On Wednesday, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) published its latest statistics on national wealth, indicating that in 2009, the nation’s average net household wealth and average net individual wealth reached a record high.
According to the DGBAS, the average net household wealth in Taiwan reached NT$9.79 million (US$337,300) in 2009, increasing NT$920,000 from NT$8.87 million in 2008, while the average net individual wealth in Taiwan was NT$3.3 million in 2009, NT$350,000 higher than the NT$2.95 million recorded in the previous year.
National wealth refers to the total value of wealth and goods generated by all citizens’ economic activities. It is defined as the total value of assets — including tangible assets such as real estate and household appliances; foreign assets such as foreign currencies and overseas mutual funds; and domestic assets such as cash, deposits, life insurance, pension funds and securities. Net national wealth is calculated by deducting liabilities — mainly home mortgages.
Without a doubt, the record net household wealth and net individual wealth figures reported in 2009 are a reflection of the nation’s economic recovery following the global financial crisis that hit the nation one year before.
Take, for example, investments in securities, such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Investors earned some of their money back on a rebounding stock market, with an average increase of NT$530,000 in securities income for households and NT$180,000 for individuals, DGBAS data show.
However, the statistics have raised eyebrows. Even though the DGBAS attributed the wealth increase mainly to a more than 40 percent rise year-on-year in securities investment, annual growth of nearly 24 percent in cash and deposits and an 18 percent addition in net foreign assets from a year earlier, its national wealth data are surprising because they also show each family in Taiwan owned NT$3.64 million worth of real estate, NT$450,000 worth of household appliances and NT$6.28 million in financial assets in 2009.
One explanation for the seemingly skewed national wealth statistics is that the figures are average values of some people who made fortunes and others who reported losses. Therefore, it is possible that some people made a massive fortune amid a recovering stock market compared with some others who lost vast amounts of money. In other words, statistics do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story.
What is of interest is that according to the DGBAS’ previous data, annual disposable income for average households was NT$888,000 in 2009, down 2.9 percent from 2008 and marking the lowest level since 2003. The average figure for individuals was NT$266,000 in 2009, down 2.6 percent from a year earlier and the lowest since 2005. So how is it possible that national wealth increased while disposable incomes fell? It makes no sense.
In fact, disposable income data provide another example of deceiving statistics. The DGBAS’ latest disposable income data released in the middle of last month showed the average annual disposable income last year was NT$274,000 for individuals, up 3 percent from 2009, but that the average disposable income for households grew just 0.2 percent to NT$889,000 per household, even though the nation’s GDP expanded 10.88 percent last year from 2009.
For many Taiwanese who are still suffering with stagnant salaries, signs of economic recovery are far from being reflected in their daily life. While most people feel no benefit from the economic upturn, the government apparently intends to use the wealth data to paint the nation’s economy in as rosy a light as possible. We should know the government does not lie — but it is just speaking for a handful of rich people and wealthy families.
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
A response to my article (“Invite ‘will-bes,’ not has-beens,” Aug. 12, page 8) mischaracterizes my arguments, as well as a speech by former British prime minister Boris Johnson at the Ketagalan Forum in Taipei early last month. Tseng Yueh-ying (曾月英) in the response (“A misreading of Johnson’s speech,” Aug. 24, page 8) does not dispute that Johnson referred repeatedly to Taiwan as “a segment of the Chinese population,” but asserts that the phrase challenged Beijing by questioning whether parts of “the Chinese population” could be “differently Chinese.” This is essentially a confirmation of Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formulation, which says that
On Monday last week, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene met with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers to discuss Taiwan-US defense cooperation, on the heels of a separate meeting the previous week with Minister of National Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄). Departing from the usual convention of not advertising interactions with senior national security officials, the AIT posted photos of both meetings on Facebook, seemingly putting the ruling and opposition parties on public notice to obtain bipartisan support for Taiwan’s defense budget and other initiatives. Over the past year, increasing Taiwan’s defense budget has been a sore spot
Media said that several pan-blue figures — among them former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), former KMT legislator Lee De-wei (李德維), former KMT Central Committee member Vincent Hsu (徐正文), New Party Chairman Wu Cheng-tien (吳成典), former New Party legislator Chou chuan (周荃) and New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) — yesterday attended the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. China’s Xinhua news agency reported that foreign leaders were present alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim
RSS