Government

A Bigger South

• Byline:PAT GAO
• Publication Date:11/01/2010

The remaining walls of Dutch-built Fort Zeelandia in Tainan. In the background is a tower built during Japanese colonial rule. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Projects to merge city and county administrations in southern Taiwan promise a new phase of regional development.

During the 17th century, a number of seafaring Asian and European adventurers put Taiwan on the world map. The Dutch obtained permission to establish an outpost in Taiwan from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and in turn, the Dutch government granted a monopoly on Asian trade and colonial affairs to the Dutch East India Co., which was established in 1602 and had its Asian headquarters at Batavia, now Jakarta, in Indonesia. In the late 1620s and early 1630s, the multinational corporation built Fort Zeelandia in what is now Anping Port in Tainan City, southern Taiwan, whence the Dutch administered the island and also oversaw trade in the South China Sea. Tainan continued to be Taiwan’s economic and administrative center after the forces of Zheng Cheng-gong (1624–1662), also known as Koxinga, replaced the Dutch in 1662 to establish a Han Chinese government on the island. Toward the end of Chinese Qing court rule in Taiwan (1683–1895), however, Taiwan attained provincial status and saw the shift of its political and economic center from Tainan to the northern city of Taipei. Just before the Qing ceded Taiwan to the Japanese following a lost sea war, the provincial capital was moved to Taipei. The capital status has remained with the northern city since then.

Now, after more than a century of the consolidation of central government power in the north, the old capital of Taiwan’s efforts to restore some of its former glory have received a practical boost. In December this year, Tainan City and Tainan County will officially merge to become one of the five special municipalities under the direct administration of the central government, a status enjoyed in past decades only by Taipei and Kaohsiung, the port city located just south of Tainan. In fact, Tainan was not included in the original special municipality upgrade program, which had largely aimed to shape an urban development hub in central Taiwan’s Taichung region. “If Tainan had been excluded, then the latest changes to regional administration would have been based purely on population density and the level of economic development,” says Tainan County Magistrate Su Huan-chih, “and that’s quite unconvincing reasoning.” He believes that Tainan could become Taiwan’s historical and cultural capital in much the same way as Kyoto in Japan. Tainan can also build a model of city growth driven chiefly by high-end agriculture and high-tech business development, the magistrate says. He suggests moving any future Tainan City Hall close to Xinshi Township, Tainan County, which is the headquarters of the Tainan section of the Southern Taiwan Science Park. In that way, the city hall would be closer to the geographical center of the new region.

 

Chihkan Tower, a national historical site in Tainan that dates back to the mid-17th century (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

The Tainan County magistrate has called for rebuilding Fort Zeelandia, now little more than a few remaining walls, on an islet in Anping Port as the flagship project for redefining Tainan as a historical and cultural destination. An earlier model for such a project is the reconstruction of parts of Osaka’s old city conducted during the late 1920s in Japan. Su would also like to see more historical stories centered on Tainan in particular and Taiwan in general, in addition to local histories that are usually told in connection with mainland China. “We must expand the scope of our own enthralling stories,” Su says, meaning they should include the period before Chinese rule. While the Tainan City Government has held the annual Koxinga Culture Festival since 2001, Su hopes to focus more attention on the legacy of the Dutch period, for example, as well as indigenous traditions including those of the Austronesian Siraya people, who existed in the Tainan area long before the Chinese or the Dutch arrived. Among other efforts, the Tainan County Government has been helping the Siraya people to recover their ethnic identity.

Although a number of Su’s proposals are just that for the time being, they have won support from some scholars including Tai Wen-feng, associate professor at National University of Tainan’s Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture, and Kaim Ang, a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History. As Ang explains, the contributions to Taiwan of the Zheng court have been somewhat exaggerated in many history books, as it was the Dutch administration that started significant economic activities and construction projects in old Tainan.

Time for Change

As for the decades-long development of local self-government in Taiwan, the moment has come for change, according to Hsu Li-ming, chairperson of Kaohsiung City Government’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission. Despite complaints about the overall planning of the restructuring effort and accusations of partisan political maneuvering, Hsu and Su believe that removing the somewhat arbitrary boundaries between county and city and managing the region as a whole will improve administrative efficiency.

As a case in point, Hsu notes that complex issues such as environmental concerns require a high degree of regional integration to tackle effectively. “If you take river management as an example, we need an integrated program for different sections of a river that otherwise just flowed out of our jurisdiction in the past,” Hsu says. The city-county merger will result in a special municipality covering a much larger land area than the current one. In fact, he says that he still finds it a bit hard to believe that the new city will reach from Kaohsiung Harbor all the way to the foothills of the Jade Mountain Range, the namesake peak of which is the highest in East Asia.

 

The Love River, once heavily polluted, is now a major sightseeing area in Kaohsiung. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Administrative efficiency will also be improved by coordinating leadership at the township level. Under the current system, leaders of small towns are elected by popular vote, with the result that they are sometimes tied too closely to local interests. “Even within a county, each township could have its own ‘land god’ [local leader], who has very specific concerns,” Su says. In folk culture, “land gods” are benevolent, but minor deities, who are believed to bestow their blessings only within the vicinity of a shrine. In the new special municipality, townships will be converted into city districts, each with a district chief assigned by the mayor.

Hsu points out that, in terms of the distribution of business communities, Kaohsiung city and county are complementary to each other, which explains why talk of a merger has been a long-standing issue in the region. Among other things, having Taiwan’s largest and one of the world’s busiest harbors plus an international airport has resulted in Kaohsiung City developing a strong service-industry sector, which includes logistics and financial-service businesses.

