Kaohsiung had to put up with was Taiwanese bosses using electric cattle prods to ‘control’ them, a wage lower than the minimal wage, not getting paid properly for their overtime, dormitories with individual space less than prison cells, bans on use of mobile phones, ridiculous fines for trivial offenses (NT$3000 fine for ‘riding a bicycle’!) and being paid in ‘tokens’ instead of cash (only useable in the overpriced company stores).

Although it remains to be seen whether anything will be done about the overall problem of overseas workers rights, the issue does seem to be getting a fair amount of play in the local press. Today, the Taipei Times (a paper which has often been criticized for shying away from negative stories about Taiwan) has a series of reports which highlight the numerous problems:

• Some more issues with the Kaohsiung workers
• The corrupt brokerage system which hires the workers – which usually requires a large up-front fee from each worker (loaned to the worker, to ensure he is in heavy debt)
• The problems of domestic workers – who usually end up in homes with little or no legal support or protection if they get abused or exploited.
• The disparity between the governments championing of human rights, and the reality on the ground.

Note that all the problems above are ones for legal overseas workers. Some people estimate there are another 300,000 workers here illegally. One shudders to imagine the conditions they have to put up with.

There are a range of obvious actions which could and should be taken by the Taiwanese government if they want to improve the situation (a complete reform of the way workers are hired from overseas, basic protection for all workers under the Basic Labor Law, legal support for workers in disputes). However, does the government have the stomach for real change (which will affect all those companies who rely on this plentiful cheap labour)?

Chen Shui-bian has been publicly asking for input for his next round of constitutional reform. Perhaps someone should mention to him that basic human rights should be protected for all people – not just citizens.

The latest display of inefficiency and incompetence by the government was this weeks revelation that none of the NT$407 million raised by the Government Information Office for Tsunami relief charities has yet been handed over:

The Government Information Office (GIO) will dole out cash donations for tsunami relief to charity groups late this month or early next month, GIO Minister Pasuya Yao said Monday.

Yao made the remarks in response to press reports that several months after a charity campaign initiated by the GIO to collect cash donations to help sponsor children after last December’s disastrous tsunami in Southeast Asia, the money still has yet to reach the hands of charity groups, including the World Vision International, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, and the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families. These groups were commissioned by the government to handle tsunami relief. Tsai Sung-lin, a national policy adviser to President Chen Shui bian, criticized the long-stalled program, saying that it will tarnish the government’s image, the reports also said.

Back in January the GIO, in association with the charities listed above, held a successful fund-raising event; they set up a trust in a bank to handle the money, along with a committee to oversee allocation of funds. The charities went ahead and started their aid programmes, while the committee … sat on the money doing nothing. Nothing that is until the Control Yuan’s Ministry of Audit noticed, and pointed out that the GIO shouldn’t be setting up trusts outside normal governmental channels, and that the money should be transferred to the GIOs account before it could be spent.

So, the head of the GIO set up a body incorrectly (illegally?), and a committee who seem to have done nothing at all – and as a result nothing has happened seven months later. Apart from the obvious questions about general competence levels in the GIO, the role of the Control Yuan raises an interesting question …

The Control Yuan doesn’t exist. Although it is one of the 5 branches of government defined by the constitution in Taiwan, it hasn’t existed since February – when the term of office of its previous members finished. Since then, the Legislature has refused to even review (let alone ratify) the proposed list of new members. In normal societies this would be called a 7-month long ‘Constitutional Crisis’; in Taiwan it seems it’s business as usual.

So, how does a non-existent Control Yuan work then? The [non-existent] Control Yuan has the answer:

In its press release, the Control Yuan stressed that although the new-term members of the yuan have yet to be sworn in, the yuan has been dealing with petition cases from the public in accordance with a set of provisional guidelines on how to settle the petition cases before the new members take office.

Accordingly, “we have to make such a clarification less the image of the Control Yuan should be damaged,” the press statement said.

The Control Yuan also noted that the right of the Ministry of Audit to perform the auditing job legally should be well respected.

So there you have it: who needs members defined in accordance with the constitution when you can use ‘provisional guidelines’ in their place? It must be said though that the Control Yuan (which doesn’t exist) seems to be a damn sight more competent than the GIO (which, although many people wish it didn’t exist, does)!

