Dateline: Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. Depending on your point of view we spent today visiting the smallest province of China, one with a rebel government OR we spent today visiting the nation of Taiwan, which sometimes calls itself the Republic of China. What is incontrovertible is that Taiwan is overwhelmingly populated by people whose ethnicity is Chinese, and whose language is one of perhaps three or more Chinese dialects. Some of Taiwan’s residents believe it to be a Chinese province, others believe it should be independent. Just about all of China’s residents believe Taiwan to be a part of China.
Here at COTTonLINE we follow the duck analogy. If it waddles like a duck and quacks, it is a duck. Taiwan acts like a nation; it collects taxes, raises a military, has a foreign policy and makes treaties, operates courts, conducts relatively free elections, conducts schools and hospitals, etc. So we think of it as a nation. If the nation of Taiwan decides someday to be part of China, fine. If not, it should be free to go its own way. At the same time we understand the concerns China has about holding their nation together, and they clearly view Taiwan as part of their nation.
What did we see today? We visited the National Palace Museum which contains most of the world’s finest Asian art. It was crowded to the point where viewing the exhibits was difficult. It is crowded because many tourists come here from the PRC. I hope these visitors recognize that had these treasures been in China during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards would have destroyed most of them, at Mao’s urging. I fear the visitors don’t know this since history, particularly embarrassing history, isn’t much taught and even less learned.
We also visited the Martyr’s Shrine, where their war dead are honored. We saw the changing of the guard, a military ritual that we also saw back in 1986. The ritual hasn’t changed, but it is still impressive. Then we spent a half hour at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, a beautiful complex in Taipei that includes the memorial itself and two performance halls, one for music, another for opera. Many people climbed the 89 steps to view the statue; I found a comfortable seat and spent the time in contemplation of a beautiful space and some amazing architecture. We had great weather, which helped.
Taipei isn’t trying to become another Singapore, they don’t need to do so. Singapore needs westerners to make it work, Taipei doesn’t need them. Taipei has earned its own wealth, the GDP per capita of Taiwan is five times that of China. We heard the statistic that Taiwan builds 60% of the world’s laptop computers.
When we were here in 1986 and again in 1989, you often saw soldiers standing guard at various buildings in Taipei. We didn’t see that today. My sense is that Taiwan is feeling less threatened by the PRC. It is possible that they will eventually assume a status with respect to China not unlike that of Hong Kong or Macau, a sort of Special Administrative Region. On the other hand, as people from the PRC come to Taiwan and see the higher standard of living and greater political freedom, and take those memories home to China, who knows what the result might be?
