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Ma apology belies his
own secret agenda
By Huang Tien-lin 黃天麟
As the May 19 protest rally against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was getting
started, Ma called an impromptu press conference in which he admitted that
during his four years in office there have been four areas where he has not
performed well enough: Not enough jobs have been created; the increase in
average salaries has been too slow; the wealth gap has not been sufficiently
reduced; and the government has not been good enough at communicating its
policies. However, apart from expressing unease and guilt, Ma remained silent on
the reasons that lay behind these problems, nor did he mention the government’s
policy goals.
The reason too few jobs have been created is that Ma’s economic policies over
the past four years have treated China as the focus for Taiwan’s economy,
leading too many Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China. This has resulted
in a lack of investment in Taiwan, which has resulted in the loss of jobs.
The reason the increase in average salaries has been slow is that after
Taiwanese businesses invest in China they threaten Taiwanese employees with
factory closures as a way of keeping salaries low, with the consequence that
wages have failed to grow fast enough.
The reason the wealth gap has not been sufficiently reduced is that Taiwanese
doing business in China are amassing vast wealth while exploited workers in
Taiwan are consistently getting poorer.
Regarding the lack of communication on government policy, Ma’s words are simply
a load of garbage. He does not believe in consultation at all — he even vetoed a
referendum on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) four times.
The outcome of all these failures has caused many in Taiwan to suffer.
Under former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo
(蔣經國), the view was that China was simply a bunch of “communist bandits” that
one should not have dealings with. Under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) the
“no haste, be patient” policy for dealing with China was outlined. In other
words, during these years, the nation’s economic policies all focused on Taiwan
and on implementing autonomous economic development strategies for its growth.
It was these policies that allowed Taiwan to lead the Four Asian Tigers for so
many years.
Since coming into office in 2008, the Ma administration blatantly started to
shift the economic development emphasis away from Taiwan, focusing instead on
China and completely deregulating Taiwanese investment there. This contributed
to Taiwan rapidly turning into another Hong Kong. As Taiwanese businesspeople
have invested increasing amounts in China, foreigners have also invested less
and less in Taiwan. For example, foreign investment in Taiwan in 2007 was
US$15.3 billion, while last year it was just US$4.9 billion. The annual growth
rate for domestic private investment has been almost zero as Taiwan, a smaller
economy, keeps on being integrated into China’s bigger economy. Businesses in
Taiwan have also lost their impetus to upgrade, transform and innovate.
In other words, the reason why Ma’s administration has failed to create enough
jobs, that average wages are not rising quickly enough, that real incomes are
shrinking and that the wealth gap is constantly widening is that the government
is promoting economic policies that focus on China, not Taiwan. For this reason
Taiwan is unavoidably becoming a subsidiary of China’s economy.
I hope that, apart from expressing their anger, Taiwanese who took part in the
May 19 rally will also be able to see through the Ma administration’s facade and
secret agenda.
Huang Tien-lin is a former presidential adviser.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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