Análisis del Ambiente Interno (Fortalezas y Debilidades)

The first demonstration of the Promotion of the Rights of Cross-strait Marriages in 1996 was well taken by the public and their demands of the rights to work and public health care were soon incorporated in the law. In April 1997 the revision of the AGRPTM granted rights to work to the mainland spouses who had already acquired the long-term residential permit (Article 17). However, the spouses holding short-term visiting visas, who had to wait an estimated eight to ten years before they obtained a residential permit, were not legalised to work. Although the initiative of the collective action of the cross-strait families did not lead to a permanent organisation, several protests mobilized large numbers of cross-strait family members and mass support followed. In May 1998 several tens of thousands of mainland brides and their family members from all islands gathered outside the Legislative Yuan to protest, further demanding spouses’ rights to work during the waiting period. Several legislators from various party factions joined this protest.334

At the end of 1998, a mainland bride Liu Yunxiang was caught working illegally and was about to be repatriated together with her five-year-old son. Liu’s husband was handicapped and Liu, as an artist, sold paintings on the street to make a living and supported her husband and son. When her case was widely reported by the media, public opinion overwhelmingly sympathized with her and many scholars and politicians openly criticized the existing policies prohibiting mainland brides to work. The dominant opinion was that the majority of the mainland brides married economically and socially disadvantaged Taiwanese men, and they should be allowed to work in order to support the family and particularly their children. Another informal group called Alliance of Victims of Cross-strait Marriages was organised, who claimed that 90% of cross-strait families were in poor economic situations, and if the government did not care for their well-being, the least the government could do was to allow them taking care of themselves.335 The government responded by

334

Other demands included: 1) increase quota to 7,300 per year; 2) the mainland spouses who had children to be granted citizenship automatically; 3) long-term residential permit granted after two years of marriage; 4) extension of short-term visiting visas from three to six months; 5) full coverage of public health insurance during the stay in Taiwan. See the China Times and the United Daily, May 20, 1998. The news reports did not identify a particular organisation or individual that launched this protest.

335

Liu Yunxiang’s case was first reported on November 9, 1998, and the news reports as well as the following column articles by scholars carried on until mid-November and follow-up reports continued till early 1999 in all major newspapers. The Alliance of Victims of Cross-strait Marriages was initiated by an individual Jiang Reijing, who was the husband of a mainland woman. This organisation was never formalized and the figure quoted was not substantiated by any statistics. Nevertheless, the statement that the majority of cross-strait couples were economically and socially disadvantaged had become dominant discourse. The China Times, November 9, 1998

promising to study the possibility of allowing the mainland brides of low-income families to work.336

This period also saw the rapid increase of foreign brides from Southeast Asia, particularly from Vietnam and Indonesia. These cross-border marriages were perceived to be a grave social problem of compromising the quality of the Taiwanese population. Although mainland brides and foreign brides were under a different category in the public administration,337 they were often grouped together in the discussion of social policies as both were considered posing potential threats to the population quality. In 1997, the Research Institute of Family Planning conducted a survey on the fertility behaviour of foreign and mainland brides.338 As the first survey on foreign and mainland brides conducted by the government, the report indicated that the foreign and mainland brides had high fertility rate because they had little knowledge of conceptive means. Implying that children born of mainland and foreign brides had higher risks of developmental diseases such as Down syndrome, the report also suggested establishing a database of all foreign and mainland brides in order to provide conceptive education and to subsidize their sterilisation.339 The concern over foreign and mainland brides’ high birth rate was not based on the sheer size of the population growth, as by then Taiwan’s fertility rate had declined to an alarming degree and the overall population growth was low.340 Besides, no prior statistical data indicated that the mainland brides gave birth to a higher number of children, instead, a later survey shows that the number of children in the cross-border and cross-strait families were actually lower than in average Taiwanese families.341 The argument that an increasing number of cross-border marriages would impose population pressure

336

The Immigration Office promised to consult the Council of Labour Affairs and the Mainland Affairs Council on this matter. The China Times, February 3, 1999.

337

For the establishment of the demographic category of mainland and foreign brides and its rationale, see Chapter 2, 2.3.1.

