New municipal council sizes

With the passing of the amended Local Government Act 地方制度法 last month, we know the sizes of the new city councils for the five direct municipalities.  Since these are the highest level SNTV election left in Taiwan, I’m enthralled by them and will be paying far more attention to them than anyone else of the course of the next year.

But first, a bit of background info.  Taiwan used to have a four, maybe five tier system of government.  Under the central government, all territory was separated into provinces.  After the ROC lost mainland China, all that was left was Taiwan Province 台灣省 and a teeny slice of Fujian Province 福建省.  Under the provinces, territory was separated into counties and county-level cities.  So Taichung City 台中市 and Taichung County 台中縣 were of equal status underneath Taiwan Province.  Fujian Province had two counties, Jinmen County 金門縣 and Lianjiang County 連江縣.  Actually, most of Lianjiang County is still on the mainland and the ROC governs only a couple of islands with about 5000 people, but it still counts as a full county in ROC organizational terms.  Under the counties, territory was separated into township-level governments.  Depending on how urbanized it was in the 1950s, it was classified as either a city 市, town 鎮, or village 鄉.  So Nantou County 南投縣 has 13 townships, including Nantou City 南投市, Caotun Town 草屯鎮, and Mingjian Village 名間鄉.  The county level cities also have township-level entities, called districts 區.   However, unlike cities, towns, and villages, which elect their own mayors, district heads are appointed civil servants.  Finally, underneath the cities, towns, villages, and districts, you have cun 村 and li 里 (which are often translated as wards, boroughs, and/or villages).  Cun and li are usually have 1000-5000 people, and don’t have any real independent powers.  Rather, they are organizational units that the higher level governments use to implement policy.  Their heads are elected, however.  Villages have cun, and the other three have li.  (English simply doesn’t have enough words to translate all these terms well, so in the previous sentence I might as well have written, “villages have villages underneath them.” Sigh.)  Oh, and the provincial government was gutted in 1998.

Are you still awake?  Well, in 1967, the government decided to elevate Taipei City 台北市 to a direct municipality, with status equal to a province.  In 1976, Kaohsiung City 高雄市 was also elevated.  Direct municipalities are different from county-level cities in several respects.  First, under the old non-democratic regime, municipality mayors were, like the Provincial Governor, appointed rather than elected.  That, however, changed in 1994, so now all are elected.  Second, direct municipalities have much better funding.  They get a different set of tax revenues and end up with a much larger budget than county governments.  As such, direct municipalities have much better public infrastructure.  Third, mayors of county governments can only appoint about four people.  Everyone else is a civil servant.  In contrast, mayors of direct municipalities can appoint lots of people, including the heads of all the city government departments and districts.  So life is much better as mayor of Taipei City than as mayor of Hsinchu City 新竹市 (county-level city).

This year, after years and years of political wrangling, three more direct municipalities will be created.  Taipei County 台北縣 (which has a larger population than Taipei City) will be elevated.  It is also changing its name to 新北市, which the Taipei Times (my favorite source for translations) is rendering as Sinbei City.  I would have preferred New Taipei (a la New Delhi).  The new Taichung City is being created combining the old Taichung City with the old Taichung County.  Similarly, the new Tainan City combines Tainan City and Tainan County.  Finally, the new Kaohsiung City will expand the old Kaohsiung City (which was already a direct municipality) to include the old Kaohsiung County.

New entity	Old entities	Eligible voters (2008 LY list tier)	% of electorate
Taipei City	Taipei City	2037601	11.8
Sinbei City	Taipei County	2870678	16.6
Taichung City		1900142	11.0
	Taichung City	767549
	Taichung County	1132593
Tainan City		1430245	8.3
	Tainan City	576785
	Tainan County	853460
Kaohsiung City		2114221	12.2
	Kaohsiung City	1161599
	Kaohsiung County	952622
Rest of Taiwan		6935664	40.1

Maybe now I’m finally ready to get to the actual post.

