Interesting post in the NY Times from Thomas L. Friedman on Taiwan’s high level of knowledge and skills:
Taiwan isn’t lucky.
Taiwan is populated by people who mostly work hard and who are mostly capable, resourceful, and decent.
And yes, I work with Taiwanese people every day.
[quote=“Adam_CLO”]Interesting post in the NY Times from Thomas L. Friedman on Taiwan’s high level of knowledge and skills:
This is a deeply flawed piece. Taiwan did have forests, good fisheries, and a rich agricultural economy. It is not a barren rock. The central mountain range largely protects it from typhoons.
Do those of us who live here seriously think that Taiwan allocates its human talent wisely? That Taiwanese education is a model for the US?
Taiwan did make some wise choices in investing in health and education when it was a relatively poor country. The US should do the same.
The fourth largest financial resources in the world ? Defined how ? The phrase “WTF” springs to mind.
[quote]Taiwan isn’t lucky.
Taiwan is populated by people who mostly work hard and who are mostly capable, resourceful, and decent.
And yes, I work with Taiwanese people every day.[/quote]
:roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: I somehow picture Tomas wearing a piping taiji silk shirt doing kungfu in the park.
Taiwan up until recently was extensively mined for coal, copper and gold - and in fact, there was recently some interest from an Australian company to buy Taiwan’s last existing working gold mine. Aside from this, much of the gold, as I understand, was grabbed from China.
There are still coal seams, but they are at present too expensive to mine but these could re-open if coal prices become prohibitive, but this is very, very unlikely.
The forests were used as a resource for lumber.
There are fairly extensive pockets of natural gas under Taiwan and this has been and is being extracted.
Taiwanese fishing fleets leave harbours around Taiwan every day.
Taiwan was a mass grower and exporter of sugar cane, and literally much of the south has been developed around this industry.
Taiwan’s location, which incidentally happened naturally, puts it in good stead to make a lot of income from its ports.
Most technology developed in Taiwan is a rip-off of foreign technology.
The Taiwanese inherited most of its infrastructure, industry, transport network, machines, mines, and industrial complexes from the Japanese and are lucky in the fact that they got pretty much everything handed to them on some pleasant Wedgewood crockery - they are lucky in that respect, but the article is completely at odds with the reality regarding Taiwan’s resources.
The article is a little over the top. However, anyone who cannot see that the Taiwanese have been punching well above their weight for a long time must be blind. Whatever criticisms we throw at their education and working methods, it’s difficult to argue that they don’t have a well-managed economy compared to most in the west.
The education system may seem flawed, but it served its purpose, chiefly, to drag the people out of the rice paddies and factories and into the science parks. The system’s brutal emphasis on never making mistakes, that mistakes are shameful and to this day, corporally and emotionally punishable has bred a generation committed to academe like no other before it.
And rote they did. Sacrificed sport and art and leisure and dug into the short term memory art of the cram. And it worked, as Friedman so aptly pointed out a few years ago when he wrote that article. He actually made the rounds from FOX to Letterman talking about Taiwan and basically quoting that article in the interviews.
The blowback of course, is a somewhat social ineptness, coupled with a draught of creativity and a culture that dares not challenge the status quo. Making money becomes the prime directive and selfishness rules the day. The drivers, the laoban class, the salary slave, the owners of FoxConn…
And yet, there is kindness and community and evolution. The mei meis and jie jies are not settling for Prince Slob-a-lots, population is dwindling, and the economy weathers and flourishes. Since the writing of that article, Taiwan has only evolved. Another successful election, no bombs or half-baked assassination attempts, Taiwan plods forward, trends upward. China Lite.
Tourism is starting to become an actual industry and it’s only a matter of time before ze germans get here, bloating about in BeiShrWan.
So how did Taiwan get so lucky? Rote Learning. But if we aren’t careful and acknowledge the role experiential learning plays in the development of a new culture (which is what is going on right now, as you read), I fear it is doomed to the same fate as America.
The “Dream” is shifting to Taiwan as the nightmare settles from sea to shining sea. Can they run with it? Well, they’d better get out from behind the books a little more often. Find the balance. Wu Wei Er Tze…
And all this under the watchful eye of some 1500 missiles. That’s impressive.
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This is the same guy who praises the lofty vision of the Chinese Communist Party. I want a pair of those rose-tinted specs. :neutral:
Well, maybe Taiwan got a leg up by being the first Asian sweatshop of the 70’s making cheap plastic crap for Western toy manufacturers to mark up 500% and sell to wealthy middle class parents? And repeating the same business model in the 80s with electronic components …
I guess Friedman forgot to mention that all of Taiwan’s wealth is held by a miserly, graying population and that the current generation is so thoroughly bankrupt that under-30s have to rely on handouts for just about everything.
I thought there were 900 missiles.
The article was published two days ago. ??
Taiwan did get lucky in one respect. Most countries that get saddled with corrupt, violent, kleptocracies tend to repeat the cycle over and over again. The elites observe what the invaders did and, upon re-emerging, copy it wholesale. South Americans have been doing it since the Spaniards showed them how. Half of Africa since time immemorial (although with a bit of a leg-up from the British, Belgians, Dutch … etc).
