Kaohsiung Elects Chen Chi-mai Chen Chi-mai of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected mayor of Kaohsiung on August 15, defeating Jane Lee from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Wu Yi-jheng of the Taiwan People’s Party. The special election follows the recall in June of the KMT’s Han Kuo-yu. After losing to…
Former President Lee Teng-hui ’s Democratic Legacy Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s first democratically elected president and first native Taiwanese national leader, died on July 30 after being hospitalized since February. He was 97 years old. AmCham Taipei released a statement joining the people of Taiwan in mourning Lee’s passing and noting his historic role in promoting…
Yu Shyi-kun Elected Legislative Speaker Former Premier Yu Shyi-kun, a newly elected Democratic Progressive Party legislator-at-large, was elected Speaker of the Legislative Yuan on February 1. He succeeds two-term Speaker Su Jia-Chyuan, who decided not to run again after his wife, Hung Heng-chu, announced her bid for legislator representing Pingtung County on the DPP ticket…
For years, a key element in AmCham Taipei’s advocacy agenda has been an appeal to the government to ease the way for foreign white-collar personnel to live and work in Taiwan. Major progress was made in that direction with the Legislative Yuan’s passage on October 31 of an Act for the Recruitment and Employment of…
Massive fines have forced the popular ride-hailing app to suspend its Taiwan operations from February 10. In Taiwan, the end of the road for Uber came swiftly. The ride-hailing app juggernaut, which is the world’s largest startup by valuation, suspended services here in February after being fined more than NT$1 billion (around US$31 million) in…
Political measures dominated the year’s first legislative session. The recently completed session of the Legislative Yuan (LY) attracted particular attention as the first in Taiwan’s history in which a majority of the seats were held by a political party other than the Kuomintang (KMT). Following elections last January, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) now…
The restructuring program has been given two more years for completion by the new legislature. The eighth Legislative Yuan ended its four-year term in December without completing action on the entire government restructuring program it set out to undertake with passage of an umbrella law in 2010. The program, intended to streamline the executive branch…
The Legislative Yuan in June froze the budget for Taipower’s pilot project to send nuclear waste abroad for reprocessing to give lawmakers time to review the plan. Under the NT$11.25 billion plan, 1,200 spent fuel rod bundles – 8% of the total spent fuel currently stored in cooling ponds at Taiwan’s three active nuclear power…
Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng’s visit to Washington D.C. in mid-February, the first by an MOEA head in many years, was overshadowed by his announcement that bans on the import into Taiwan of six different types of beef products from the United States would be lifted. The Council of Agriculture made the decision after…
The deadline for completion of the reorganization plan has been extended to the end of this year. Under the original schedule, a plan for extensive restructuring of the government’s executive branch – reducing the number of cabinet-level agencies from 37 to 29 and enhancing efficiency by bringing related functions under the same ministry – was…