The Local Government Act also set the guidelines for determining the sizes of the direct municipalities.  (All this is preliminary, since the final determinations will be based on populations in June 2010 (I think), but we don’t expect too much change between now and then.)  So here’s what I think we have (updated June 17):

		current	new
台北市	Taipei City	52	63
	北投士林	10	12
	南港內湖	7	9
	信義松山	9	10
	大同中山	7	8
	萬華中正	7	8
	大安文山	11	13
	平地原住民 Plains Aborigines	1	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	0	1
新北市	Sinbei City	65	66
	板橋	9	9
	中和	7	7
	永和	4	4
	土城樹林鶯歌三峽	9	10
	三重蘆洲	10	9
	新莊五股泰山林口	10	10
	淡水三芝石門八里	3	3
	汐止金山萬里	4	4
	瑞芳平溪雙溪貢寮	1	1
	新店深坑坪林石碇烏來	5	5
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	2	3
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	1	1
台中市	Taichung City	103	63
	中西區	6	3
	東南區	8	4
	北屯區	10	6
	北區	7	3
	西屯區	8	5
	南屯區	6	4
	后豐區	8	5
	潭雅神區	9	6
	東勢石岡新社和平區	4	2
	大甲大安外埔區	5	3
	清水沙鹿梧棲區	7	5
	烏日大肚龍井區	7	5
	大里霧峰區	9	6
	太平區	6	4
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	2	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	1	1
台南市	Tainan City	91	57
	東區	10	6
	南區	7	4
	中西區	5	2
	北區	7	4
	安南區	9	5
	安平區	3	2
	新營鹽水柳營	6	4
	白河後壁東山	4	2
	麻豆下營六甲官田	5	4
	佳里西港七股	5	3
	學甲將軍北門	3	2
	大內新化山上	3	2
	善化安定	3	2
	玉井楠西南化佐鎮	2	1
	仁德歸仁關廟龍崎	8	5
	永康新市	11	7
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	0	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	0	1
高雄市	Kaohsiung City	98	66
	鹽埕鼓山旗津	5	4
	左營楠梓	10	8
	三民	10	8
	新興前金苓雅	8	6
	前鎮小港	10	8
	鳳山	14	8
	大樹大社仁武鳥松	7	4
	林園大寮	7	4
	岡山橋頭燕巢梓官彌陀永安	10	5
	田寮阿蓮路竹湖內茄萣	6	4
	旗山美濃六龜甲仙杉林內門茂林三民桃源	6	3
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	2	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	3	3

So the new law means that Taipei County essentially retains the same number of seats, and everyone else adjusts to that standard.  I haven’t heard how Sinbei City will be apportioning its seats to individual districts, but I don’t see any reason for changes.  The only difference is that they get one more seat for Plains Aborigines.  (I don’t know if this is because the population has increase or because the apportioning rules are different.)

The Taipei City Council will actually be increasing in size from 52 to 63.  This means that each district is going to get one or two extra seats.  Hooray!  It’s a great time to be a candidate there.  Incumbents have a little more breathing room, and new candidates will be able to get nominations.

Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung are exactly the opposite.  They will be bloody.  The number of seats will be reduced by anywhere from a third to a half.  A newspaper article gave the plan for the new districts in Taichung City.  They were debating on whether to use the legislative districts, each of which would have around eight seats or keep the old districts and simply cut the number of seats in each.  As of now, they have decided to keep the old districts.  As you can see, a lot of incumbents are going to become unemployed at the end of the year.  For new candidates, it will be next to impossible to get a nomination.  It will be hard enough for the incumbents to get nominated.  I don’t have the district by district breakdown for Tainan and Kaohsiung yet.  Tainan will almost certainly have to redraw its districts, since the current ones are fairly small.

This certainly was a long-winded way to say Taipei—easy; Sinbei—normal, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung—meat grinders.