City Support, County Land

Following the merger, the county’s farming, fishing and traditional manufacturing industries, which account for much of its land use, should benefit from more support from the city’s advanced service sector. In return, Kaohsiung County offers much-needed space for the city’s businesses to develop, a situation heightened by the city’s concentration of state-run heavy industries including steelmaking and petrochemical plants, which have left many pieces of land there polluted to the point that they are deemed unsuitable for use. At about 18 times larger than the city’s 154 square kilometers, Kaohsiung County has great expanses of land, notably at the section of the Southern Taiwan Science Park headquartered in Luzhu Township. The science park offers 570 hectares of land for the development of high-tech businesses and is currently running at only about 35 percent capacity. “With such an area, we won’t have to ask for more land from the private sector,” Hsu says.

Hsu notes that the development of science parks during the past two decades has contributed much to shaping regional profiles in Taiwan. During the first half of this year, the total production value of the Hsinchu Science Park in northern Taiwan, Central Taiwan Science Park headquartered in Taichung City and Southern Taiwan Science Park exceeded NT$1.05 trillion (US$32.8 billion), of which integrated-circuit and optoelectronic businesses accounted for about 91 percent. Production value is expected to reach a historic high of NT$2.2 trillion (US$68.75 billion) for the whole year. Currently, Hsinchu Science Park, which was the first to be developed, accounts for more than 50 percent of the total business value generated from Taiwan’s science parks, while the Southern Taiwan Science Park comprises about 28 percent. Tainan County Magistrate Su wants to see the Southern Taiwan Science Park continue to strengthen its research and development capabilities given the rising knowledge-based economy, and also so as to compete with the emerging Central Taiwan Science Park. “Only businesses with a strong competitive edge can make people stay,” Su says. “Otherwise all the city upgrades in the world won’t do any good.” In addition to the development of advanced technology-based businesses, the magistrate emphasizes the great potential of cultural tourism, which he thinks could be significantly boosted by integrating old Tainan’s historic sites and tourist services into a city museum system.

 

The Tainan coast offers one of the world’s major wintering sites for the endangered black-faced spoonbill. (Photo courtesy of Tainan County Government)

Su also sees great opportunities for future development of the new Tainan metropolis given the existing facilities at Anping Port and Tainan Airport, as well as the county’s extensive land resources. In a time of increasing trade ties between Taiwan and mainland China, the magistrate proposes combining Tainan’s sea and air transportation services to form a free trade zone. Such a zone could focus on added-value products by assembling parts from mainland China and labeling the resulting goods as made in Taiwan before sending them on to their eventual export markets, he says. In fact, Su believes the proximity of the Anping seaport to the local airport means Tainan could perform better than other free trade zones that have been established in Taiwan since the Act for the Establishment and Management of Free Trade Zones was promulgated in 2003. Currently, such zones exist at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and four harbors in Keelung, Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung, all of which fall under the administration of the central government’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC).

In Kaohsiung, Hsu Li-ming also hopes to see the administration of Kaohsiung Harbor taken over by the city. “It’s a long-standing issue and there are plenty of theories and proposals about it,” says Hsu, adding that he expects the city-county merger to put Kaohsiung in a stronger position to negotiate the transfer of the harbor to local government control.

Shaking Loose of Heavy Industry

Moreover, while Tainan is hoping to establish a unique status among Taiwan’s cities as the home of history and culture that is quintessentially “Taiwanese,” Kaohsiung is shaking loose of its image as a heavy-industry city and cultivating a more cosmopolitan, livable feel. Following the merger, Kaohsiung will become Taiwan’s largest city in terms of land size and second only to the upgraded Taipei County in population. In a recent ranking by CNN (Cable News Network) International, Kaohsiung was listed as one of the best biking cities in Asia along with Japan’s Kyoto, mainland China’s Beijing, South Korea’s Jeju and Singapore. According to the CNN report, a phrase promoted by the city government that Kaohsiung is the most bike-friendly city in Taiwan is “actually true” thanks to a growing network of bike lanes and being Taiwan’s first city to offer self-service public bike rentals. Of the current 50 rental sites around the city, about half are located near Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit (KMRT) stations. Hsu notes that the KMRT system, which launched service in 2008, has significantly boosted the use of public transportation among local residents. While the KMRT routes have been extended from the downtown area northward and eastward to areas in Kaohsiung County, an extension toward Pingtung County to the south has also been proposed. Hsu says that merging Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County might well be a step toward connecting Kaohsiung with Pingtung, Taiwan’s southernmost county, to form a greater southern region. Since 1999, a regular meeting of Kaohsiung and Pingtung government heads has been held several times a year, giving rise to a working system of regional joint administration in southern Taiwan.

 

The extension of the Kaohsiung MRT system has boosted the use of public transport in the city and county, and could help to form a greater southern region. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Seeking reelection in a greater Kaohsiung metropolis, incumbent Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu has been one of the major forces to promote the city-county merger. In September this year, she welcomed Toru Hashimoto, the governor of Osaka Prefecture in Japan, and accompanied him on a boating trip along the Love River, a popular sightseeing spot in the city. Leading a business delegation, Hashimoto became one of the most prominent Japanese politicians to visit Taiwan in decades. In addition to promoting economic exchanges between Japan and Taiwan, the Osaka governor was also interested in learning more about Taiwan’s ongoing efforts to merge local governments, as Osaka faces a similar issue of how to integrate its prefecture and city. News reports quoted him as saying Taiwan’s latest moves were a strong, beneficial political force that will expand the scope of its cities and shape effective leadership of them, thereby adding momentum to development. Hopefully, just like Kaohsiung’s promises about being a bike-friendly city, these long-term goals of more effective leadership and regional development may also prove to be “actually true.”

 

The bustling Liuho Night Market in downtown Kaohsiung (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com