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20 Taiwan Development Perspectives 2009 Another tremendous task is to reduce government debt. Taiwan’s fiscal deficit was once reduced to zero in 1989. There was a surplus in the following year. It was an outstanding achievement. The government debt ratio rose again in 1991. The debt balance rose from NT$216.9 billion in 1991 to NT$1,214.9 billion in 1999. The situation turned worse after 2000. The current national debt defies estimation. President Chen promised no tax increase while he was in office and it was practically the only one promise he kept. The debt balance rose from NT$2,478.6 billion in 2000 to NT$2,831.7 billion in 2002, bringing the cumulative public debt to NT$3,292.2 billion or 33.4 percent of Taiwan’s gross domestic product. With hidden amounts such as national health insurance losses added, Taiwan’s public debt topped NT$13.8 trillion or US$460 billion at the end of 2007, or more than 105 percent of GDP. One way to chip away this mountain of debt is to raise tax, but it is doubtful if Ma could do so, particularly after his Democratic Progressive Party rival had promised a tax cut during the presidential campaign. Moreover, Ma promised a package of 12 economic reconstruction projects, which needs NT$4 trillion (US$130 billion) to finance so as to keep GDP growing at six percent a year, lower unemployment to three percent, and raise per capita income to US$30,000 in eight years. He knows it is not at all easy to find that much money to implement all 12 projects with success. To make things worse, the silent tsunami, triggered by the U.S. stock market crash, is hitting Taiwan in full force. The Kuomintang administration had to scale down the high economic growth Ma promised in the presidential campaign. Recession is expected to start, and the government has to do what it can to stimulate domestic demand by channeling billions of dollars into Keynesian investment in infrastructure construction. As no quick economic growth was realized and unemployment rose, Ma’s approval ratings nosedived. They fell to a little over 20 percent from a record high 61 percent by the end of 2008. Another task, which is a much harder nut to crack, is a sort of moral rearmament to curb the hedonistic penchant of young adults. People in their 20s belong to what is popularly called the “strawberry generation.” They look nice, red and shining, but are extremely fragile like strawberries. Unlike their grandparents who experienced war, most of these young adults were pampered almost all their life so far. They detest hard work. They would do almost anything to get a quick buck. They are Machiavellian, convinced the end justifies the means. One public opinion survey asked college students whether they would cheat in examinations. Eight out of every ten respondents told their pollsters they would cheat just for getting high grades, albeit they knew cheating is wrong. Honesty is no longer their best policy. And they have role models to look up to: corrupt political leaders from President Chen Shui-bian on down. The rapid proliferation of colleges and universities, one lamentable outgrowth of Taiwan’s education reform Nobel laureate Yuan T. Lee recommended, wound up with an increasingly high jobless rate among new college graduates. Taiwan now has more than 160 degree-granting institutes of higher learning, the highest density of university population in the world with the concomitant fall in the quality of higher education. Quite a few of these young college graduates who could find no jobs chose to end their lives out of despair. They were true strawberries, not tough enough to survive the harsh struggle for existence. But by far a greater majority of the young people believe that life is for theirs to enjoy. Fun is easily available because banks are more than willing and ready to give them credit to buy it. These banks, overly eager to extend consumer credit to people who they know are unable to repay, have issued almost indiscriminately credit, debit and cash cards to help create millions of “card slaves” in the last two years. They are slaves in every sense of that word, for they have to toil probably throughout the rest of their lives to repay their card debt. Taiwan’s suicide rate has soared. On the other hand, Taiwan is becoming an M-shaped society, where the middle-income group continues to dwindle while the high income earners and the
Campaigns of 2008 and Beyond 21 people falling below the poverty line are increasing. The gap between the rich and the poor is fast widening, while wage-earners have seen their disposable income shrink over the past four years. Ma’s economic reconstruction master plan was intended as a remedy. One spot of sunshine is sighted in Taiwan’s external relations. Ma is no stranger in the United States. Born in the former British crown colony in 1859, Ma came to Taipei with his Kuomintang apparatchik father in childhood. He earned a law degree from prestigious Taiwan University in 1972 and went on to study at New York University, where he obtained an LL.M. degree in 1979. It was at New York University where he met his future wife Christine Chou. They were married and together went to Cambridge, Massachusetts. He worked as a consultant at the Law Office of the First National Bank of Boston from 1981 to 1982 and got an S.J.D. degree from the Harvard Law School in 1984. He was an associate for Cole and Deitz Law Office in New York briefly before joining the University of Maryland Law School. The Mas returned to Taipei in 1984. Ma started his civil service career as deputy director of the First Bureau of the Office of the President after his return from the United Sates. He served as a senior assistant to and an official interpreter in English for President Chiang Ching-kuo. After a brief stint as a deputy secretary-general of the Kuomintang, Ma was appointed vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council in 1991. He was minister of justice from 1993 to 1996. In 1998 Ma beat Chen Shui-bian in the mayoral election in Taipei. He was reelected in 2002. Three years later, he was elected Kuomintang chairman. He stood for president, while he headed the Kuomintang, visiting Washington to get acquainted or renew friendship with American leaders. President Ma mended relations between Taiwan and the United States frayed during President Chen Shui-bian’s eight-year reign. In a telephone conversation shortly after Ma had been elected, President Bush talked to his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao and they were agreed that dialogue should be resumed between Taiwan and China on the basis of the consensus of 1992. Shortly thereafter, Vincent Siew attended the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in the resort city on Hainan Island, where he had a landmark meeting with Hu Jintao and presided over a roundtable on the economic exchanges between Taiwan and China in his capacity as chairman of the Cross-Strait Common Market Foundation. The cross-Strait common market, a brainchild of Siew’s, is on the Kuomintang platform. At the roundtable discussion, Chen Deming, Chinese minister of commerce, offered at least NT$1 trillion (US$33 billion) in foreign direct investment in Taiwan. All the money would be invested in Ma’s 12 economic development projects. It would be the first capital flow from China to Taiwan. Accounting for three fourths of Taiwan’s aggregate foreign direct investment in China, which totaled US$45.76 billion as of the end of 2007, the new Chinese capital bears one fourth of the cost of Ma’s Keynesian master plan to build and improve infrastructure and start strategic industries. P. K. Chiang, chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), led a high-power delegation to China in June to resume dialogue between Taiwan and China that was disrupted at the end of 1999. Chen Yunlin, chairman of the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), came to Taipei at the head of a 60-member delegation on November 3 to sign four agreements with Chiang to further improve the Taipei-Beijing relationship. The four accords were inked on November 6. President Ma received Chen and his delegates at the Taipei Guest House. Under one of the four agreements, direct charter flights along much shortened air routes cut the time and cost of travel across the Taiwan Strait. So did direct maritime shipping between Taiwan and China under another of the four accords. The SEF and ARATS, both charged with conducting cross-Strait relations, would negotiate arrangements for joint financial and banking cooperation to better cope with the silent tsunami that is engulfing
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