A good number of people believe that Taiwan's enterprises must have a presence in the Chinese market to maintain competitiveness. Almost 70,000 Taiwanese enterprises are based in China and more than 1 million Taiwanese businesspeople operate there. Because these China-based Taiwanese businesspeople make a profit of many billions of US dollars every year, some of them couldn't care less about Taiwan's dignity, which has been compromised by Beijing's enactment of the "Anti-Secession" Law. They urge all Taiwanese to be pragmatic and bear with China.
In fact, we should work out how much of Taiwan's capital has been invested to make these profits and how many people have become unemployed as a result. Also, how much of this enormous profit benefits China rather than promoting Taiwan's economic development?
Continued investment in China will only speed its economic boom and strengthen our competitive rival. And while the number of China-based Taiwanese businesspeople mounts and their fortunes pile up, the unemployment rate in Taiwan increases and Taiwan's economy stagnates.
As these businesspeople work hard to earn themselves a fortune, they help China build up foreign exchange reserves, part of which is allocated to procure missiles and other advanced weapons to threaten Taiwan, and to fund "money diplomacy" to isolate Taiwan in the international community. Their contributions to the Chinese regime are certainly greater than those to their homeland.
Most people are excited about the 10-point agreement between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation lead by party Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun (
For instance, Beijing's willingness to assist in marketing Taiwan's agricultural and farm products in China comes, of course, with the expectation of a reciprocal right to be allowed to dump its products on Taiwan. In the short run, Taiwan's high-quality agricultural and farm products may remain competitive, but in the long run, China's ability to imitate, coupled with its cheap labor, will soon gain the upper hand. Within a few years, Taiwan's farmers will be out of jobs.
China has also agreed to let their universities charge Taiwanese students the same tuition fees as Chinese students, and is giving Taiwanese students generous scholarships. All this seems to be very beneficial to Taiwanese students. To protect these students' future, Taiwan's Ministry of Education will be forced to recognize Chinese degrees. The first to be aversely affected by these policies are the Taiwanese universities that already have problems filling their classes. In only a few years, dozens of universities in Taiwan will be forced to close. More seriously, these young people studying in China, with their weak Taiwan consciousness, will easily be filled with a Greater China consciousness and will sooner or later become a mouthpiece for China's efforts to annex Taiwan. They will be no different from the profit-hungry China-friendly Taiwanese businesspeople operating today.
Some people will say that Taiwanese universities in Taiwan can do the same to Chinese students coming over here. But the question then is, How many Chinese students would be willing to pay the higher Taiwanese tuition fees? And how can the nation effectively control any Chinese spies of the communist regime among those students?
Isolationism will only hurt industry and cause it to lose international competitiveness. But opposing rash developments and ensuring Taiwan's national identity and security are not the same as adopting an isolationist policy. Taiwanese industry and businesspeople should actively develop international markets instead of just locking on to China.
China is an enemy country. China is the only country with territorial ambitions regarding Taiwan and it has 700 missiles aimed this way. China is now the world's factory, but India, Southeast Asia and Latin America will soon catch up.
Taiwanese industry must take a global approach. The government can set up an incentive program to encourage overseas Chinese and Taiwanese around the world to help Taiwanese businesspeople break away from the idea that they are "locked into China." Only in this way will Taiwan's businesspeople become members of an international business community. Both Taiwanese and overseas Chinese and Taiwanese business people will benefit.
Building good relations between overseas Chinese and Taiwanese businesspeople would be beneficial to developing international markets, and help Taiwan participate in the international community.
Tsong Tien-tzou is a research fellow at the Institute of Physics at the Academia Sinica.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI AND PERRY SVENSSON
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