In the 1990s, when I was living outside Kaohsiung, the locals sardonically summed up the central government’s regional policies with a play on the term for male chauvinism: “Stress the north, ignore the south.” It’s now been over a decade since Tainan, Kaohsiung city and county, Taichung and Taipei County were upgraded to special municipalities in December 2010, with Taoyuan following suit in 2014. At present, some two-thirds of the population is contained in these six large administrative areas. After the change, some 61 percent of the central government funds for local areas went to the municipalities, with the share