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China’s ‘Taiwanese experience’
By Huang Tien-lin 黃天麟
Each year on Double Ten National Day, famous performers lead everyone in singing
the national anthem outside the Presidential Office. The opening lines of the
anthem are “the Three Principles of the People, the foundation of our party.”
However, we all know that these three principles became meaningless long ago,
for what has really been promoted in Taiwan over the last few decades is a
capitalist market economy.
In other words, the Three Principles of the People are a metaphor to cover that
up. However, this metaphor for the market economy has also contributed to the
creation of the Taiwanese economic miracle and allowed a tyrannical government
in exile to hang on to power. The irony is that this phony “Taiwanese
experience” actually gave former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) the idea to
start huge economic reforms in 1979. Now, anyone who has been to Shanghai will
say that “socialism” is merely a metaphor used by the Chinese government to
cover up the fact that China is practicing a Western-style capitalist market
economy.
Of course, Deng would never have said he got the idea for his reforms from
Taiwan. However, it is within reason to say that if Taiwan had not provided a
successful model of a capitalist market economy based on the Three Principles of
the People, there is no way Deng would have come up with the “socialist market
economy” model that China now has.
The export-based economic development that Deng later adopted was also a clone
of Taiwan’s economic development strategy. Coupled with capital from Taiwanese
businesspeople, skilled Taiwanese workers, Taiwanese technology and Taiwanese
management methods, this all helped lay the foundation for China to become the
factory of the world as well as the world’s No. 1 exporter. Of course, while
China has been promoting the establishment of a market economy and improving its
financial management, Taiwan has also provided China with a framework to follow
and mistakes that they could learn from. In so doing, Taiwan has in effect
supplied the structure that underpins economic planning and development in China
There is no way that an independent and sovereign Taiwan can be a bad thing for
China. In future it could even prove highly beneficial. This is how things are
now and how they will be in future. The Taiwanese experience — which I use to
mean things that happened before in Taiwan that China can now learn from in
areas like thought, capital, technology and cultural establishment — has shown
that China’s long-lasting insistence on a great, unified nation is devoid of
rational analysis and discussion. This is also what has made it hard for China
to modernize over the past 2,000 years. Only by giving this system up can China
start to move forward in the world and become a superpower recognized by all
nations, especially in the areas of politics, economics and culture.
Huang Tien-lin is a former national policy adviser to the
president.
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