The Untapped Potential of Taiwan

I’ve written about this previously here and have left threads on twitter but the news about the fate of Pinglin started me thinking again about how reorienting promotion of Taiwanese tourism abroad might kill more than a few birds with the same stone.

Tourism in Taiwan is unbalanced and unsustainable. Whilst the number of FITs has always been significant, the prior administration’s focus on Chinese tourists and tour operators catering to them has had a number of significant negative externalities. Aside from incidents of what could be called ‘culture class / clash’, the problem with the tour model is that it has funnelled a vast number of people to a small number of venues in a manner that is environmentally damaging, economically ineffective, and socially alienating. Tour buses busily belch up and down the biggest arterial roads and their safety, or relative lack of it compared to travelling by train, has made the news for all the wrong reasons, from unfortunate force majeure events such as landslides or cranes falling off buildings to everyday crashes and, recently, more sinister and violent acts involving mass murder suicide. Worst of all, the government is supporting this.

The businesses which had built their income stream model around these tours have made themselves hostage to fortune, one that may depend on the largess Beijing is willing to allow in terms of constricting or opening the flow of tourists the tours can book. To date there is no solid evidence yet that the flow of Chinese tourists has been dramatically cut, or that Beijing has had a hand in trying to constrict the flow of them. If anything, the rise in numbers has slowed but with media regularly helpfully suggesting it’s either already happening or will do soon, a longer-term psychological knock-on effect (on businesses) may already be in place - anticipating trends, even if they are wrong or overstated, is one of the strengths and weaknesses of industrious Taiwanese.

It is increasingly clear that the smart money for Taiwanese businesses relying on tourism will not be with tour groups in the near future, one key reason being that they are as political-economy as pandas, even when they’re trying very hard not to be. Aside from political contingency, the social and environmental cost of them is high too. The B&B model has exploded in recent years (look at Yilan) because more and more Taiwanese and foreign travellers don’t want to spend their holiday in a large hotel, and not one physically and busily dominated by one nationality. Increasingly popular locations offer diversity, difference, tranquility, and space - a haven from urbania. B&B’s offer a quieter, more personal service and a chance to meet and make new friends and their ecological footprint is a lot lower than hotels - both in terms of utilities and sustenance. Hotel developments, especially on the south east coast, have become sites of controversy, some of them built on land unfairly appropriated from local, often Indigenous, communities, and lacking or having suspiciously passed EIAs.

Taiwan’s cities have made efforts to promote themselves internationally and be more tourist friendly but the countryside is where tourism in Taiwan has the most untapped potential. Taiwan has some of the world’s best hiking and mountain cycling paths and roads in the world. It also has the offshore islands and good conditions for water sports. Focussing on land though, it would be easy to identify and map the three hundred and ninety-six best hikes in Taiwan (launched in 2020, that would be the number of years since the Dutch arrived in 1624 - “Can you do them all in a year?”) and make it a rite of passage much like the bicycle ride around the mainland has become), and do the same for the best two hundred cycling routes (#TaiwanTwoHundred #Taiwan200 #Taiwan2 #TW200 #TW2 - alliterative appeal), then invest a lot in public works to ensure that these routes are fixed up, safe, have regularly spaced and clean public amenities, and sufficient resting areas.

For Taiwan, a environmentally-centric tourism ‘New Deal’ that carried out such investment and promotion could generate many jobs in areas of Taiwan that have seen population flight, ageing communities, and falling work opportunities. The renovation of these routes wouldn’t be a one-off event either: more permanent employment could be generated in artisan and horticultural services for these routes - ensuring that infrastructure is sound and clean or that foliage over roadways are pruned and verges flower bedded where ecologically appropriate for example. A government which made this project a centre-piece national initiative (or part of one that also includes watersports e.g.), and which then followed up visibly, actively, and energetically, when implementing it would immediately catch the attention of savvy Taiwanese investors. Rules prohibiting or severely limiting the number of chain store or service units setting up on these routes would help better ensure that local existing businesses can capitalise on the New Deal first.

The New Deal would require some changes also to existing infrastructure. Catering principally to two wheeled or train transport needs to become the operating principle of urban planning and traffic management, with bicycle and electric scooter riders enjoying significant discounts on MRT & trains and room rates at B&Bs etc. Both TRA and THSRC need to up their game in respect of cyclists. They need to offer cyclist dedicated carriages (two or more per train on popular tourist routes) then sit back and watch the explosion of usage. More old train lines could be opened, either to run steam tours or be converted to bicycle pathways. A continuous, clear, quiet, and safe cycle path needs to be built from Taipei to Kenting, whether it passes all along the coast or cuts inland, rest stops with toilets, shade, water, and air can be provided. The path should try to avoid major roads. The South Cross-Island highway could be reopened solely for bicyclists / under 200 cc powered scooters. In cities, parked vehicles take up too much space and hinder free movement of traffic. We’ve all seen those vertical car showrooms, so why not have something similar underground in cities for temporarily storing bicycles, scooters, and cars? Dot them with the frequency of 7/11s and then erase all those parking spaces on the roads, freeing them up for properly dedicated and strictly enforced “2WB” (two-wheeled/bus) lanes. Users could pay with cash or MRT card to store their vehicle at a low rate per hour or day (e.g NT$1 for scooter bicycle NT$10 for car).

