President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) described five key industries of the country during her election campaign, which are biological technology, green energy, the Internet of Things, national defense and machinery.
After winning the election on Jan. 16, Tsai embarked a so-called "industry tour" to several industrial clusters. During the trip, she declared again her industrial policy, which will center on the development of those chosen industries.
However, Tsai has never elaborated on the reasons why she selected these specific industrial clusters for her industry tour.
It is not without reason to say that the new government's theory for picking the country's future industrial pillars needs to be improved. For example, green energy was designated as one of Taiwan's "six emerging industries" seven years ago by then-Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄).
Liu's Cabinet allocated funds to the tune of NT$6 billion (US$168 million) each year for its energy-centered national projects. However, over the past seven years, Taiwan's development of green energy has been conducted at a snail's pace. No substantial progress has been seen in the areas of extracting energy from tides, heat underground, sunlight, offshore wind, or methane hydrates.
We believe that if planning to promote a policy that a predecessor has failed to achieve, the new government should be able to explain why its methods are better and will achieve success.
Aside from its lack of theory, what it is about Tsai's industry tour that is of greatest concern is its role in the areas of political-business collusion and benefit transfer.
From the recent controversy surrounding publicly listed biotech company OBI Pharma Inc. (浩鼎), people have begun to question Tsai's endorsement of the development of the biotech sector and her entire industrial policy.
While the president of prestigious Academia Sinica remains embroiled in a scandal involving sales of OBI stocks, how can Tsai's family, her policy-planning team and her assistants who planned the industry tour earn the trust of the people that they have not benefited from Tsai's policy?
If the OBI case can light up the blind spots in the new government's industrial policy, prompting the incoming government to re-think and take measures to mend the holes, it will perhaps be the only positive outcome of the case. Editorial abstract, March 31, 2016
(By Elizabeth Hsu)
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