One of the areas where Taiwan is constantly search for international recognition is in the World Health Organisation. Given the lack of success Taiwan has had in becoming a full member, it has also tried some alternative approaches to participating …

Four communities will become part of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “Safe Communities Network” in an accreditation ceremony later this year.

Leif Svanstrom, head of the WHO’s Collaborating Center on Community Safety Promotion, will come to Taiwan in October to present certificates to representatives from Neihu (內湖), Tungshih (東勢), Alishan (阿里山) and Fengbin (豐濱), which have been granted membership of the network.

The Safe Communities initiative is a joint project by the WHO and the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Most of the information about it is hosted on the Karolinska website which explains why it can get away with such outrageously subversive information as this one for Neihu:

Safe Community Neihu
Country: Taiwan
Number of inhabitants: 261,201

My current office is in Neihu, so it’s nice to know I’m working in a ‘safe community’ (although I do wonder how safe the raging fires outside almost every building today are).

When Lien Chan visited China back in April he was offered a gift of two panda bears. Well, it seems that the pandas have beenare being selected, but they’re already getting a bit tired of the media circus:

A process of Beijing officials selecting a pair of pandas to be proffered as a gift for rival Taiwan — normally a scene of Chinese pomp and glory — quickly deteriorated into pandemonium when one of the pandas bit a female journalist in the hand.

The mainland Chinese journalist, who was not named by press reports, stuck her hand in a panda cage as she attempted to photograph one of the rare black-and-white animals at Sichuan Province Wolong Nature reserve.

The five-year old Panda “Ximei”, was pregnant, which affected her normally docile mood and made her grumpy, causing her to take a bite at the press, experts said.

I hate to think what the pandas will make of Taiwan’s famously aggressive media.

It is still unclear whether the pandas will ever make it into Taiwan – back in May the official line was that they would only be accepted if all the permits from the ‘Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species’ were in place (a problem, as the donors don’t believe it is an international trade). Now the Mainland Affairs Council seems to have softened its stance a bit, saying that ‘major international conservation groups would have to have a say on whether Taiwan is able to take care of the animals’. So maybe the penguins and koalas will be getting worried about losing their top billing at Taipei Zoo …

Last Sunday afternoon, I took the train back from Hualien to Taipei. As usual it was packed, with many more passengers than seats, so how did I get a seat? You can book a seat two weeks in advance – but the online system for booking regularly goes into meltdown as everyone tries to book seats as soon as they are available. Having failed to get through before all these seats were snapped up, we were forced to go for the second option …

Every train has a large percentage of the seats reserved for army officers – of course hardly any of these seats are actually used by the intended recipients. This means that if you know someone who knows someone whose third cousin once used to be in the army, then you might be able to get a reserved seat that way. Although it’s quite surprising that such an odd rule is still in existence, it goes to show how slow Taiwan has been in reforming away the priveledges of the ruling class. It’s also an example of how old rules and customs mean that it can still be a question of who you know, and how much ‘guanxi’ you have that decides how easily you can get something done.

Last night, 7 cable TV channels were forced to stop broadcasting as the goverment had refused to renew their licenses:

The government has decided to suspend seven cable TV channels, including one news station and a movie channel, beginning tomorrow, citing the irresponsibility of the electronic media. But the move is expected to ignite new political confrontation soon.

The background to this is that the Government Information Office (the GIO – the body responsible for regulating the media) has been reviewing the licenses for the majority of TV channels over the last few months. It released a preliminary report a few weeks ago which failed 21 of the 70 channels; after further review this number was whittled down to 7 failures – who were forced to close almost immediately.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t think the quality of TV in Taiwan is terrible, and so there was plenty of support in principle for something to be done (a survey done just before the review showed that 73% of people thought the current news channels had a negative impact on the country). Elton John famously called Taiwanese reporters “rude, vile pigs” within half an hour of landing in Taiwan, so he’d probably agree that more control is needed of the media.

The one news channel which has been closed, ETTV-S, could hardly claim to be a high quality news organisation. Recently, it’s claim to fame was as the channel which broadcast a fake news report by a PFP councillor on reuse of food from funerals (along with the suspicion that many other ‘news reports’ from that show were also faked). It is also the 2nd news channel owned by ETTV, which means that anything of any quality can easily be transferred to its sister channel. Given these fact, if any news channel was to be closed, ETTV-S was always going to be favourite.

After the closure of ETTV-S there are still 7 24-hour news channels left in Taiwan, so the problem is still one of too much quantity, too litle quality.