338

The report was issued in November 1997, the United Daily, November 21, 1997. The Research Institute of Family Planning was a governmental organisation under the Taiwan provincial government, which was later elevated to the national level under the Department of Health, Executive Yuan, now merged as part of the Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health.

339

The first survey on the cross-strait marriages was conducted in 1994 by Dr. Chen Shiao-hong, commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council. This survey focused on the policy implication of residential status. Another survey commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council, also conducted by Dr. Chen, on the living condition of mainland spouses in Taiwan was conducted in 1999 (Chen, 1999).

340

Selya analyses the factors of fertility decline and the policy responses for remedy. He draws the conclusion that the fertility rate in Taiwan was not too low by international standard and the panic reflected in the population policy was not scientifically grounded (2004:185).

341

The first survey containing information on the actual numbers of children that mainland spouses have was carried out in 2003 in the Report on the measure of assistance for foreign and mainland spouses, Ministry of Interior Affairs, Taiwan, which shows that the number of children of the cross- strait marriages is not higher than the average. (Survey report of the living conditions of foreign and mainland spouses, Ministry of Interior, ROC, June 2004) Other scholarly research also confirms that the fertility rate of mainland and foreign brides are not higher than Taiwanese women (Yang and Schoonheim, 2008).

was ungrounded. The concern of this survey and the family planning authority was the “quality”, not the size, of the population. The underlying assumption was that the children born by foreign and mainland brides were either biologically inferior or that their mothers lacked knowledge and skills to provide proper education to their children. This assumption was best illustrated by the policy proposal that “all imported brides have to pass the Mandarin literacy test [Chinese] before the resident permits are issued……. This includes the Mainland brides who are categorised as illiterate population.”342 The media and academic discourse therefore devoted attention to eugenics and how to enhance the foreign and mainland brides’ capability of child-raising.

As a result of the concern over population quality, the mainland spouses who had children aged under six years were exempted from the six-months-per-year waiting period and were allowed to stay in Taiwan with unlimited times of extension of short-term visa, in view that “parents’ living-apart would have negative impacts on familial relations, and without proper care and education their young children would cause or become social problems”.343

The health authority and medical professionals played a significant role in targeting mainland brides as a high-risk group of the public health hazard, and as a result, the entitlement of public health care was granted to them without much dispute. In 1997, the Bureau of Public Health issued a statement that the first case of a HIV- positive Mainland bride was discovered. Based on this one case, it identified foreign and Mainland brides as a high-risk HIV group and drew a conclusion that they posed a threat to Taiwanese society.344 In mid-1999 in the process of revising the Public Health Insurance Law, the Bureau of Public Health Insurance and Department of Health urged legislators to include foreign and mainland brides in the coverage, something which previously only Taiwanese citizens were entitled to.345 Later that year the revised law extended the coverage to foreign and mainland brides but only those from low-income families. In early 2000, a municipal hospital in Taipei published a report on mainland brides’ prenatal care. It stated that mainland brides

342

Consultation meeting between Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC, April 15, 2003 in Taipei. I attended the meeting as a representative of a NGO working with cross-strait couples. The quotation is from the speech of the Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs.

343

Press release of Mainland Affairs Council, March 1998, in the United Daily, March 23, 1998, p. 2, 1998. According to the statement, the children should be biologically born from the Taiwanese and the mainland spouses. This regulation still required the mainland spouses to exit Taiwan but the re-entry visa can be issued in the third country/region. In view that the travel and documentation cost and time required was much higher and longer if the mainland spouses returned to the PRC, many spouses stopped over in Hong Kong and applied return visa to Taiwan. As a result, the Immigration Office of ROC set up a counter at the Hong Kong International Airport to cater to the needs of mainland spouses.

344

The United Daily, July 31, 1997, p. 4.

345

Preliminary committee meeting on the revision of Public Health Insurance Law, May 19, 1999. The

had high risks of bearing children of Down syndrome because they had lower education and had no awareness of prenatal check-up in China. The report also attributed the high risk to the fact that mainland brides were not covered by the public health insurance and might not be able to afford prenatal care and the hospital bill of childbirth. It concluded that mainland brides should be included in the public health system so that they would not “affect the population and create social burdens”.346 Before the Public Health Insurance Law was revised, the Taipei Municipal government had already provided free screening tests targeting mainland spouses.347