What do you think of Tsai's Go South policy?

Tsai has just announced a revival of the 1990s Go South policy. See here

taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_c … id=2808338

I’m not economist, but I’m wondering if rehashing a policy from 20 some years ago can really meet the challenges in a much changed world. I don’t know what happened to LTH’s Go South policy under the CSB years. World Bank statistics show that between 200 and 2007 trade with China increased three-fold. Did it peter out? Did it fail? What are Taiwan’s realistic options to improve its economy? How much do politics and ideology influence economic policy and decisions? Will Taiwan be an economic backwater 10 years from now?

[quote=“schwarzwald”]Tsai has just announced a revival of the 1990s Go South policy. See here

taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_c … id=2808338

I’m not economist, but I’m wondering if rehashing a policy from 20 some years ago can really meet the challenges in a much changed world. I don’t know what happened to LTH’s Go South policy under the CSB years. World Bank statistics show that between 200 and 2007 trade with China increased three-fold. Did it peter out? Did it fail? What are Taiwan’s realistic options to improve its economy? How much do politics and ideology influence economic policy and decisions? Will Taiwan be an economic backwater 10 years from now?[/quote]

I would say those Taiwanese business that moved into Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand are perfectly positioned now. Although people should really look into going to India.

Yes, I frequently hear India mentioned as some kind of magic bullet, but it’s not like India is sitting there waiting for us. India has signed 28 FTAs with most major economies, Taiwan has signed two. India has already signed an economic cooperation pact with South Korea, which is Taiwan’s biggest competitor in many fields.

The magic elixir of “free trade.” Ma is on his hands and knees begging for Taiwan to be included in the TPP, and all he gets for his efforts are more demands from the USA to allow more unsafe US food products into Taiwan, with no real guarantee that Taiwan gets any benefit whatsoever other than a pat on the head. Tsai’s policy on the TPP appears to be exactly the same, but almost none of you would admit that, because whatever Ma does is evil and whatever Tsai does is golden.

Tsai can declare a “Go South” policy, but that doesn’t mean India or any other country is actually going to sign a free-trade agreement with Taiwan, especially if it will “upset China.” Or that it would benefit Taiwan if it happened. The problem with free-trade agreements is that details matter - they can help the economy, or wreck it.

Doubly ironic that most of the self-declared liberal pro-DPP folks on Forumosa are normally against free-trade agreements when they were back on the old country (USA, Canada, Europe, etc). When they move to Taiwan, they suddenly become fervent free-market capitalists. Just sign any free-trade agreement without even reading it, because it will make Taiwan look like a “real country,” even if it wrecks the economy.

Foxconn is moving huge operations to India right now.

Mainland China is a dangerous drug for Taiwan. The money and opprtunities are not even there like before.

I wasn’t aware LTH had promoted a similar policy, so thanks for informing me.

I’m for improving trade relations with southern neighbors, though i also doubt that any more FTAs will come regardless of who is in office. Cozying up to China hasn’t helped Taiwan all that much, and Ma’s huge push for FTAs has been nothing short of embarrassingly ill-fated. Of course FTAs are good for an export-oriented country, but who is going to risk angering China to sign them with Taiwan? Even with relations “at the best they’ve been in 60 years” (as Ma likes to trumpet), nobody is willing to cut a deal with Taiwan except for Singapore and New Zealand. Those are good starts, but it seems like there’s nowhere left to go at this stage. TIFA would be nice if it could be concluded, but Tsai hasn’t indicated she’ll stop doing that. I’m not sure what the economic results of ECFA are, but I’m guessing that since Taiwan’s economy hasn’t improved by leaps and bounds over the past 5 years, it’s fairly negligible. Korea has agreements either live or pending with the US, China, and the EU – check and mate. Taiwan simply can’t go about business as usual and hope to compete with better Korean products at cheaper prices.

I applaud Tsai for treating Taiwan like a country, not a province. The Ma administration has been so utterly obsessed with trade with China that everything else has been on hold indefinitely. By looking to the rest of the world, it seems that Tsai will actually give the foreign ministry a semblance of purpose again.

by the way, FTAs aren’t magic bullets either. Well they are for huge corporations, not for anyone else.

[quote=“OrangeOrganics”]Foxconn is moving huge operations to India right now.
[/quote]

I assume that Foxconn ran the numbers and decided that this would be a good investment. Or that there was less political risk operating in India than in China (Question: Are they actually closing the China factories, or will continue operating them in addition to the India ones?). Either way, Foxconn made this decision while Ma was still in office, and in the absence of any formal free-trade agreement. I’d be surprised if a Tsai electoral victory affects their decision either way. Businesses tend to be better than governments at crunching the numbers and deciding where to invest.