The other channels that have been axed have one thing in common: smut. Taiwanese TV has always had pretty puritanical standards for what can be shown (watching an episode of ‘Sex & the City’ in Taiwan will be several minutes quicker than watching the original), and it seems that 6 channels have failed to live up to the regulators views on decency.

Political motivation

Of course, several opposition legislators are crying foul and claiming that the government is shutting down dissenting voices; first prize for hyperbole goes to PFP Legislator Lee Yung-ping who said “If political force is to intervene again in how the media should work, we’ll be returning to the days of ‘white terror'” (a farcical comparison – especially given the way that her boss, James Soong, controlled the media with an iron grip at the tail-end of the white-terror days).

Practically speaking, the only evidence of any bias is the fact that the GIO is a government appointed body. In response to these claims the GIO is pointing out that only a quarter of the review committee were government representatives, and also trying to make the review process as transparent as possible:

The whole five-hour reviewing process as well as discussion and debates of the 12 panelists were recorded and can be made public to dispel the speculation that the GIO had made any intervention, he [GIO head Yao Wen-chih] explained.

However, in the current political climate, anything that could be construed as censorship is immediately pounced on by the opposition.

Scrap the GIO

One issue that has been raised by this is the role of the GIO: During the martial law years it was responsible for all the propaganda of the government, and suppression of any dissenting voices. It was only in the 90s that its grip was relaxed, and the current free-for-all in Taiwanese media resulted. There is general agreement that the powers of the GIO should be reduced (and even that it should be disbanded completely). However, as always the deadlock in the government in Taiwan means that this hasn’t happened … both the ruling DPP and the opposition KMT/PFP agree that a seperate body should be created to handle media regulation (like the FCC in the US), but they can’t agree on the details.

One final point: The question about whether these actions will improve the quality of Taiwanese TV was emphatically answered for me in the positive when I found out that most cable TV operators had replaced the banned channels with BBC World.

In the recent KMT election the key issue (apart from who could win the next election) was reform of the KMT. Here’s an example of why reform is necessary:

Six young newly-elected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) national delegates yesterday appealed to party chairman-elect and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to let delegates directly elect Central Standing Committee members during the upcoming National Congress. Currently, the 31 members are elected by the Central Committee members. During the party’s National Congress, scheduled for Aug. 19 and 20, Ma is to take the oath of office and the more than 1,000 newly-elected party delegates will elect 210 Central Committee members, who will then elect 31 Central Standing Committee members. In addition to saving time and money as well as narrowing the gap between management and grass-roots supporters, the young delegates yesterday said that the direct election would inject younger blood to the committee.

So, the ~1 million KMT members vote for party delegates who vote for the Central Committee members who then vote for the Standing Committee, who then try to agree with the chairman (separately voted for by the KMT members) on policy which they pass on to KMT legislators (voted for in national elections) and try and convince them to implement it. Does this sound like an efficient process, or a hangover from one-party rule?

Of course, for Ma Ying-jeou to be able to change this he will have to hope that the delegates vote for reform minded committee members, so that they vote for reform minded standing committee members …

A sad day for baseball fans in Taiwan:

Professional baseball in Taiwan was hit by a new scandal following a police crackdown the night before on a criminal ring in which 10 people were arrested on fraud and gambling charges.

Among those arrested were La New Bears player Chen Chao-ying and Tsai Sheng-feng, a coach for the farm team of the Macoto Cobras. Both confessed to having “made a mistake” by playing a role in the gambling fraud scheme. Tsai, 42, was fired by his team yesterday.

The scheme was devised by Li Chuan-lin, a local gangster, who together with six other gangsters and bookies was arrested in central Taiwan on charges of blackmailing and terrorizing baseball coaches and players, and of organizing illegal gambling.

This is the 2nd time that professional baseball has been hit by a major match-rigging scandal – the previous time was back in 1996. The fallout from that scandal all but destroyed the league for several years (many teams folded, and those that survived played in front of tiny crowds), and it’s only in the last few years that support has returned to former levels. Whether there will be a similar reaction this time remains to be seen.

It seems this is the culmination of a years work by the police – they were able to document over a season the not-so-subtle ways that games were fixed:

“The crimes committed by the gangsters are obvious. Films provided by CPBL showed some gangsters shouting at players in the games asking them to play as directed,” police officer Chi Ming-mo, director of the CIB’s anti-crime center in central Taiwan, told reporters.

