NT$700 Billion vs Zero: the Truth of the Tsai Gov’t’s Word Games

 NT$700 Billion vs Zero: the Truth of the Tsai Gov’t’s Word Games

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 21, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Tsai government has repeatedly declared that the home-coming investment funds from Taiwan businessmen on the Mainland have reached as high as NT$700 billion; however, Deputy Economics Minister Lin Chuan-neng, nevertheless, admitted in an interpellation session at the Legislative Yuan that NT$700 billion was the aggregated amount in the approved applications, but he hadn’t seen the repatriation of funds from abroad, while Taiwan businessmen were using all domestic funds so far. This elicited an uproar in public opinion, as "NT$700 billion and zero" were like heaven and earth, exposing that the government’s statements bragging about the report card on home-coming investments for Taiwan businessmen on the Mainland were all empty rhetoric.

President Tsai argued that the origin of the funds for home-coming Taiwan businessmen from the Mainland was a "fake issue" and that the important point was whether home-coming Taiwan businessmen were indeed implementing their investment projects. This is indeed a specious statement. First of all, the person who repeatedly and publicly declared the home-coming of investment funds from Taiwan businessmen on the Mainland was precisely President Tsai herself. However, when our countrymen found that Taiwan businessmen’s funds had not been repatriated and that they had been using domestic funds, she immediately changed her tune, saying that this was a “false issue”, demonstrating that she could not face the truth. Moreover, for home-coming Taiwan businessmen to invest here, no one has said that they could not employ domestic funds, but "home-coming funds" and "domestic funds" have different meanings in terms of taxation. For repatriated funds from abroad, the tax rate varies between 8% and 20%; which funds home-coming Taiwan businessmen are employing for investments will have greatly different effects on both domestic tax revenue and the economy. How could we lightly let go such an important distinction?

Besides bragging, word games, expanding power, fighting to claim achievements, many means for striving for the economy by the Tsai government are “at the expense of the taxpayers” and are using money in the national treasury, striving for electoral gains in the name of striving for the economy. This year, the government has enlarged the subsidies for home-coming Taiwan investments of Taiwan businessmen, catapulting the amounts from NT$20 billion to NT$500 billion; not only asking banks to provide low-interest loans, the government also subsidizes bank fees. If Taiwan's investment environment is as good as in the Tsai government's propaganda, why does the government have to spend big money to attract Taiwan businessmen to return home with "low-interest loans", and not let home-coming Taiwan businessmen use their own money in hand for investments? The Tsai government, on the one hand, publicizes that Taiwan businessmen on the Mainland have repatriated NT$700 billion, and on the other, uses NT$500 billion to subsidize home-coming Taiwan businessmen: May we ask, when home-coming Taiwan businessmen could use low-interest domestic funds, who would repatriate funds from abroad?

President Tsai’s governance report card is filled with bragging and lies, yet under the government’s strong packaging and mobilization of netizens, plus the escort of the DPP’s legislative majority, it has become a sharp propaganda tool in her campaign for re-election. Amid this wave of global economic/trade restructuring, our competitors are aggressively expanding economic/trade, and adjusting their systems, while in the eyes of the Tsai government, there is only the general elections next January. When the myth of the NT$700 billion is debunked, the truth is surprisingly zero. President Tsai could brush aside with ease, saying it was a false issue. She relies on word games, claiming great achievements, and the public’s money from sweat and blood to build her report card on economics, does she still merit the people’s trust?

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