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Economists decry Chen's China talk

"President Chen is restricting the country by not allowing trade with China."

Lee Tong-how, professor of finance at National Chengchi University

A team of economic pundits criticized President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) stance that Taiwan should wage economic war with China, saying his party's ideology should not take priority over economic development.

Chen made the controversial comments at the opening of the Economic Development Advisory Conference on Sunday, saying that even if China has overtaken Taiwan "by a few stages" in economic development, Taiwan "cannot evade fighting an economic war" with China.

Responding to the conference, several prominent academics yesterday attended a seminar organized by the National Policy Research Foundation, a KMT think tank.

One pundit at the event said DPP party politics are getting in the way of economic reform.

"President Chen is restricting the country by not allowing trade with China," said Lee Tong-how (李桐豪), a professor of finance at National Chengchi University. "Actually, Taiwan's and China's [areas of expertise] should be complementing each other. If the conference follows Chen's definition that economic warfare is being waged across the Strait, the loser in the future might not be China."

"The [reason that the] administration organized the conference illuminates another issue," he said.

"Currently the administration is not looking for solutions [to economic problems]. Instead it want academics and others to address the problem and then provide solutions and hand those to the administration for execution. It's irresponsible politics.

"Meanwhile, it appears that the administration only hires obedient people who conform to its ideologies," said Lee.

Other pundits at yesterday's meeting also criticized the attitude of government officials.

"A number of government officials recently criticized many pundits as being too pessimistic concerning the prospects of the local economy. But actually it shows ignorance among economic officials within the DPP administration," said Norman Yin (殷乃平), a banking professor at National Chengchi University.

"When all the economic indicators are declining, the economic officials still say that the economy could grow. I hope that the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics will disclose the real economic indicators, instead of covering up the figures," Yin said.

Meanwhile, another academic at yesterday's meeting said the conference should work on attracting new investment if it wants to turn the economy around.

"The most important issue for the conference is to solve the issue of domestic investment. How to improve the current investment environment to attract foreign investment and to solve domestic unemployment problems should be on the top of the meeting's list," said Paul Chiu (邱正雄), a former finance minister who chaired the KMT-sponsored meeting.

"To suspend levying the securities transaction tax is not a cure for the stock market. However, the tax system on the securities should also be reviewed [by the conference]," said Chiu.
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