Is Taiwan a free COUNTRY?

Hello everybody and welcome back to the channel. My name is Alan. This is My Life in Taiwan, the channel where I sometimes like to bring my desk out into public here in Taiwan and talk about whatever tickles my fancy in the hope that hundreds, thousands, nay millions of you guys will listen to what I've got to say, hit the like button, share it with your friends, subscribe, fall in love with me, have my babies and eventually make me rich beyond my wildest dreams with millions and millions of views. But seriously, subscribing to the channel can really help me out and get me a little bit more credibility when talking such topics as I am today. Therefore, if you want to help out a fellow Taiwanese resident, then go find that red subscribe button under my video, give it a little poke and make me very, very happy. But anyway, let's jump right into today's topic talking about freedom in Taiwan and how our level of freedom here in this country compares to that of some other countries around the world. So I guess the best place to start would be to give you my opinion of what I think actually makes a country or the people within a country free. Because on the surface, is Taiwan free is a pretty wishy-washy title. It doesn't really mean anything. And some of the factors that I'm going to get into today will be, of course, democracy, freedom of speech, government accountability, and one other, which is actually the reason that I came up with the video idea in the first place. And that's the level of government intervention in day-to-day lives of the people of the country. And the reason I mentioned this is because recently with the whole coronavirus and lockdowns being put onto people, some of our super free American friends over there in USA have taken it upon themselves to protest against the lockdown in a kind of, you can't tell us what to do manner, as they believe their rights of freedom supersedes the need for quarantine in order to control the pandemic. But anyway, I digress. Let's get back to those key factors I was talking about. The first of which is democracy. And Taiwan ever since 1996 has been a fully democratic multi-party country with fair and free elections. Although it might be worth pointing out that one UK company who compile an annual democracy index rates Taiwan's democracy as flawed due to some media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition, but the same company also classify USA in the same flawed democracy bracket. So with regards to democracy, Taiwan certainly passes the test and is free in that context. In fact, the democracy index I just mentioned ranks Taiwan's democracy at 31st in the world ahead of countries such as Italy, Belgium and Czech Republic. But anyway, onto the next point I want to mention, which is freedom of speech. And this one isn't as black and white as it would be in a country like the UK, for example. First of all, Taiwan not too long ago, at least in my lifetime, was an authoritarian state and the KMT, the Kuomintang, strictly controlled the media. During that time, parties other than the Kuomintang, such as the China Democratic Socialist Party or Chinese Youth Party, were all banned and media promoting democracy or Taiwan independence was outlawed. One very famous political activist, Li Ao, had 96 books banned from sale. Writer Bo Yang was jailed for eight years for his translation of the cartoon Popeye because the translation was interpreted as a criticism of the leader Chiang Kai-shek. And not only was any Taiwanese language media completely banned, but any child found speaking Taiwanese in school was corporately punished. But that was in the past. And of course, since democracy has come in, the constitution of Taiwan does provide for freedom of speech and the authorities generally respect these rights. However, there are still some cases of national security where censorship rules are enforced. But basically, Taiwanese people are free to criticize their government if they so wish. And of course, unlike some neighbors of ours, we are free to use Google, Facebook and YouTube to say whatever we like about the government, as many famous Taiwanese YouTubers like to do. So that also kind of links to my third point about the accountability of the government. Now, I'm not naive enough nor qualified enough to say that any government is totally transparent. And I'm sure there are under the table goings on in most governments around the world, either for corrupt reasons or more legit ones, perhaps such as national security. And Taiwan actually ranks well above average on the corruption scale index carried out by Transparency International. Taiwan placed 28th out of 180 countries, making us less corrupt in countries such as Spain, South Korea and Portugal. But seeing as we are not number one with a score of zero corruptions, that must mean there are some levels of corruption going on. And as I'm talking about how accountable the government is for instances of corruption, we would need to look at some specific examples, the most notable of which would be the former President Chen Sui Bian, who was held very accountable back in 2009 when he was given a life sentence for money laundering and embezzlement of about 15 million US dollars. So I guess from that specific example, we can say politicians here are held accountable at the highest levels of government, and the people can generally feel safe that their democratic choices at election time can be trusted as much as any other free country around the world. Therefore, in summary, when looking at these general characteristics, it can't really be denied that Taiwan and the citizens of the country are free. But there are some other maybe more frivolous factors that I wanted to add that some people may consider when looking at freedom levels within the country. The freedom to come and go as we please, a passport that ranks highly and allows visa-free entry to more countries than most others, the freedom to marry whoever the hell you want, as long as they want to marry you of course, the freedom to own land, the freedom to search any website you want online, the freedom to live without a social score that may limit your opportunities in life, freedom to believe in whatever god we want and protest about whatever we want, the freedom to have as many babies as we want and can afford, and the freedom to make a joke about our national anthem if that's what we really want to do. And basically a whole load of other things that citizens in non-free countries are prohibited from doing and will be persecuted if they do. So in summary, is Taiwan free? Well in my opinion, from my point of view, yes, absolutely. Taiwan is a free country. But as I mentioned earlier, I am aware that a country's freedom isn't as black and white or objective as it may seem. And it's more a case of seeing how free a country is and where it falls on the freedom spectrum. But I feel that Taiwan is about as free as a country can get. And I certainly hope that it stays that way. The recent terrible events that are going on in Hong Kong have made me question and wonder how long their freedom and democracy will last here in this beautiful country. And I'm pretty sure I'll be making a video on that in future when I've done a little bit more research and know exactly what I want to say. But let me say unequivocally that I'm pretty sure the people of Taiwan will be standing shoulder to shoulder with those in Hong Kong when it comes to protecting the freedom and democracy. But as I say, that's probably going to be covered in more detail in a future video. I think that's pretty much everything I wanted to say in this video. Other than, of course, to remind you to go to my Instagram, follow me there, subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. We are at 70% unsubscribed versus 30% subscribed. The subscriptions are growing. But let's see if we can get that number higher and higher. Go click on that red subscribe button if you haven't already to get future notifications of videos as and when I publish. That's pretty much everything I want to say other than to thank you for watching. So as for now and as always, I'll see you next time in my life in Taiwan. Peace. As a bonus, I'm going to continue the theme that I started last week of copying Prozzie and reading the top comments from last week's video. In last week's video, I talked about why I can never leave Taichung, a little bit of a personal video walk and talk style. And in that video, I mentioned my agent, Andrew Liu, who brought me to brought me to Taichung when I got my first job. And his comment is the first one. I'm going to read it directly from my phone. Hey, Alan, you're indeed a Taichung Ren. To me, I really think we get the best weather here in Taichung compared with the others in Taiwan. I once worked in Taipei for about three years when I was younger, but the weather in Taipei always got me moody. So eventually I moved back to Taichung. Perhaps the weather in Taipei somehow remind you of living in England, which could also get you a bit emotional. All matters you mentioned here are appreciated by people who live in Taichung, I'd say. Cheers. And yes, his points are very valid. The weather is definitely a factor. I think I got lucky in last week's video in Taipei, beautiful blue skies. But yes, thanks to Andrew for commenting. Thanks to all of you who made comments. I'll be doing the same again next week. So please leave a comment down below on this video. Thanks for watching. Do I need a new sign off for the end of the video? Nah. As for now and as always, see you next time on My Life in Taiwan. Peace. Bye-bye.