Foxconn has to have some investment in India since there are local electronics brands there now.
China will surely remain their main manufacturing base, Indians are a lot more difficult to control. Foxconn will never find another China.
The go south policy was a big part of csBs platform, but businesses just do what they want in the end. Something like half of Taiwanese companies on the mainland are now losing money and shutting down or moving elsewhere. Many will
Bank their cash and their profits from property price increases.
Taiwan’s exports have dropped severely over the last year. Things aren’t too rosy, not that you’d know it looking around the cities! I don’t see any major layoffs either, so it may be from just a few industries or commodities than anything.

At the same time, there’s a reason China has taken off and India hasn’t. China does infrastructure very very well, and Chinese workers are well educated (in the grand scheme of things), and the country is known for its ruthless “harmonizing” efforts. India is more of a mixed boat. Lots of regions have trouble with electricity, unpaved roads, overcrowding, and security problems. On top of that, Taiwanese people speak the language and are culturally very attuned to China – it’s a natural match. The fact that in spite of that TWese companies are still losing money shows just how lihai the people in power are. India is probably more business-friendly when it comes to policy, but the infrastructure (both hard and software) is severely lagging.

This is in the past. Look at the change in policies and tariffs in the last year. Many Chinese companies are building factories in India right now. The human resources are there and the political will is there. Guo Tai Ming himself made a huge speech about India being the future. India never had an industrial revolution and its starting to happen now.

Taiwan business magazines are awash with stories about India now.

Make of that what you will, but the India scramble has started.

Both India and China are part of the BRICS nation, which also include Brazil, Russia and South Africa. It’s an attempt to create a more multi-polar world as opposed to the US dominated unipolar model. It is probably wise for Taiwan to foster relations with the emerging markets rather than aligning itself too closely with the US and Japan. India and Pakistan are also scheduled to join the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization).

You make it sound like China had amazing infrastructure when the US, Japan, Korea and Taiwan first allowed companies to move jobs to China. You don’t need the entire country to have great infrastructure at first. You just need to have great infrastructure in a few selected cities that were close to major ports.

India is finally ramping up now, but it will never become a manufacturing giant on the same scale as China due to cultural reasons and tech changes. It has the growth rates that will attract a shitload of FDI to access
The internal market and plug into supply chains.terry gou has variously said Indonesia will be the next one, Brazil will be the next one…he’s always saying this stuff.
In the case of India they will definitely have to invest but the iPhone’s will
Still be put together in China.

But a one-party authoritarian state doesn’t run into problems like this because nobody can say no: nytimes.com/2014/01/15/busin … .html?_r=0

The BRIC label (no S), as used by the Goldman Sachs economist who coined it, refers to the similarly rapid economic development (from the point of view of 2001, but projecting forward several decades) between those four countries. As the term caught on, leaders of the four countries–later five, counting South Africa (whose economy O’Neil doesn’t think is comparable)–started meeting under the BRIC / BRICS name. So what began as an observation / prediction of a more multipolar world, has now become a kind of club which has issued declarations to that effect, and eventually set up a development bank.

Personally, I have followed Tsai advice and gone south. It’s not bad. Certainly better Indian food.

But what do single women know about Going South?

(Sorry Hokwongwei!)

[quote=“Zla’od”]But what do single women know about Going South?

(Sorry Hokwongwei!)[/quote]
:roflmao:

[quote=“Hokwongwei”]I wasn’t aware LTH had promoted a similar policy, so thanks for informing me.

I’m for improving trade relations with southern neighbors, though i also doubt that any more FTAs will come regardless of who is in office. Cozying up to China hasn’t helped Taiwan all that much, and Ma’s huge push for FTAs has been nothing short of embarrassingly ill-fated. Of course FTAs are good for an export-oriented country, but who is going to risk angering China to sign them with Taiwan? Even with relations “at the best they’ve been in 60 years” (as Ma likes to trumpet), nobody is willing to cut a deal with Taiwan except for Singapore and New Zealand. Those are good starts, but it seems like there’s nowhere left to go at this stage. TIFA would be nice if it could be concluded, but Tsai hasn’t indicated she’ll stop doing that. I’m not sure what the economic results of ECFA are, but I’m guessing that since Taiwan’s economy hasn’t improved by leaps and bounds over the past 5 years, it’s fairly negligible. Korea has agreements either live or pending with the US, China, and the EU – check and mate. Taiwan simply can’t go about business as usual and hope to compete with better Korean products at cheaper prices.

I applaud Tsai for treating Taiwan like a country, not a province. The Ma administration has been so utterly obsessed with trade with China that everything else has been on hold indefinitely. By looking to the rest of the world, it seems that Tsai will actually give the foreign ministry a semblance of purpose again.[/quote]

Ma wants to trade more with the US. It’s the DPP that keeps preventing that from happening by scaring the electorate over ractopamine. You and I have been eating that stuff for most of our lives. Are we less healthy than Taiwanese? If anything, Taiwan’s big problem is air pollution and the solution to that is nuclear energy which is renewable. But who’s against that? DPP.

Let the DPP rule for 4 years. Do better.