Corruption and Gambling

This is another high profile example of the corruption that has been endemic in Taiwan over the last few decades – although recent governments have made anti-corruption drives a priority, there has been painfully slow progress. That we seem to be in almost exactly the same situation as we were nearly 10 years ago with corruption in baseball is an uncomfortable reflection on corruption in the rest of society.

Apart from the match-fixing, it’s worth noting that gambling is illegal in Taiwan. Of course this doesn’t mean that it isn’t widespread – the police estimate that this match-fixing ring made about NT$100 million over one year which shows it was quite a lucrative venture. The fact that gambling is illegal obviously has little effect on the enthusiasm with which people gamble – but it does have an effect on how the bookmakers operate, in particular their strong links with organised crime.

Last year, when President Chen Shui-bian was shot, just about the only believable conspiracy theory that came forward was that it was an illegal gambling syndicate who organised the whole thing to profit from the bets already placed on the election outcome. Although this was later found to be false (unsurprisingly, it turned out to be a lone disillusioned nutter who blamed CSB for losing his job who shot him), it is indicative of the power of the gambling gangs that many believed they were capable of something like that.

There must now be a very strong case for legalising gambling in Taiwan. It wouldn’t cut the links that gangsters have with gambling, but it should weaken those links, and would stop criminalising the millions of people who will gamble anyway.

While the focus of most has been on some nutty Chinese general’s attempts to start World War III, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council has been focusing on an altogether more concrete threat … Kung Fu fighters:

The Mainland Affairs Council’s rejection of an application for Chinese Shaolin monks to teach Shaolin Kung Fu in summer camps has prompted complaints that the government is trying to restrain cross-strait exchange activities.

Although there is debate about exactly why the monks aren’t being allowed to visit Taiwan, the man who invited them has his suspicions:

Shiau-shinn Lin (林孝信), chairman of Taiwan Secom, blasted the government’s decision in an interview in a Chinese-language newspaper yesterday.

“We invited some other Chinese Shaolin monks to Taiwan in early June. I don’t understand why the government now has a different position on the issue,” Lin said.

The association told the newspaper that the application was rejected by the council on the grounds of “national security.”

So, is the MAC afraid that these kung fu monks will storm the presidential palace as part of China’s “decapitation strategy”? Or is it just the case that the association knows they’ll get more media coverage if they imply that?

In any Western analysis of Asian affairs, I’m always a bit suspicious of over-emphasis on cultural differences. People are people, and concentrating on stereotyped differences can often confuse the issue. In that light, I am not going to claim that the behaviour of the losers of the KMT election has anything to do with Confucian respect for seniority, nor that it is to do with any loss of ‘face’ – however the phrases ‘bad losers’, ‘immature whiners’ and ‘spoilt brats’ do come to mind.

While KMT chairman-elect Ma Ying-jeou has been the model of grace and magnanimity over the last few days, Wang Jin-pyng has been acting like a 12-year-old who’s been told he has to finish his homework before he can watch TV. First came the refusal to even acknowledge Ma’s existence, let alone wind down the window and shake hands, on the night of the election:

Next came the sulky refusal to cooperate:

Wang, the legislative speaker, said he repeatedly told Ma “to leave me out” of his personnel arrangements and said he would follow the example of outgoing KMT leader Lien Chan and serve as a lifelong party volunteer.

Ma, behaving like a grown-up, has repeatedly tried to calm things down, clocking up six separate apologies for anything that might have upset Wang … which hasn’t achieved much since Wang has stuck his fingers in his ears while singing “LaLaLaLa, I’m not listening!”:

Ma said he had apologized to Lien, Wang and party members for confrontations during the election campaign six times — twice before his election win and four times afterwards.

Wang, apparently offended by Ma’s campaign allegations of bribery and other irregularities, denied any knowledge of an apology from Ma and refused another offer from the Taipei mayor to remain as the party’s second-in-command.

As with your average sulky teenager, the reasons for this behaviour are clear: he’s been deprived of something he thought was his right … and he knows he can get away with it. Unfortunately for Ma, his position as head of the household isn’t yet strong enough to do anything much apart from to wait for Wang’s hissy fit to blow over. For the health of the KMT I hope that he does quietly remind Wang that over-indulgent Grandpa Lien won’t be around forever, and that this sort of behaviour won’t be tolerated in the future.