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EDITORIAL: Generosity
should start at home
As you read this, 85-year-old Chiang Bei-bei’s (蔣伯伯) ramshackle house in
Taipei’s Huaguang Community (華光社區) will have been pulverized by bulldozers sent
by the central government. Like many other residents of the community, Chiang
barely ekes out a living and the government’s decision to raze the community to
erect a glitzy neighborhood condemns him to destitution. While business tycoons
and the central government pour millions of dollars into China’s Sichuan
Province following Saturday’s earthquake, the fate of Chiang and others is
ignored.
No sooner had the magnitude 6.6 quake hit Yaan City than the Executive Yuan,
along with tycoons like Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Want Want China
Times Group chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), announced they would make donations to
help with relief efforts and reconstruction. Gou and Tsai alone donated more
than US$10.5 million, with actors, singers and other business leaders also
making contributions.
While this outpouring of generosity is commendable, it raises serious questions
about those people’s priorities. Just as with the 2008 quake in Sichuan, what
the Chinese government needs is emergency aid in the form of food, medicine and
expert medical teams — not money, which it has plenty of.
Even more disturbing is that not a single one of those donors has bothered to
say anything about, let alone provide just a fraction of the money they are
sending to China, to help destitute people in Taiwan. The destruction of
Huaguang, the forced relocation of its predominantly elderly residents, the lack
of proper assistance from the government and the fines that this same government
has imposed on those people, is just one among many examples in Taiwan of
situations where desperate people should receive help.
Many of the residents, including Chiang, are not entitled to social assistance
and are being forced to move into social housing in Taipei’s Nangang District
(南港). In most cases, their meager earnings are insufficient to cover the
NT$13,000 rent, while the small businesses that they operated are now uprooted.
For the rich and powerful, the residents of Huaguang are nothing. In fact, their
presence on this prime plot of land in the heart of Taipei stands in the way of
further riches. Those who have extended a helping hand are mostly students,
social organizations and private individuals.
While the wealthy donate to China, it is artists like film director Hou Hsiao-hsien
(侯孝賢), who last week donated his NT$1 million (US$33,520) in prize money from
the National Cultural Award to help finance reconstruction of the partially
demolished Losheng (Happy Life) Sanatorium in New Taipei City (新北市), who man the
front lines in the local war between the haves and the have-nots.
Of course, the large donations to China have a self-serving component, as it
ingratiates the tycoons with the Chinese authorities and opens the door to large
investments in future. Which is why the wealthy cannot be bothered with the fate
of Taiwan’s own poor.
This is shameful. Taiwan is, by any metric, a modern and wealthy country, and
the refusal by the government and the more fortunate to help those in need flies
in the face of the very values that underpin society. One-tenth — one-hundredth
— of the money generously donated to Sichuan to help its people recover from a
natural catastrophe would go a long way in helping people like the displaced
residents of Huaguang, the victims of human agency, live their last few years in
dignity rather than destitution.
Gou and Tsai, whose interests in China are well known, are not alone in this.
There are plenty of extraordinarily rich people in Taiwan who could make a
difference, but who are not lifting a finger.
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