What exactly is the Control Yuan and why should you care? Well, if you work in Taiwan’s offshore wind development, a really good reason just dropped about a week ago when the Control Yuan released a report on Taiwan’s offshore wind localization program. I can’t remember the last time a government-released document made me want to stand up and clap, but this thorough investigation did. It was concise, fair and solution oriented. The report correctly states that Taiwan’s localization plan is not workable in its current form and the government needs to reassess and “foster only the components that has potential to be developed.”

There’s just one problem: this is not policy, but more like a strongly-worded suggestion. The closest analogous government body to Taiwan’s Control Yuan would be the Government Accountability Office in the US or the European Court of Auditors in the EU. They are an ombudsman body. I asked local reporters what the likely impact of this report is.

”To put it simply, they are the government department that the bureaucrats fear the most,” said one, “Just as the Examination Yuan give life to the bureaucrat, the Control Yuan can take it away.”