|
Taiwan
|
| Political
Rights: 2 |
Civil
Liberties: 2 |
Status:
Free |
GNI per capita: $13,392 |
Population: 22,600,000 |
Life
Expectancy: 76 |
Religious
Groups: Mixture of Buddhist, Confucian,and Taoist (93 percent), Christian (4.5 percent)other (2.5 percent) |
Ethnic
Groups: Taiwanese [including Hakka] (84 percent),mainland Chinese (14 percent), aboriginal (2 percent) |
Capital: Taipei
|
Ten
Year Ratings Timeline (Political Rights, Civil Liberties,
Status):
|
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
3,3,F |
3,3,F |
2,2,F |
2,2,F |
2,2,F |
2,2,F |
1,2,F |
1,2,F |
2,2,F |
2,2,F |
Overview
As campaigning heated up for Taiwan's March 2004 presidential
election, the focus was on two related issues that have dominated
the island's politics in recent years: economic links with
China and the question of Taiwanese independence. Trailing
in the polls, President Chen Shui-bian tightened the race
late in 2003 with calls for a new constitution that, he hinted,
would promote Taiwan's formal independence from China. Opposition
leader Lien Chan, however, maintained the lead, in most polls,
that he had seized after teaming up with a former rival to
contest the election. A Lien victory could help break the
stalemate with Beijing that has prevented Taiwan and China
from establishing direct air and shipping links.
Located some 100 miles off the southeast coast of China, Taiwan
became the home of the Koumintang (KMT), or Nationalist, government-in-exile
in 1949, when Communist forces overthrew the Nationalists
following two decades of civil war on the mainland. While
Taiwan is independent in all but name, Beijing considers it
to be a renegade province of China and has long threatened
to invade if the island formally declares independence.
Taiwan's democratic transition began in 1987, when the KMT
government lifted a state of martial law imposed 38 years
earlier. The KMT's Lee Teng-hui in 1988 became the first native
Taiwanese president. His election broke a stranglehold on
politics by mainland refugees, who, along with their descendants,
make up 14 percent of Taiwan's population.
In his 12 years in office, Lee oversaw far-reaching political
reforms including the holding of Taiwan's first multiparty
legislative elections in 1991 and the first direct presidential
elections in 1996. Lee also played down the KMT's historic
commitment to eventual reunification with China, promoting
instead a Taiwanese national identity that undermined Beijing's
claim that there is only "one China."
With Lee barred by term limits from seeking reelection, Chen's
victory in the 2000 presidential race, in which he ran as
the standard-bearer of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive
Party (DPP), broke the KMT's grip on politics and signaled
that Taiwan would continue promoting an independent identity.
Chen, a former Taipei mayor, downplayed but did not renounce
his DPP's core position that Taiwan should eventually be independent.
With an 82 percent turnout, Chen took 39 percent of the vote
to defeat James Soong, a KMT defector who ran as an independent
and took 37 percent, and Vice President Lien Chan, who captured
23 percent. Despite Chen's victory, the combined support for
his two conservative opponents, totaling around 60 percent
of the vote, suggested that many Taiwanese are wary of the
DPP's pro-independence platform and its potential to cause
trouble with China.
Still, the DPP swept the conservative KMT out of parliamentary
power for the first time in the December 2001 legislative
elections. While the question of independence loomed large
in the campaign, many voters appeared to be swayed at least
partly by the DPP's pledges of cleaner government. The DPP
won 87 of parliament's 225 seats, up from 70 in 1998, while
the KMT took 68, down from 123. The new People First Party,
headed by KMT defector Soong, won 46 seats. The Taiwan Solidarity
Union, backed by former president Lee, won 13 seats, and two
minor parties and independents took the remainder.
Chen's hopes for reelection dimmed in April 2003 after Lien
and Soong, his rivals in 2000, teamed up to contest the 2004
vote on a ticket headed by Lien. A KMT alliance in parliament
with People First also made it harder for the DPP to pass
legislation. A widely anticipated banking reform bill was
defeated in July.
Chen gained ground in opinion polls, however, with his surprise
proposal in September that Taiwan adopt a new constitution
through an islandwide referendum by 2006. Chen said that a
new constitution would improve governance by streamlining
Taiwan's complicated presidential-parliamentary system. Chen
also hinted that he was seeking to delete provisions in the
1946 constitution that formally link Taiwan to the mainland.
Along with an economic rebound that coincided with the containment
of Asia's severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus,
the buzz surrounding the proposal helped Chen close the gap
with Lien to single digits by November from around 20 percentage
points in August, according to some polls.
The KMT proposed its own constitutional reforms in November
that included changing the presidential election rules to
require an outright majority for victory. In late November,
the opposition-controlled parliament passed a bill permitting
islandwide referendums but, in a setback to Chen, gave the
legislature, not the president, the power to decide what questions
are put to voters. Undaunted, Chen proposed using a special
provision in the law, allowing the president to hold a "defensive"
referendum when the island faces an imminent external threat,
to hold a referendum during the 2004 presidential election.
Chen said that China's longstanding threats against Taiwan
justified using the defensive referendum procedure. China
sharply rebuked Taiwan, particularly after the administration
announced that the referendum would ask whether Taiwan should
boost its missile defenses in response to China's build-up
of missiles aimed at the island, and whether Taiwan should
seek peace talks with the mainland.
