The slogan “Protect Taiwan” is being bandied around. It reminds me of a similar phrase: “Protect Great Taiwan,” which we used to hear decades ago. The threat from China is forever with us and while the danger stems both from its internal and external affairs, the technological advances being made in China constitute the greatest threat.
China’s competencies in 5G technology are well known, as is its ability to construct high-speed railways. We are all aware of the strides China has made in military technology, but we should also pay attention to its astonishing advances in industry and manufacturing, which are a major threat to Taiwan’s manufacturers.
Some Chinese manufacturers are not making money, but are able to offer high salaries that poach Taiwanese talent. They are even announcing plans to expand. This would not happen in any other country.
Factories in China can do this because the government takes industrial development seriously, and has put all kinds of mechanisms in motion to assist industry. In many cases, the Chinese government covers the cost of constructing the plants, including the purchase of equipment.
However, the Chinese government is not simply offering financial assistance. It stipulates that the plants receiving help must buy locally made equipment. This means that equipment and components produced in China at the very least have a market.
The Chinese Communist Party is not overseeing a communist system, nor is it running a capitalist system: It is operating state capitalism. Taiwanese should be aware of the threat that this poses.
Taiwan’s economy and industry are intimately linked. In the past, our industrial technology surpassed China’s, but following former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) economic reforms, we have watched aghast as China’s pace of progress has caught up with us.
Taiwan needs a comprehensive policy to deal with these threats, and to do so it must understand some of China’s advantages.
First, the Chinese government’s ambition and patience: It is closely involved in the development of nuclear weapons, long-distance missiles, high-speed railways and 5G technologies, and has put much time and effort into these areas.
Second, Beijing helps companies compete with less competitive rivals in the same sector.
Third, China cultivates large numbers of outstanding graduates. Fourth, China courts Taiwanese talent, and provides the right salaries to attract them.
Finally, Chinese officials, even heads of local governments, take a keen interest in economic development.
These strengths are mitigated by a number of shortcomings of which I list three:
First, engineers lack fundamental scientific understanding. Very few engineers in China can develop engineering simulation software by themselves.
Second, basic industries and technology still lag behind more advanced countries, and China relies on imports for many specialized chemical products.
Third, young Chinese are increasingly more interested in making money than in developing science and technology, as their predecessors were.
The government understands our nation’s strengths and shortcomings better than I do, but I will offer an anecdote to make my point. I was told by the representatives of a Taiwanese technology company that they produce an industrial product and that they in no way feared competition from China. They said that they had plowed decades of work into this product and that it would be extremely difficult for anyone to catch up with them.
Need I go on?
Lee Chia-tung is an honorary professor at National Tsing Hua University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers