A discussion with Dutch Van Gessel is ideal for understanding the chamber's evolution from the 1970s through the 1980s, because he served as president in 1976-1977 and again in 1986. He tells first-hand how the character and the concerns of AmCham changed significantly in a decade's time.
During the 1970s, van Gessel describes the chamber as a small, cohesive group consisting largely of US television manufacturers such as Zenith and RCA, and components suppliers TRW and Corning Glass.
The few service-sector members included the Taipei Hilton, and the chamber included few lawyers and consultants, no advertising companies or PR firms. Even importers were rare.
Chamber meetings took place at members' homes in Peitou or Tienmu. "We would meet for beer and football at the house of one of the GMs," he remembers.
Relations with the government were also friendly and uncomplicated: since most chamber members were manufacturing for export, the government was generally very supportive.
But by the mid-1980, AmCham had diversified to include importers and service organizations focused on the domestic market.
As such, the interests of AmCham's membership no longer meshed as well with those of the ROC government; the chamber was now competing with local companies in some key fields.
"There were a lot more issues that had to do with market access [by 1986]," says van Gessel. "As soon as you start importing, you are goring somebody's ox, breaking somebody's rice bowl."
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the chamber membership continued expanding to include fields such as law, advertising, consulting, executive recruitment, hotels and entertainment, along with more welcomed foreign input as customers for Taiwan's growing IT industry.
Opening Taiwan's service fields to foreign companies has been a steady, if not always smooth, process.
The good news was that the 1980s marked Taiwan's aggressive move toward democratization. Although AmCham remained strictly a business organization, it heartily celebrated Taiwan's political transformation throughout the 1980s, congratulating the evolving new government whenever possible.
Several AmCham members indirectly supported the democratization of Taiwan.
Longtime member Nicholas Gould, now an independent consultant, was one of the most direct supporters. From 1984 to 1993, Gould hosted the ICRT radio show "Issues & Opinions," which discussed political and social issues.
The program, which began airing under martial law, often pushed the limits of Taiwan's fledgling free media. "He was right on the edge. We were nervous as hell any time he got on the radio," says van Gessel, who served on ICRT's board of directors.
"He'd talk about things that no newspaper [editors] in their right mind would broach. I don't think we ever edited him but we were watching him very carefully."
On one occasion, van Gessel even posed as a technician on the show, ready to "cut him off in case it got out of hand," says van Gessel.
Gould remembers that program, an interview with a US human rights activist harshly critical of the KMT.
Another highlight was interviewing the first representative of the new Democratic Progressive Party to face-off with a KMT representative on the air.
One interview with Irish priest and labor activist Father McGill, conducted after McGill had been deported from Taiwan, resulted in Gould's one-month suspension from the air.
He also raised eyebrows by airing an interview with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, after an unsuccessful attempt to help one of Taiwan's blacklisted dissidents return to Taiwan.
Despite the tension the show caused to management, van Gessel says, "Looking back on it, [Gould] did this country a favor. He and his show had a lot to do with the opening up of the airwaves and free speech."
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