Bizarrely, Taiwan managed to transition from being ruled by a bunch of vicious clowns to a more-or-less functioning government and legal system within a couple of generations, or at least one that delivers a manageable level of corruption and incompetence. That’s quite an achievement, and off the top of my head I can’t think of any other country that’s managed to do that quite so quickly, successfully and painlessly.
South Korea would be another example.
Its more to do with the culture , Chinese ethnic groups value hard work and material success more. So do the Vietnamese, so do the Koreans and the Japanese. Less so for some SE Asian countries.
Taiwan has done well to get to this point but it needs to pull up it’s socks and the KMT need to stop favoring the rich and asset holders all the time. It needs to make the move toward a more caring society in terms of pushing for higher wages, better social welfare provision, better working conditions, cleaner environment. These concepts have been quite slow to be implemented and Taiwan is very much a follower, when the Koreans do it the Taiwanese will think about doing it.
Basically to make a further leap in living standards they have to change the model they have been following, but I see change here as being painfully slow.
The other thing I take issue with is the foreign exchange holdings being held up as a huge marker of success. Yes it is good to have foreign exchange holdings. But who holds the money? A lot of that is due to the open nature of the Taiwan stock market, something like 20% of the assets are held by overseas investors.
When foreign investors purchase stocks or bonds in Taiwan they need to park their money here and that is one of the reasons for the large amount of foreign exchange. This fluctuates according to how foreign investors move their money around.
academicjournals.org/AJBM/PD … 20Fang.pdf
fidelity.com.au/insights-cen … -march-12/
This is the reason , as far as I can tell, that stocks tend to rise and fall in unison in Taiwan. They also concentrate in certain sectors like electronics. So the stock market and the foreign exchange holdings are heavily influenced by the investors money coming and going from the island.
A better marker of success is high income and a high quality of life.
[quote=“Toe Save”]The education system may seem flawed, but it served its purpose, chiefly, to drag the people out of the rice paddies and factories and into the science parks. The system’s brutal emphasis on never making mistakes, that mistakes are shameful and to this day, corporally and emotionally punishable has bred a generation committed to academe like no other before it.
And rote they did. Sacrificed sport and art and leisure and dug into the short term memory art of the cram. And it worked, as Friedman so aptly pointed out a few years ago when he wrote that article. He actually made the rounds from FOX to Letterman talking about Taiwan and basically quoting that article in the interviews.
The blowback of course, is a somewhat social ineptness, coupled with a draught of creativity and a culture that dares not challenge the status quo. Making money becomes the prime directive and selfishness rules the day. The drivers, the laoban class, the salary slave, the owners of FoxConn…
And yet, there is kindness and community and evolution. The mei meis and jie jies are not settling for Prince Slob-a-lots, population is dwindling, and the economy weathers and flourishes. Since the writing of that article, Taiwan has only evolved. Another successful election, no bombs or half-baked assassination attempts, Taiwan plods forward, trends upward. China Lite.
Tourism is starting to become an actual industry and it’s only a matter of time before ze germans get here, bloating about in BeiShrWan.
So how did Taiwan get so lucky? Rote Learning. But if we aren’t careful and acknowledge the role experiential learning plays in the development of a new culture (which is what is going on right now, as you read), I fear it is doomed to the same fate as America.
The “Dream” is shifting to Taiwan as the nightmare settles from sea to shining sea. Can they run with it? Well, they’d better get out from behind the books a little more often. Find the balance. Wu Wei Er Tze…
And all this under the watchful eye of some 1500 missiles. That’s impressive.[/quote]
Good grief. You guys need to stop. This almost brought a tear to my eye. 
Taiwan is ranked 5th on this list (if you count the EU as a country).[/quote]
Thanks, so the article is totally misleading. Financial resources and foreign currency reserves are not the same thing.
To measure a country’s success and international standing based on how much money it has invested in it’s foreign currency reserve is ridiculous. On this list, Algeria and Switzerland stand above the UK, France and the USA. GDP better lah …
Certainly. It just seems to me that one single stroke of luck - ie., Chiang Ching-kuo being, against all odds, a basically decent person with a sense of duty to his country - determined Taiwan’s entire future. It could easily have ended up like Burma if he’d been a chip off the old block.
As for foreign exchange: a large foreign exchange reserve generally just means that a country is exporting more than it’s importing, usually unintentionally. Excessive and persistent holdings of foreign paper is not good because it is just that - paper. The country has been giving stuff away and has been getting nothing in return.
Friedman has always been full of shite. He’s a festering pustule on the noxious lardass of what passes for modern American journalism.
Mencken would have roasted morsels like him in a single paragraph.
I thought there were 900 missiles.
The article was published two days ago. ??[/quote]
Ummm…June 2010:
And I think the number of missiles has grown every time I’ve seen it referenced over the last 10 years. I think, no matter what the number, my point is made.
I thought there were 900 missiles.[/quote]
And I think the number of missiles has grown every time I’ve seen it referenced over the last 10 years. I think, no matter what the number, my point is made.[/quote]
Dude, you missed your line. “There were.” 