Is Taiwan failing?
That is the question. Salaries for Taiwanese and expats are falling or stagnant, manufacturing base is gone, politics are mess, is the island doomed?
Yes it is. Run for your life.
I believe the more useful verb here may be SWIM.
“Doomed” could probably be defined more tightly.
failing in slow motion…but for the majority of us on the island, we will become worthless long before Taiwan does…
LOL
Taiwan is its own universe. It is just a different planet to the rest of the world.
One should not ask is Taiwan failing you, but are you failing Taiwan? 
[quote=“CarlyOasis69”]Is Taiwan failing?
That is the question. Salaries for Taiwanese and expats are falling or stagnant, manufacturing base is gone, politics are mess, is the island doomed?[/quote]
I’ve seen this question asked in various ways over the years, and even I have thought similar years past. Notably during the SARS crisis and endless fights of the CSB years. I have been surprised at the prosperity and infrastructure improvements in Taipei but the relative stagnation of the rest of the island, although at least Kaoshiung is cleaning up nicely, if Kending or other spots are left to fester.
I also marvel at the tourist hordes which have brought in investment, which is a two faced sword.
The future trends don’t look promising, with large numbers of elderly looking for funds but a rapidly shrinking youth population. This is going to further decimate smaller cities, towns, and villages around the region. I guess the big cities will continue to prosper (for Kaoshiung prosperity might be a strong word) and perhaps Hualien and Taidong
And even Tainan will be revitalized due to retirees and touristm from Asia.
However for young people in general ,
Or should I see young people with no family money or assets available, I don’t think Taiwan holds much promise, as it hasn’t since I arrived here 15 years ago. Housing is too expensive to purchase and salaries are too low and importantly, no major new industry has started since I have been here, except for low paid service jobs in the tourist industry!
The failure of Acer and HTC is not s good sign, although from creative destruction new opportunities can emerge. Taiwan companies will struggle to compete with big investments from Samsung and Now Chinese companies, some will prosper like Tsmc, but the flat panel and LED and memory industry…zombies.
All true.
The silver lining being the new blood. The weekly news we get about some Taiwanese person or group taking home the gold for invention, ideas, tech and science related. Or the maverick taking home the gold for best bread, best craft beer, best cake, best etc etc.
I see and hear the young dudes speaking eloquently, succinctly and enthusiastically about biz ideas at the coffee shop on a sunday while i’m hungover and vegging out.
I see big potential. Taiwan must harness this talent, and build services, ecosystems, knowledge platforms around emerging spaces - IoT, biotech, etc - otherwise it will be more of the same old. They’ve seen how marketing is done, and are starting to get it. We’ve seen dozens of companies re-brand over the last decade. (they got it, don’t fuck around with something we are not good at, let’s pay western firms locally and abroad to help us with branding and marketing).
Time to harvest all those decades of higher education and tech, science training. The only thing standing in the way now is psychological - that’s why i get so pissed off at the obsession with English teachers, waiguoren this and waiguoren that, cookie cutter attitude towards the international platform. This is fucking them up
I agree with everything you say in general, but the “Internet of Things” just looks like a poor man’s Skynet. We don’t need to hook our toasters and burglar alarms to a huge web. That is a recipe for high tech disaster. I want to go in the opposite direction. The public and media rejected Google Glass, which was the first phase of the Kurzwellian THX-1138 surveillance state. Glass failed, because no human wants to be turned into a walking NSA listening post.
http://betanews.com/2014/01/30/the-internet-of-things-hasnt-skynet-taught-us-anything/
And biotech won’t help anyone. 50 per cent of food grown never reaches the plate, so why are they hawking GMO as a solution for hunger? I want to create agricultural space: More organic/hydroponic/low-tech vertical farming food platforms. Simplicity is the way forward.
Apart from that, I think you are correct about the future we could make…
“Internet of things” is just marketing drivel invented by people with MBAs. In my industry people keep talking about it, but nobody can explain why anybody would want it. Technologically it isn’t really doable, and (as HHC just said) utterly pointless anyway.
Unfortunately, Taiwan tech companies do seem to latch onto marketing drivel, and I think that’s one reason salaries are low in that industry. They’re really not doing anything productive: just churning out endless low-cost consumer gadgets which involve a shitload of effort and make little or no profit.
As for failing in general: no, absolutely not. My observation is that Taiwanese society is quite responsive to change these days (in that they can recognise - eventually - that something is broken, and fix it). It still takes them a while (years), but that’s a vast improvement on the rest of Asia (decades).