Thinking bigger, the Dahzi to Nangang section of the MRT Wenhu Line could be rebuilt underground, freeing the City to rebuild the entirety of Beian Road, Neihu Road, Chenggong Road, Kangning Road, over the Nanhu Bridge to the Exhibition and then on to Academia Sincia (hooking onto YanJiuYuan Scenic Road over the mountain to Liuzhangli). Imagine if you could ride a cycle path from Dazhi to Nangang right along the middle of road with trees & low bushes and a small grass verge on either side of you, including the occasional bench (with air pump). The bus and taxi companies should also sit down with the Government and plan out a switch to entirely electric vehicles, later expanding this to all delivery vehicles. Taiwanese cities become electric cities, and growth of solar powered home charging units for vehicles is encouraged and subsidised. If there isn’t the capability for that, the Government should subsidise study and development of that capability. The government’s role is to provide incentives for investment in green tech and urban planning whilst simultaneously building a new energy infrastructure that has the goal of being 100% renewables. Steps like this are helpful in that regard. Other actions by the government would be needed to create a more level playing field and show preference for small enterprises. Rules such as a moratorium on the building of new hotels but subsidies for smallholdings would channel private investment into a multitude of smaller projects, keeping the ecological footprint smaller and easier to plan.

Finally, the government would need to get the word out, outside of Taiwan. It should work with the best Taiwanese B&B, cycling, big biking, and hiking websites (the ones which catalog amenities/route and or facilitate booking) and create a combined android and iOS app in multiple languages that allows the visitor to Taiwan to quickly and easily see where they are and find the best places to hike, cycle, ride etc as well as good quality accommodation nearby (it could include emergency info etc etc). Quest maps such as the #Taiwan2, #396, #SCIsland, and #RoundTrip could be included as presets with options of accommodation and dining suggested along the route (alerts for proximity). The app would start by showing the visitor everything useful from touchdown: location of rental services, banks, stations, timetables, Highway Code, distance & time calculators etc. Taiwan could advertise with a simple message in its targeted countries: show the beauty of the hikes and rides, hit the key notes for the FITs and outdoor adventure segment, flash quickly on three cities - great food etc (youbikers) - and then just show the app. “Get - Open - Go”.

The broad idea is to get people to just get on a plane with a backpack, arrive, and be ready to go. For those unable to bring their bicycle or vehicle with them there should be better and much more frequent facilitates for hiring good quality bicycles for long journeys, as well as electric scooters (more recharging stations), and big bikes (some more foreign licences would have to be recognised) at most airports and train stations. The goal, and a key selling point would be that “at no time does a tourist have to use a four wheeled or Co2 emitting mode of transport”. Travellers not only get easy access to some of the widest diversity of geology, geography, and ecological habitats in all of Asia in one place, they are also coming to one of the safest, most open, and most free democracies in the world. To top it off, getting around Taiwan is not only not troublesome, but is in fact the actual idea, because it is simple, easy, cheap, and most importantly, healthy and pleasant.

A initiative like this ‘Tourism New Deal’ or ‘Ecological New Deal’ above would be a legacy definer for a President and administration brave, and competent enough, to implement it. It would bring Taiwan to world attention, in turn allowing an important opportunity for rebranding the image of the nation in a politically neutral area (Taiwan’s endemic Asiatic Bear with white chest ‘V’ could become a symbol of it). Taiwan would be capitalising on its natural assets. Ultimately, hundreds of small towns and villages could benefit from travellers both passing through and coming to stay, with not a tour bus in sight. A diversity of travellers would better ensure a more even distribution of flow rather than summer high winter low, and that would provide income stability allowing these communities to save and grow.

If the government wants to win the case with the public for prioritising the environment, it needs to make keeping Taiwan clean and pretty the biggest industry in the nation. The public sentiment is there but it is riven with concerns about the impact of the cost of being green on the economy, as it is about the impact of multiple other factors. Taiwanese want to be green and the government can help them make money being so. Places like Pinglin can then make their own decisions about what their level of engagement will be in this New Deal, and hopefully revive their town’s fortunes.