Politically I don’t want Taiwan ‘unify’ with China … economically I wouldn’t mind, a China-Taiwan Economic Union.
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Not possible, used to be, but not now, China is too powerful and autocratic already.
Why LOL.
Also what is weird with three generations? Grandparent, parents , grandkids.
China has textbook living standard improvements since 1960s.
China isn’t in danger of being bombed and swallowed up by a giant neighbour anytime soon.
A generation is 30 yrs.
60s was cultural revolution in China. Taiwan had textbook living standards improvements from the 60s to 90s. You got the timeline wrong.
No I got it exactly right, from the grandparents generation things started to turn around.
I’m well aware when the cultural revolution happened.
Don’t know what the LOL is for.
It means that when the economy stops growing at a very fast rate, China is fucked.
And things started to turn around in China since the late 80s the earliest. That’s not grandparents’ generation.
Why is it ‘fucked’ exactly ?
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Nah it was opening up from Nixon in the 1970s.
China is going to be able to avoid the middle income trap by having an endless supply of ambitious poor people. China will hit some bumps, but they have talent, resources, money and a huge domestic market. They will be fine
Actually there’s a hard stop on how much their living standards can grow unless energy and food sources can be expanded.
It’s not just China but Indian sub continent and the Middle East and Africa with vastly expanding populations that are food and energy hungry.
There’s just not enough resources to go round, if we depend on carbon fuels we’ll either cook to death or suffer from acidification of the oceans.
The U.S. appears to be firming up its commitment to Taiwan, at least this administration. However much I abhor Trump, I might have to vote for him if his policies toward Asia continue.
Trump is not the best president for trade, but he said he likes bilateral trade deals.
If the U.S. signs a free trade agreement with Taiwan, then Japan will follow. Then the dominoes will fall.
Japan does whatever the U.S. does. Furthermore, if that 17% tariff falls off for U. S. autos, Japan has to sign one or it will be at a disadvantage. After Japan, other countries.
The trade deals will add 1% to 2% to GDP. Then Taiwanese can afford to have more children to counter the aging population.
Taiwan’s talent is still fundamentally sound.
That’s hilarious. China’s median age is already near that of developed countries (actually it’s higher than some). The population pyramid is one step away from Taiwan and Korea’s when the level of household income is merely comparable to Taiwan and Korea in the 80s and their birth rate now is the same as Japan’s today. It’s aging at the fastest rate possible, and they can’t folllow Germany and Sweden’s precedent as ain’t no refugee’s gonna go there.
They have a lot of ambitious poor people all right, but there are and will be way more old folks. Their demographic collapse is gonna be worse than Japan’s. They won’t be fine, they are in for a perfect storm.
The only way to counter aging population is immigration. A miracle can happen to Taiwan’s economy and the birth rate will remain far below replacement level. It’s just the way it is.
We need immigration too. But surely, we can do much better than the 0.9 per couple we’re doing right now once the economy starts booming again, like it did for half a century.
I doubt the economy is gonna boom again and it’s not 0.9 per couple. More like 1.2 or something. 0.9 was 2010, the tiger year.
Awesome!
There is nothing that is fixed that will hold Taiwan back from growing again.
All we need is two Years of the Dragon. How do we manage that? 
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If the goal is to lift average living standards, it would probably be more efficient for Taiwan to put efforts in to lowering wealth inequality instead chasing an extra basis point of GDP.
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When is it going to be booming again ?
Remind me again if you have lived or worked in Taiwan ?
It hasn’t boomed since I got here almost twenty years ago and political economic and social factors aren’t very positive.
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Could easily be done by collecting more property taxes and under table revenue.
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