Each year on Double Ten National Day, famous performers lead everyone in singing the national anthem outside the Presidential Office. The opening lines of the anthem are “the Three Principles of the People, the foundation of our party.” However, we all know that these three principles became meaningless long ago, for what has really been promoted in Taiwan over the last few decades is a capitalist market economy.
In other words, the Three Principles of the People are a metaphor to cover that up. However, this metaphor for the market economy has also contributed to the creation of the Taiwanese economic miracle and allowed a tyrannical government in exile to hang on to power. The irony is that this phony “Taiwanese experience” actually gave former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) the idea to start huge economic reforms in 1979. Now, anyone who has been to Shanghai will say that “socialism” is merely a metaphor used by the Chinese government to cover up the fact that China is practicing a Western-style capitalist market economy.
Of course, Deng would never have said he got the idea for his reforms from Taiwan. However, it is within reason to say that if Taiwan had not provided a successful model of a capitalist market economy based on the Three Principles of the People, there is no way Deng would have come up with the “socialist market economy” model that China now has.
The export-based economic development that Deng later adopted was also a clone of Taiwan’s economic development strategy. Coupled with capital from Taiwanese businesspeople, skilled Taiwanese workers, Taiwanese technology and Taiwanese management methods, this all helped lay the foundation for China to become the factory of the world as well as the world’s No. 1 exporter. Of course, while China has been promoting the establishment of a market economy and improving its financial management, Taiwan has also provided China with a framework to follow and mistakes that they could learn from. In so doing, Taiwan has in effect supplied the structure that underpins economic planning and development in China
There is no way that an independent and sovereign Taiwan can be a bad thing for China. In future it could even prove highly beneficial. This is how things are now and how they will be in future. The Taiwanese experience — which I use to mean things that happened before in Taiwan that China can now learn from in areas like thought, capital, technology and cultural establishment — has shown that China’s long-lasting insistence on a great, unified nation is devoid of rational analysis and discussion. This is also what has made it hard for China to modernize over the past 2,000 years. Only by giving this system up can China start to move forward in the world and become a superpower recognized by all nations, especially in the areas of politics, economics and culture.
Huang Tien-lin is a former national policy adviser to the president.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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