Hsieh unveils policy on housing

By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Jan 08, 2008, Page 3
　

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday unveiled his housing policy, proposing that the government rent out public housing to young people at discount rates.

Slamming Taipei City's real estate policy, Hsieh said the bubble would burst when investors from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong stopped buying real estate in the capital.

He proposed that the government release state-owned land for the construction of public housing to be rented to people above 25 years of age. Such a privilege would be offered on a once-in-a-life-time basis.

To alleviate the financial burden on young tenants, the government would offer a 40 percent discount on rent for the first two years and 20 percent discount for another two years.

He also proposed a low interest loan program to make real estate affordable to young people. Under the program, first-time buyers would be entitled to interest-free loans. The government would also build more dormitories on campuses and make efforts to stabilize real estate prices so that young people could afford a house of their own.

"My idea of economic prosperity is first to ease the plight of the people," he said. "If elected, I will make an effort to create more jobs, give jobless people something to do, make houses more affordable, let homeless people have a house of their own and let those who rent a house be able to afford to buy one."

Hsieh criticized his election rival, former Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), for being a "princeling" used to a luxurious lifestyle removed from the poor.

Hsieh said the reason he chose to make his housing policy public at Taipei 101 was because he wanted to highlight the contrast between high real estate prices in the city's Xinyi District and young economically disadvantaged people.

"Some people promote the idea of improving the economy, but the measures they propose are quite shallow and their direction is wrong," he said.

"People have the right to pursue happiness just like they have the right to a referendum. The government should provide the people with an environment where they have the right and opportunity to pursue happiness," Hsieh said.

If Ma were elected president, Hsieh said, real estate prices in Taipei could rise to NT$1 million (US$30,000) per ping. In other words, a person with a standard income would have to work for a year to be able to afford a ping.

"The middle class will become the new poor," he said. "Young people in Taipei City don't have any hope for the future and many have moved elsewhere."

Koo implores voters to shun KMT
　

By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Jan 08, 2008, Page 3

"It is time for those who still support the KMT to wake up."－Koo Kwan-min

A pro-independence heavyweight yesterday urged the public to reject the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in Saturday's legislative elections, saying the country will never change if people continue to support a party lacking the capacity for self-examination.

Former senior adviser to the president Koo Kwan-min (辜寬敏) urged voters to spurn any party that is anti-democratic and advocates eventual unification with China.

"It is time for those who still support the KMT to wake up," Koo said. "It is a misfortune to have a political party that is anti-democratic in the 21st century."

Koo made the remarks after placing advertisements in yesterday's editions of several Chinese-language newspapers. He said he placed the ads because he was angry at the KMT's recent decision to boycott the two referendums to be held concurrently with Saturday's elections.

Koo said referendums are important for Taiwan's democratic process and that it is natural to hold referendums during elections.


"The KMT's decision to boycott the two referendums makes me wonder whether it deserves to exist in Taiwan ? Isn't it a shame to have a party that is so firmly against the referendums and democracy?" he said.

As one of the referendums was initiated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to reclaim the KMT's stolen assets, Koo said the KMT's boycott showed its true colors and that it was out to protect its questionable party assets.

The KMT's stolen assets put the party on an unequal footing with other parties and only the return of those stolen assets to the treasury can put Taiwan's democratization on the right track, he said.

Koo also criticized the KMT for taking advantage of its legislative majority to implement a "scorched earth" policy and frustrate the country's democracy.

On the legislative elections, Koo said that he suspected the KMT would continue to dominate the legislature but may not obtain a two-thirds majority.

While the DPP hopes to garner 50 legislative seats, it would be considered a resounding defeat if it secures only 40, he said. However, Koo said he did not think a defeat in the legislative polls would deliver a blow to DPP candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) presidential hopes, even if the DPP won only 20 legislative seats.

Koo said he did not think President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who doubles as DPP chairman, should step down as party chairman should the DPP lose because he is considered the party's best campaigner.

What's really bothering Beijing?

By Gerrit van der Wees
Tuesday, Jan 08, 2008, Page 8

Almost every day, Taiwan is feeling the heat of China's aggression: Beijing's military threat and intimidation, more than 1,000 missiles aimed its way, constant attempts to isolate it internationally and a failure to accept Taiwan as a friendly neighbor.

What is China fighting against? What is driving China's leaders in their obsession with Taiwan? When we go back in history, we see three main reasons.

One is the Chinese Civil War, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fought against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). This struggle was deeply ingrained in the minds of older leaders of the CCP, and still plays an important role in the thinking of the present leadership. But as the international power and influence of the KMT waned in the 1970s and 1980s, the old hostility was refocused on the new "threat": Taiwan's democracy.

While Taiwan considered its transition to democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s a momentous achievement, the leaders of the PRC perceived it as a threat to the authoritarian system they had built in China.

If the Chinese had ideas similar to those of the Taiwanese, then the rule of the CCP would be finished.

China is thus not fighting Taiwan because the latter wants to remain separate: History shows that most Chinese leaders don't care much whether Taiwan is separate or not. It is an outlying place -- very much like the Northwest Territories for the US -- and not crucial to China's "center of civilization."

The real reason China is fighting Taiwan is because it represents a successful democracy right next door, undermining the CCP's authoritarian "stability."

The second reason that seems to be prevalent in Chinese thinking is to "right the wrongs" caused by two centuries of "humiliation"at the hands of Western countries.

This may have been a factor in the 19th century, after the Opium Wars, when Western states established enclaves along the Chinese coast, but the trials and tribulations of the 20th century were of China's own making: The Chinese Civil War, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were internal Chinese affairs with which the West had little to do.

The third reason for China's hardheaded attitude toward Taiwan is that it thinks Taiwan's close association with the US and the West stands in the way of China becoming a "great power."

The leaders in Beijing have set an ambitious course for China to become a "superpower" along the lines of the US: wielding economic and political influence and power across the globe.

For China's leaders, "possession" of Taiwan is a key element in their geostrategic competition with the US -- and to a lesser extent in their regional competition with Japan.

This is because of Taiwan's strategic location -- straddling the important sea lanes between Japan and Southeast Asia while keeping China from unfettered access to the deep oceans of the Pacific.

China's threats to Taiwan are thus not caused by Taiwan's efforts to seek its rightful place under the sun, but rather by geostrategic competition with the US. This argument is made eloquently in a recent book titled Why Taiwan? by Alan Wachman of Tufts University. As long as "Taiwan's people seek the dignity of sovereignty and the assurance that so long as they do no harm to the PRC, Beijing will regard the island with neighborly comity," Wachman writes.

He argues that if, on the other hand, one views the issue through the lens of Beijing's geostrategic ambitions, one might come to a very different conclusion. If it sees Taiwan as essential to its security and even more importantly as part of a broader geostrategic competition with the US and Japan, the chance of Beijing resorting to the use of force is much greater.

This has important implications for the US. Another US East Asia researcher, Don Rodgers, recently wrote: "In the United States, policymakers must be careful not to view increasing tensions between China and Taiwan as the outcome of a `trouble-making' government in Taiwan (as they seem far too inclined to do), but rather as one manifestation of an intensifying geostrategic competition between China and the US and Japan."

Let us hope that Washington pays heed.

Gerrit van der Wees is editor at the Washington-based Taiwan Communique.