A book entitled T Day, published in August 1994, predicted China would wage war against Taiwan the following year. This month Japanese author Kenichi Ohmae published his latest book, The Emergence of The United States of Chunghwa, auguring that Taiwan and China will be united in 2005.
When T Day hit the market, the first wave of China fever reached its peak in Taiwan. The nation's traditional industries moved to China on a large scale. It was also when the Council for Economic Planning and Development proposed that the nation transform itself into an Asia-Pacific regional operations center and establish direct links with China.
Under this policy, Taiwanese businesses provided a boost to China's rapid rise while the People's Liberation Army was building up its military at the same time. The quality of Tai-wan's air and naval defenses soon became a heated topic. The publication of T Day amid that atmosphere, singing the demise of Taiwan, was natural.
However, the book's prognostications did not come true. What appeared instead was former president Lee Teng-hui's (
Now The Emergence of The United States of Chunghwa has been released. Both the background behind this book and its rhetoric bear a strong resemblance to the 1994 work -- "The manufacturing industry, including high-tech and wafer sectors, has become less profitable. We should work toward research and development, as well as planning and management." This argument has once again taken center stage.
This ostensibly "pragmatic" viewpoint is a policy that shies away from problems to legitimize industrial migration to China. The large-scale outflow of the high-tech sector is similar to that of traditional industries back in 1994. The only difference is that today's China is far better off.
China's foreign exchange reserves in 1983 totaled only US$21.2 billion. Now they have topped US$280 billion. Taiwan's US$160 billion investment in manufacturing in China has caused its cross-strait exports between January and November of last year to exceed 30 percent of its overall exports. Around 500,000 Taiwanese are now working in Shanghai. Economic integration between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is picking up speed. To push for direct links, Taiwanese businesses in China have also applied increasing pressure on the central government.
Ohmae is viewed as an important voice primarily because pro-China scholars and government officials are promoting him. What he has been exposed to is the media and businesspeople who extol China as a land of abundance. His bold prediction of unification in 2005 is a natural and logical product created by this environment.
But is China's economy as glorious as Ohmae has painted it? Is the Chinese economic sphere so powerful that all its neighboring countries have to take part? His prophecy remains to be tested but one thing is evident; the centerpiece of next year's presidential election is neither whether the two sides should unify nor how to unify, but "how to establish the nation of Taiwan."
Ohmae's book provides an important lesson. He would not have written it if Taiwanese businesses in China did not bow to Beijing's economic ploys, if Taiwan's own officials did not sing the demise of the nation's traditional industries and high-tech sector, and if academics were not trumpeting resource integration with China.
If the China fever keeps raging, Ohmae's prophecy could prove to be more than an astrologer's prediction.
Huang Tien-lin is a national policy adviser to the president.
Translated by Jackie Lin
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