Imagine Taipei in 1949, a town of rice paddies, pedicabs, and political turmoil. In May of that year, just months before Shanghai fell to communist forces in China, evacuations on the mainland forced 34-year-old US businessman Robert Scanland to relocate his business to Taipei.
Undeterred by the challenges of setting up shop for trading firm William Hunt & Co against this tumultuous backdrop, Scanland got down to business quickly. And ran into a serious snag. A major part of his new job was importing US machinery into Taiwan, but this was restricted under the US government's Marshall Plan. The section of the plan governing financial assistance to the Republic of China stipulated that procurement of equipment be overseen by the Economic Cooperation Administration in Washington. Private US importers, in Scanland's words, "had no place in the picture and would not be able to function properly."
To fight this obstacle, Scanland had an idea -- a "united approach" that gathered importers together to present their case to the US government "on an official letterhead of some nature." Thus, the founding of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei came to pass out of a simple need still central to its existence today: lobbying for an improved business environment.
In an article in the July/August 1976 edition of TOPICS (celebrating the Chamber's 25th birthday), Scanland describes how he enlisted two other US importers -- Loris Craig, vice president and manager of Taiwan Trading Corp, and Frank Smolkin, US proprietor of Pacific Commerce Co, Taiwan Trading Corp. "Among the three of us, it was agreed that we would endeavor to form an American Chamber of Commerce," Scanland writes.
After the trio found two other charter members, Americans working for US oil companies Caltex and Stanvac, the group applied for registration with the Taipei Municipal Government. Approval was granted on Sept. 14, 1951.
As soon as the first American Chamber letterhead was printed, Scanland and the other importers launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at Washington. "I am happy to say that our move was completely successful," Scanland writes.
The US government relaxed its restrictions on importing machinery into Taiwan.
There is no way Scanland could have realized that his success would be the first of 50 years of lobbying achievements for the chamber. Of course, not all AmCham efforts to improve business conditions have succeeded, but even those attempts that missed the mark served to communicate the chamber's concerns to the ROC and US governments, and to deepen AmCham's business roots in Taiwan.
This special edition of TOPICS highlights the growth and development of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei through its 50-year history. In many ways, AmCham's experience mirrors the ups and downs of Taiwan's own economic transformation since 1951 -- from the early years of basic infrastructure development, through the industrial growth of the 1970s, the economic miracle and democratization of the 1980s, the growth of the IT sector in the 1990s, and the current struggle for Taiwan to redefine its role and hit its stride amid the ascendance of greater China.
Through each of these transformations in Taiwan, Am-Cham Taipei has repositioned and redefined itself as well.
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