The second issue is that even though Taiwan and today's Taiwan economy, on paper, is represented by the outstanding results of its IT industry, the confused atmosphere created by the economic downturn and rising unemployment figures should still make Taiwan consider what other industries could create the same positive results.
Taiwan today has an asymmetric industrial structure: students graduating from science and engineering departments may be able to find work in the internationally more competitive IT industry, but students graduating from other departments can only find work in internationally less competitive industries. Taiwan should borrow from the highly financially internationalized Hong Kong and Singapore, and raise the level of internationalization of financial insitutions to create another achievement as brilliant as the IT industry's. This is also something that Taiwan in reality must accomplish in the short term. After joining the WTO, the question of to what degree the Taiwanese financial system is internationalized will become an important indicator of whether or not Taiwan will be able to raise its international competitiveness.
As the world once again is focusing on China, the Taiwan's worry over facing China is understandable, since, after all, the image displayed by China this time around is largely positive. There are some people in Taiwan, however, that see the acceptance of the "one China principle" as the solution for Taiwan's economic problems, which really is overestimating the power of China and underestimating the logic of global comptetition. What Taiwan really should do is prepare for global competition by establishing related financial management systems and again create an internationally competitive industry, something that has nothing to do with whether or not we accept the "one China principle."
Under Taiwanese marital law, some dissidents described the restrictions put on the general public by the authoritarian system as a political version of the "Incantation of the Golden Hoop", used to restrain the Monkey King. In today's Taiwan, we don't need any inhibiting Chinese incantations, but we must be clear on the logic of global competition. That, and only that, is the correct way to deal with this wave of China fever!
Hsu Tung-ming is a freelance writer based in Beijing
Translated by Perry Svensson
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