This is a living collection for journalists and media reporters.
Waterkeeper (in production)
Red Sea: Vietnam's Modern Disaster (in production)
Dirty Money: Point Comfort (Netflix, 2020)
[Welcome to this virtual tour of the Formosa Plastics Group Museum! We, your tour guides, are a collection of academics and researchers studying Formosa Plastics Group (FPG), an international petrochemical corporation headquartered in Taiwan. As we share images and interpretations of museum exhibits with you, we encourage the audience to consider: How does FPG as a company view itself? How does FPG hope others view the company?]
The Formosa Plastics Group Museum is located on the grounds of Chang Gung Formosa Plastics University, near Taipei. Chang Gung University grew out of a hospital set up by [FPG] in 1976 “to make a meaningful contribution to Taiwan’s society.” Today, the university uses “the successful management model of Formosa Plastics Corporation and its resources” to build students’ management knowledge (https://www.cgu.edu.tw/p/404-1000-17343.php?Lang=en).
[edit the image to be both the front & back of the flyer]
The Formosa Plastics Museum has [seven total] floors of exhibits celebrating the founder and spirit of the Formosa Plastics Group--complete with dioramas, wax figures, and a miniature replica of Formosa’s Sixth Naphtha Cracking Plant. Other highlights include the Earth Conservation Theatre on the fifth floor [and a simulated forest experience in the basement level, alongside a souvenir shop. Exploring the entirety of the museum takes 4 to 5 hours!] The sixth floor conveys how Formosa has given back to society through investment in education, hospitals, and cultural heritage projects. [I'm thinking save this last sentence for later in the essay]
[When entering the museum, guests are greeted by this large FPG logo engraving, complete with the company's Chinese name, "台塑企業."
Formosa Plastics Group is a massive conglomerate of over 100 subsidiary companies, which produce a vast array of industrial and chemical products. FPG highlights some of its most prominent subsidiary companies in eleven small icons included in the logo, including Formosa Plastics Corporation, Nan Ya Plastics, Formosa Petrochemical Corporation, and Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation.]
The Formosa Plastics Museum's second floor features the details of Founder Wang Yang-ching's (王永慶) upbringing and rise to prominence. This Western-style portrait, mounted in a grandiose gold frame, depicts Founder Wang sitting in front of a crowd of employees dressed in white. The mass is running forward, presumably a reference to the exercise events that FPG hosted, but also suggesting Founder Wang as an inspiration moving thousands forward towards progress. The golden letters above his head, 勤勞樸實, are a corporate slogan utilized consistently throughout the museum. The four characters mean diligence, hard work, frugality, and sincerity--values that Founder Wang claims FPG strives to accomplish.
This replica depicts the original ox-drawn cart that Formosa Plastics (originally known as Fumao Plastics 福懋塑膠) used in the 1950s to transport PVC resin. Emphasizing their humble beginnings, Formosa Plastics began as a small company producing 4 tons of PVC resin daily, surviving Taiwan's depression and growing over the decades into a massive corporation.
Besides the display is the phrase "篳路藍縷開展石化王國," meaning "enduring hard beginnings to develop a petrochemical kingdom." The Chinese idiom utilized to describe hard beginnings invokes an image of a pioneer driving a cart in ragged clothes. This language suggests that Formosa Plastics is an innovating, resourceful company that deserves its current success. Using its scrappy origins, the company justifies its current behavior as rooted in humility.
[I think we should replace this image with one of young Founder Wang's wax figure--would look a little more interesting and emphasize the narcissism of it all. I have a photo we can use!]
[A significant portion of the museum--virtually all of the second floor--describes the upbringing and philosophical approach of the company's founder. Growing up in a poor rural community, Founder Wang is said to have created this vastly wealthy company through wit and resourcefulness.
An exhibit of his early life describes the "Theory of the Starving Goose," which references Wang's time raising geese in his village. He could not afford enough feed to keep his geese well-nourished, so to prevent their starvation, Wang supplemented the goose feed with leftover vegetable leaves from neighbors. His spendthrift approach allowed the geese to survive and his livelihood to continue.]
[Despite its humble origins, Formosa Plastics Group is the fourth largest petrochemical company in the world today, worth over $100 billion in annual market capitalization. FPG began expanding facility operations across the globe in the 1990s, especially in China, the United States, and Southeast Asia. In this wall-sized map of world operations, FPG depicts facilities in over 16 U.S. states.
It is noteworthy that this map depicts Taiwan, the company's home country, as significantly larger than on its actual geographic size. By making the island the same size as Taiwan and the United States, could FPG be suggesting that it is growing the geopolitical power of Taiwan through economic expansion?]
-absurdity of an indigenous person weaving this, tone-deaf
-a reference to social welfare programming
Upon entering the Formosa Plastics Group Museum in Taoyuan, Taiwan, the first thing that visitors see is a large piece of wood, kept under a dome of glass. The label at the bottom reads:
This magnificent piece of New Zealand Kauri burl had been buried in the ground for more than fifty thousand years before being unearthed. The timber is a rare hard resin-filled solid wood. This beautifully-shaped burl weighs 8.5 tons, well over the the 6 ton piece held by the British Museum in London, making it unique in the world. In 2002, Chairman Wang Yung-ching came across the Kauri burl in Kaohsiung and was drawn to its strength so much that he decided to make this Kauri burl the centerpiece of his collection. This remarkable piece of wood on display here at the entrance to the museum symbolizes the vitality of the Formosa Plastics Group capable of immeasurable possibilities. and longevity.
I later learned that a burl is considered a tree's natural response to "some form of stress such as an injury or a viral or fungal infection" (Wikipedia). I also looked up the Mandarin translation for burl, which is 瘤 (liú). This term can mean hump, knurl, lump, nubble, or tumor. The latter invokes environmental and health impacts, such as high cancer rates in petrochemical fenceline communities. However, these issues are not addressed in the museum. Instead, the piece of wood is paired with an all-plastic recreation of a New Zealand rainforest in the museum's B1 gift shop. This recreation includes chirping bird sound effects, leaving visitors with a greenwashed first and last impression.
However, one way to capture the ambivalent meaning of the object at the center of the museum is through Kim Fortun's (2019) reflection on "toxic vitalism," a term that describes "the way systems can take on a life of their own, often beyond what experts planned or expected.
The museum has an array of FPG-made products in a souvenir shop on the basement level. Items on display ranged from beauty products and toiletries to dried snacks, tea, bleach, and commemorative jewelry. This Lego-like plastic building set, which creates a FPG Museum replica, was purchased in the museum.
Their souvenir shop leaves critical visitors with a few takeaways. First, it displays the uncanny diversity of goods that FPG and its subsidiaries create--the company's influence ranges far beyond what the public imagines petrochemical production to be. Secondly, for visitors familiar with FPG's extensive legal and human rights violations, the shop feels tone-deaf to the point of absurdity.
