Job Discussion Forums

[EOD]

Agents are not goverment officials, they won't take nearly as big of a percentage as the Ministry of Education. It also would mean they would be hiring locally as well. That means more demand for ESL teachers and a pay raise. As the agents will be paying the teachers directly, a higher level of pay and quality teachers will result (maybe). It will also allow the local public school teachers to preserve some face as far as compensation.
I want to know how to become one of the agents, that sounds like a serious amount of money.

[ScottSommers]

For the last fiveteen years, I have lived in various countries in Asia. The last six of these have been spent in Taiwan. I have never seen the kind of corruption that is implied here. It simply does not exist as an everyday experience in Taiwan. I would like to know where the people making these posts get their rich and informed opinions about corruption in Taiwan. Personal experience? Tell me what happened please. The bibliographies of books on China that are posted here? Get serious, almost all these books are about the history of Mainland China before WWII.

Organized crime and political corruption is widespread all over the world. Organized crime rings circulate tons of drugs and huge numbers of prostitutes all over the developed world. Controlling contributes to political parties is an enormous problem all over the world; in France
http://www.transparency.org/working_papers/country/france_paper.html
Germany
http://www.worldpress.org/1001cover7.htm
not to mention that other very real country, Japan. International comparisons of corruption do not indicate that Taiwan is particularly bad
http://www.taiwan.com.au/Polieco/Industry/Blackgold/2001/0628a.html
http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/2002/2002.08.28.cpi.en.html

Despite rumours to the contary, I doubt that any but the higest placed foreign residents of Taiwan have experience with corruption or organized crime, particularly as it occurs in government services. Taiwan is an extremely safe, reasonable advanced country struggling with severe modernation and identity problems. Corruption continues to be a problem in some sectors of society, but no more so than in places such as South Africa, Italy, South Korea, or Greece. Most of what you see about corruption in Taiwan is simply hog wash written by foreign residents trying to exaggerate the romance in their lives.

[EOD]

You are right of course Mr. Sommers, Taiwan is a highly developed and evolved democracy with the highest moral and ethical society in all of Asia. The brothels on every corner of every town and city filled with adolescent prostitutes are not what they seem. People in Taiwan don't sell their children, the government doesn't write laws for the express purpose of extorting money from the constituency..................
Take off your blinders, the only things in Taiwan that has evolved past third world standards are the locals bank accounts.

[ScottSommers]

Thanks for your reply EOD, however, I am left wondering if you actually read the contents of my post.

Perhaps you're confusing something I said. I did not say that Taiwan was anything more than a devloping nation. My exact words (if you can see through the typos) were that "Taiwan is an extremely safe, reasonably advanced country struggling with severe modernization and identity problems." My point was that foreign residents posting on Dave's are full of comments about a corruption problem in Taiwan that they have never personally experienced. I doubt that anyone posting about this problem here even knows someone who has actually seen corruption occur. Much of what I read about corruption in everyday Taiwan sounds like the 'far-away-from-home' stories of young men whose lives are not quite as exciting as they'd hoped. For those who have lived in a country where corruption is really a serious problem during everyday life, it is a romantic thing to talk about.

Taiwan is hardly the only the only the place in the world where prostitution is highly visible. I am from Canada and there's a problem there. Some (although I am not one these people) would even say that in Taiwan, prostitution is conducted in a manner safer and cleaner for all involved since it can be conducted in a supervised manner.

As for selling children, I am not certain what you are referring to. While this is widely rumoured among my adult students, a thorough search of Yahoo for "Taiwan selling children" was unable to find anything that was meaningful. Perhaps you are confusing the situation in Taiwan with that in Mainland China where the selling of girls is a serious social problem. If you have any appropriate links or other sources you can correct me with, please let me know.

Taiwan is also not the only country in the world where underage prostitution and sexual exploitation of children is a problem. I think if you search the Internet, you will find a great deal of information on this problem in every highly modernized nation. In Taiwan, this problem is complicated by the involvement of aboriginal girls
http://www.safe4kids.org/reports/asia.htm
The issue of social problems among aboriginal Taiwanese is an altogether different issue, but probably closely related to the problems of aboriginals in Canada, the USA, and Japan.

To avoid any more confusion, I will sum up what this response. Taiwan has a large assortment of social problems. I think that many of these are not uniquely local or related to Taiwan's state of development. Corruption is not worse here than many other places in the world that are clearly modernized states. As anyone who has lived here knows, Taiwan is not a clearly modernized state. For some people, however, it can provide a safe place to live and work.

[ScottSommers]

My typing and proofreading are worse than pathetic. I wrote,

"For those who have lived in a country where corruption is really a serious problem during everyday life, it is a romantic thing to talk about"

I should have written,

"For those who have lived in a country where corruption is really a serious problem during everyday life, it is NOT a romantic thing to talk about"

[Paul G]

There should be an "edit" button in the upper right hand corner of your messages once they are displayed.

Click on this button and you can make changes to your posts, correct typos, etc.