Despite
Chen's late-year bounce in the polls, the KMT has benefited
from frustration among many Taiwanese over the lack of any
breakthrough in relations with China. Taiwanese businessmen
have poured some $100 billion into China in the past decade
or so but say that the lack of direct air and shipping links
pushes up their costs. Beijing, however, refuses to negotiate
on opening direct links between Taiwan and the mainland unless
Taipei concedes that such links are a domestic matter rather
than a state-to-state affair. The DPP generally favors closer
economic ties but argues that accepting Beijing's one-China
precondition would be tantamount to Taiwan's formally renouncing
independence.
Beyond
their differences over cross-strait relations, the KMT and
DPP share similar economic policies. Moreover, a general consensus
exists that Taiwan needs to respond to the exodus of Taiwanese
factories to the mainland in recent years by boosting its
high-end services, research, and manufacturing industries.
Political
Rights and Civil Liberties
Taiwanese can change their government through elections and
enjoy most basic rights. The 1946 constitution, adopted while
the Kuomintang (KMT) was in power on the mainland, created
a hybrid presidential-parliamentary system. The president,
who is directly elected for a four-year term, wields executive
power, appoints the prime minister, and can dissolve the legislature.
The prime minister is responsible to the legislature, which
is directly elected for a three-year term.
The
Chen Shiu-bian administration has worked to crack down on
vote buying and on the links between politicians and organized
crime that were widely believed to have flourished under KMT
rule. The Justice Department, for example, has indicted more
than 100 Taiwanese for vote buying related to recent legislative
and local elections; dozens of legislators, magistrates, and
local officials have been indicted for corruption.
Two
alleged scandals in 2002, however, stoked concerns over official
corruption. The chief shareholder in a development company
admitted that she had made large loans to several Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT politicians. Meanwhile, police
in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second-largest city, detained Chu Anhsiung
for allegedly paying several other city councillors to vote
for him as speaker of the municipal body. The Berlin-based
Transparency International ranked Taiwan in a tie for thirtieth
place out of 133 countries rated in its 2003 Corruption Perceptions
Index, with top-ranked Finland being the least corrupt country.
Taiwanese
newspapers report aggressively on corruption and other sensitive
issues and carry outspoken editorials and opinion pieces.
In a setback for press freedom, the High Court in July sentenced
journalist Hung Cheh-cheng to 18 months in jail for sedition
over an article that it said contained classified information
about Taiwanese military exercises. The
Court granted Hung a three-year suspended sentence. Moreover,
criminal defamation laws used by past governments to jail
journalists are still on the books. In a positive development,
the High Court in 2000 upheld a lower court ruling that raised
the legal barrier for news outlets to be convicted of libel.
Broadcast television stations reportedly are subject to some
editorial influence by their owners. The DPP, KMT, government,
and armed forces each are the largest shareholder in, or otherwise
are associated with, one of Taiwan's five island-wide broadcast
television stations. The fifth is run by a nonprofit public
foundation. Any political influence over regular television
is offset, however, by the fact that more than 80 percent
of Taiwanese households can access roughly 100 private cable
television stations. The government defends a controversial
requirement that radio station owners have roughly $1.45 million
in capital on the grounds that the amount is based on the
actual costs of running a station. Moreover, the amount is
reduced for stations serving designated ethnic groups or for
certain other socially beneficial purposes.
Taiwanese of all faiths can worship freely. Adherents of Buddhism
and Taoism make up around 40 percent of the population. Taiwanese
professors and other educators can write and lecture freely.
Laws barring Taiwanese from advocating communism or independence
from China remain on the books, though they are no longer
enforced.
Taiwanese human rights, social welfare, and environmental
nongovernmental groups are active and operate without harassment.
Trade unions are independent, and roughly 30 percent of workers
are unionized. However, teachers, civil servants, and defense
industry workers are barred from joining unions or bargaining
collectively. Moreover, the law restricts the right to strike
by, for example, allowing authorities to order mediation of
labor disputes and ban work stoppages while mediation is in
progress. Some union leaders have been dismissed without reasonable
cause or laid off first during lean times. In another concern,
some employers take advantage of illegal foreign workers by
confiscating their passports, deducting money from their wages
without their consent, and having them work extended hours
without overtime pay, according to the U.S. State Department's
human rights report for 2002, released in March 2003.
Taiwan's judiciary is largely independent, and trials generally
are fair. However, corruption and political influence over
the courts remain "serious problems," the U.S. State Department
report said, despite recent judicial reforms. Moreover, police
reportedly at times use force to extract confessions from
suspects and, while confessions obtained through torture are
inadmissible, courts sometimes accept confessions even when
they contradict other evidence or plain logic, the report
added. In a case that the human rights group Amnesty International
called a "miscarriage of justice," three men in October began
their tenth trial on the same 1991 murder charges. The charges
are based almost entirely on confessions that allegedly were
extracted by torture.
Taiwan's 400,000 aborigines face discrimination in mainstream
society and, in general, have little input into major decisions
affecting their land, culture, and traditions. Ethnic Chinese
developers often use "connections and corruption" to gain
title to aboriginal land, according to the U.S. State Department
report. Aborigines say that they also are prevented from owning
certain ancestral land under government control. In another
concern, anecdotal evidence suggests that child prostitution
is a serious problem among aboriginal children despite initiatives
by the government and private groups, such as the Garden of
Hope Foundation, to protect children.
Taiwanese
women have made impressive gains in recent years in business,
but reportedly continue to face job discrimination in the
private sector. The government in 2001 passed a law banning
gender discrimination in the workplace in response to charges
by women�s advocates that women are promoted less frequently
and receive lower pay than their male counterparts and sometimes
are forced to quit jobs because of age, marriage, or pregnancy.
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