In its latest annual white paper, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) has expressed reservations about Taiwan’s investment environment, warning that the nation is being marginalized in the recent wave of international economic integration.
While it is true that this is a recurring theme in AmCham’s white papers, this year’s report singles out many impediments put in place by the government, including ineffective legislation that has relegated Taiwan to second-from-bottom of the 17 major Asian economies in terms of investment attraction for private equity funds.
According to the report, Taiwan is ahead only of Pakistan, and even trails Sri Lanka in this regard. This makes a joke of the government’s plans to develop Taiwan into a financial services center.
How different things were before. The nation’s previous “go get ‘em” approach made it an economic model for growth in developing countries. “If Japan and South Korea can do this, then why can’t Taiwan?” expresses the kind of spirit behind the approach. It was an indefatigable drive that not even the energy crisis of the 1970s, nor the 1990s Asian financial crisis, could dent, enabling Taiwan to compete not only with other Asian Tigers, but also with more developed countries.
However, in the past 10 years or so the nation seems to have lost its way, as a result of political infighting, lack of vision by its leaders, a preoccupation with entering the Chinese market and lack of international economic integration; all of which have conspired to drain the impetus to compete. Nowadays, Taiwan struggles even to finish above last among its fellow tigers.
The past few years have been tough. The public has had to deal with leaden economic growth, corporate flight, rising unemployment, falling salary levels, a drop in consumer confidence, people seeking work overseas, increasing national debt and economic stagnation. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has not only failed to deliver on his “6-3-3” campaign pledge (6 percent economic growth, less than 3 percent unemployment and per capita income of more than US$30,000 within his first term), his government’s economic stimulus packages have been flops too. Furthermore, so-called reform measures — levying a luxury tax and a capital gains tax on securities transactions — have been toxic for the property and stock markets.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) has conceded that the economy faces many pressing problems and the government has announced a five-year, NT$3.4 billion (US$113.8 million) stimulus package. However, this has largely been dismissed as less than what goes into a Jody Chiang (江蕙) concert.
The government’s efforts deserve little more than ridicule. It is no wonder that many people are now expressing concern that Taiwan is turning into a new Philippines, or that it is going the way of Greece.
The AmCham paper was produced by a single institution, and it is not an authoritative report, but the nation ignores it at its peril. When Taiwan was going through its economic miracle, the country was not satisfied with merely being ahead of other developing countries, its ambition made it aim for the top.
Now the government seems satisfied with a humble place in world rankings and it is this acceptance of Taiwan’s decline that is the most worrying aspect of all. Compare for a moment Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is dragging the Japanese economy back to its feet with his ambitious “Abenomics.”
When South Korea’s economic indicators gave off warnings, the government immediately ordered a radical devaluation of the won and implemented measures to bring down interest rates and benefit exports. Ma, on the other hand, is behaving like a rabbit caught in headlights.
Come on Taiwan, snap out of it.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and