Taipei Times: How would you rate the outcome of the Economic Development Advisory Conference and what is significant of the event in terms of improving the economy?
Tu (
If you look at Taiwan over the last 50 years, it was ruled by one party -- a dictatorship. Last year when the DPP took over the administration was the first time the ruling party was a minority party and also the first time that multiple sects emerged from multiple parties in the Taiwan political arena.
So I would say that Taiwanese society has not really learned to build a consensus under this kind of new environment. The Taiwan-ese community is still exploring how to build a consensus. We can therefore say the conference was the most successful consensus- building since the president took office.
In the beginning, I could not understand why [President] Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) required a consensus. Because he said in the kick-off meeting that if the conference reached a consensus then the Cabinet members had no right to veto the decisions. Throughout this meeting I was very angry because basically there were a lot of proposals, yet only one or two that were rejected. That is not really a good sign.
But after that I understood why the president required that, because it forced us to reach out to people [in the conference], to seek a consensus.
I think the most important proposal is the conclusion by the sub-committee related to cross-strait ties with China. Actually, in the second day of the three-day conference I could feel that the atmosphere of positioning and posturing had changed. We had reached a consensus [on the issue] by unanimous vote as a package deal.
That was a controversial issue on which to reach a consensus. That was quite a success for Chen. And it was presented in a way that the other side of the Strait understands -- that this was a consensus decision formed by a conference.
Our sub-committee had 98 proposals, and [multiple ministries'] heads and business leaders took part and everybody was willing to listen to other members opinions. Also there was a consensus among all of us to try to do something for Taiwan. We did come out with some recommendations to help Taiwan get out of the current economic situation.
TT: What was learned at the conference about the way the government manages policy-making?
Tu: If you look at Taiwan versus Japan -- I often make the comparison since they too have a leader who is from a minority party -- they are quite similar in that their businesses are still very much on the cutting edge of technology.
If you look at Taiwan's information technology side, it's one of the leading countries in the world. But if you look at the overall [domestic] infrastructure, it has not really caught up with the speed of the technology sector.
And in Japan, the distribution channels for doing business are the same as those from 50 years ago, so they are very backward in that way. But one way we are different from Japan is we could hold this meeting and find consensus. I think it would be very, very difficult for the Japanese to build a consensus given the way they communicate.
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