IoT is very obviously the next wave. This one’s a no-brainer. One Taiwanese firm, Advantech, is doing all the right things in this field
bioIT as well. this is all very textbook. your average technology prof and tech futurist has been saying it since the 90s
Yep, Taiwan does seem to be able to change direction at times, usually slower than I anticipate, but it certainly has some momentum in the right direction for most of the issues out there. Things improve over time generally. The relatively strong democracy and some social supports means you don’t get SUCH jarring switches and revolts like Thailand. Yes there was trouble during the CSB years and recently, but civil society continued to function as per normal.
Pollution control and sanitation are going a bit slower than I would desire, as is the switchover from 20th century scooter tech. Honestly speaking, some areas of Taiwan, mostly the underfunded and neglected towns and villages, are a real mess, but the city environments, even though ugly are improving at a rapid clip.
Education and the immigration system not in step with a globalised world either. I don’t mean learning English but moving away from rote education and teacher talks, student listens approach. Maybe with less kids there will be a possibility to give more teacher time to the students, but the test/exam culture is chronic here. Adults emerge out of that with successful and happy lives IN SPITE of their education, not BECAUSE of it.
I would think Taiwan would be a huge success if they’d just clean up the air and the water and soil and give more time for kids to be kids. If Taiwan could invent it’s next biggest industry ‘clean green super livable Taiwan’ that would attract people to live here (local/immigrants) and invest here and see it as their home. Although that’s not enough, everybody needs to eat too.
So not I certainly don’t see Taiwan failing, in many respects its in a far better place than the early 2000s , when things were quite ropey indeed! The chance for armed conflict with China is quite low, and the visitor numbers from the region along with direct and low costs flights have helped to open up the island somewhat , even if it is still isolated politically.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
I would think Taiwan would be a huge success if they’d just clean up the air and the water and soil and give more time for kids to be kids. If Taiwan could invent it’s next biggest industry ‘clean green super livable Taiwan’ that would attract people to live here (local/immigrants) and invest here and see it as their home. Although that’s not enough, everybody needs to eat too.[/quote]
This is why I’m fascinated by the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project. This is an opportunity that Taiwan would be stupid to miss up on. Create the most unbelievable green tech super residential business park the world has ever seen. The govt should be rallying the whole country behind the project and ideas should be flowing like crazy, but …
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
The failure of Acer and HTC is not s good sign, although from creative destruction new opportunities can emerge. Taiwan companies will struggle to compete with big investments from Samsung and Now Chinese companies, some will prosper like Tsmc, but the flat panel and LED and memory industry…zombies.[/quote]
Acer and HTC deserve to fail. They suck.
Yeah but that’s not what the project was about. The project is simply about real estate speculation, the ‘aerotropolis’ part could have been any old thing to latch onto, it’s just a buzz word to allow large scale farm > urban rezoning under compulsory purchase through the local government and their appointed cronies. The farmers get their land purchased at a low price and then the local government sells off the rights to develop various plots to their mates, who then up the price by multiples for what will be factories or apartments (this is EXACTLY what the CCP in China do, and Taiwan has among the worlds highest rates of government compulsory purchase projects…essentially stealing private citizens land for officials to profit from!!!).
Another part of the aerotropolis is to approve a ‘free trade’ zone whereby companies don’t have to abide by pesky things like regulations on how many foreign laborers you can employ, or paying much taxes at all, EPA review , or importing Chinese goods and switching labels or any of that nonsense that stops somebody making a quick buck. I don’t see anything much for Taiwan in this except exploitation, less tax receipts and over development.
They have done the same in most counties around Taiwan (I’ve visited many of them, usually just square blocks of former farmland waiting for somebody to build a factory on), this is nothing new, just on a bigger scale. Anyway corruption has already been detected and the project is probably dead in the water.
Seriously, go to the aerotropolis website and try to get anything out of it except buzzwords and wishful thinking, there doesn’t seem to be any real depth to it, it’s just a catch all term. Taiwan doesn’t need anymore sea ports, it has loads of capacity already. Taoyuan airport needs expansion with a third runway and terminal, but that’s happening anyway.
taoyuan-aerotropolis.com/en_ … lan02.aspx
Here you’ll see they’ve changed the plans to show development around the Taoyuan MRT line. It’s pretty transparent what’s going on! The compulsory purchase channeled all that juicy land into the right hands.
taoyuan-aerotropolis.com/en_ … px?PType=3
Their investment plans and conferences had no English interface.
taoyuan-aerotropolis.com/en_ … ews01.aspx
LOL at this image!
You’re right. It’s another bullshit project.
I was hoping for something special
The best idea would be completely shutting down Songshan airport and make it some sort of botanic garden. Imagine a massive green space right in the middle of Taipei, that’s the shit.
On shuttering Songshan Airport: there’s already a thread about it:
http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=143549&hilit=songshan+airport
Guy
And about the Aerotropolis scheme: kudos to HHII for the terrific post. It’s a massive land grab. One can only hope that this scheme gets killed.
Guy