Minister of the Interior Huang Chu-wen has said in an interview that the downsizing of the TPG is a gradual process and cannot be carried out overnight. "The whole process is being implemented very slowly," says Huang. The central government itself is also downsizing. According to a draft proposal on central government staffing levels, in the future the central government will cut back from its current level of 160,000-170,000 employees to around 120,000. When TPG employees are transferred, the number of central government employees will increase. To bring this number down, in the future many government employees will not be replaced when they retire. On the structural level, it is hoped that the work of many government bureaus and departments can be combined as in the case of the TPG's Water Resources Department and the Bureau of Water Resources, thereby reducing the number of levels and offices of the government.Raising the status of cities and counties
No matter whether you believe that the TPG was created for ideological reasons, to secure political stability or to improve administrative efficiency, the fact is that it has existed for more than 50 years. With Taiwan now fully committed to democratization, with a directly elected president, and with the political reality being that the ROC government governs only Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu and the Pescadores, there is a great deal of overlap between the powers of the provincial government and those of the central government. This is obviously not beneficial to the nation's development in an era of global competition. It is thus essential that the government trim its size.
One can see that an entirely new map of the administration of the ROC is being created. Especially noteworthy is that a complete redistribution of power and money between the central government and local governments is being carried out.
Political science's most basic definition of local autonomy is the use of local people and the allowing of local self-governance wherein local people's wishes are obeyed in resolving local problems. However, this has not been put into practice on Taiwan since the ROC Constitution came into force. "The tendency in the past was to stress the power of the central government. This limited the power and capabilities of local government," says Woody Cheng,chief of the history teaching section at Feng Chia University. In Cheng's opinion, the "patriarchal" political structure had the effect of turning government bodies below the provincial-government level into powerless "daughters-in-law;" dependent upon the "patriarch's" mood for their own allocations of money and power.
Having relied on the care and attention of the government bodies above them for decades, local governments now lack the ability to handle affairs on their own. After the TPG is downsized, a completely new relationship with local governments will emerge. In particular, a four-tier system of government will be simplified to three tiers. As such, a focus of much attention is whether city and county governments can, like those of Taipei and Kaohsiung Cities (which are directly administered by the central government), take on more personnel and financial responsibilities.
Although city and county governments under the TPG were self-governing bodies before the implementation of downsizing, their status was much lower than that of Taipei and Kaohsiung. In the latter cities, the highest-level bureaucrats were accorded the status of high-ranking officials, and the mayor has full power to assemble his own team to implement his policies. In contrast, the highest-level bureaucrats in the municipal and county governments under the TPG were required to have passed the civil service examination, effectively tying the hands of mayors and magistrates when it came to choosing personnel. In some cases, there were even instances of such mayors and magistrates having to wrestle for control with persons from different parties on their administrations, leading to difficulties implementing policies.
Chi Chun-chen says that according to the draft localization bill sent to the Legislative Yuan, which defines the division of power between local governments and the central government, and related bills, in the future mayors and county magistrates will have more power to choose their own staffs. Now not only will a deputy position of political officer be established under mayors and county magistrates, mayors and county magistrates will also be allowed to appoint five senior-level staff members that need not be drawn from the civil service. In addition, these five senior staffers will see their civil service grade raised. Finally, mayors, county magistrates and their administrative deputies will have their civil service grades raised by at least one level. It is hoped that such changes will encourage talented people to work in local government and raise the morale of those already employed there.
When the functions of the TPG are changed, the structure of local representative bodies will also change. The Taiwan Provincial Assembly will become an consultative council of 26, all appointed by the Executive Yuan. It will no longer have the power to review legislation and budgets, and will instead have only the power to advise. Many former assembly members have now changed tracks, becoming members of the Legislative Yuan, and some pundits are already predicting that numerous local affairs will be raised in the legislature. Whether lower-level measures related to localization of government can be implemented smoothly remains to be seen. These lower-level measures include the consensus reached by the National Development Conference on downsizing the TPG, making the jobs of village chief and township chief into positions appointed by the central government rather than elected by the public, and ending elections for village and township councils.
Many are worried that parochialism may become more apparent when tasks that were originally handled by the TPG are handed over to local governments. Local tasks that the central government used to delegate to the TPG, such as the planning and design of urban roads, will most likely be turned over to local governments in the future. "Local governments don't have the ability to carry out such tasks, and there are no measures in place to prevent the long-criticized problems of 'dirty money' and local interest groups from interfering," says Chih Mei-chiang, a professor in the department of public administration at Tunghai University. Another worry is that 46 provincial assembly members entering the legislature might turn it into an arena for the divvying up of spoils, instead of a body dedicated to monitoring the operations of the entire government.
The Provincial Assembly Building has a mosaic in the floor of its lobby so that people entering walk over a dragon, the traditional symbol of the emperor. This represents authoritarianism being replaced by democracy.