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The colonial comprador economy

Thirteen years ago, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government proposed the establishment of an Asia-Pacific Regional Operations Center (APROC). Two years later, then-minister of economic affairs Wang Chih-kang (王志剛) said that his ministry had spent billions of NT dollars and published more than 100 papers over a period of eight years in order to make the center a reality.

But in April that year, Michael Porter, a Harvard professor, was invited to Taiwan to hold a lecture on improving national competitiveness.

He said that the future of Taiwan's economy was uncertain and, using the APROC project as an example, added that many other countries or areas -- including Singapore and Hong Kong -- were doing more or less the same thing, with only a few differences, and that those countries might be even more advanced than Taiwan.

Porter also said that Taiwan's development of the APROC would result in Taiwanese dependence on the Chinese market, adding that Taiwan's biggest problem was a lack of long-term vision and that the project would become a mess.

Although the KMT's promise for the new century focused on a push for the APROC to move Taiwan's national competitiveness into the top-five of the International Institute for Management Development world competitiveness listing, the nation's ranking dropped to 18.

This was the reason why Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) quickly switched direction after being appointed premier in September 1997 by announcing that he would review the project's focus and priorities.

Ironically, Siew, now the KMT vice presidential candidate, is once again relying on the APROC to define Taiwan as the global operations center for Taiwanese businesspeople and the Asia-Pacific operations center for overseas businesspeople to turn Taiwan into a part of a common Chinese market.

As Porter said, the APROC is a passive strategy controlled by others rather than an active strategy that we can control ourselves.

The APROC of yore and today's common Chinese market are but a kind of "colonial comprador economy" that plunders and exploits local resources for profit. This will only benefit compradors, or intermediaries, with special privileges and hurt most Taiwanese and the country's natural environment.

Consequently, as former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) has said, this would cause industry to become completely dependent on the technology provided by upstream companies and orders from downstream companies in developed countries. It would also make Taiwanese firms stop striving to establish themselves based on their own technology and brands.

The presidential election is crucial to the transformation of Taiwan's economy. Our votes will decide whether we will put an end to this kind of "colonial comprador economy" and open up a new path for an independent and free Taiwanese economy.

Bob Kuo is a professor in the Department of Information Management at National Sun Yat-sen University.

Translated by Eddy Chang
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