As South Korea’s Per Capita GDP Reaches US$30,000, Why Does Taiwan Become Old and Poor?

 As South Korea’s Per Capita GDP Reaches US$30,000, Why Does Taiwan Become Old and Poor?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 1, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The South Korea government recently announced that South Korea’s per capita GDP had exceeded US$30,000 as projected, reaching US$31,862. South Korea further projects that in five years, its per capita GDP may reach as high as US$40,000. Such news is indeed embarrassing to Taiwan. According to the forecast of the Budget Office under the Cabinet, Taiwan’s per capita GDP this year, as estimated, will reach a little over US$25,000, in other words, over US$6,000 behind South Korea.

Just as people in this country engage in a sustained dispute over whether Kaohsiung is "old and poor," in contrast with South Korea, it is an undisputed fact that the whole of Taiwan has become old and poor. Ever since the era of economic take-off, Taiwan’s economy for a long period of time led South Korea. Lamentably, in the progression of democratization, our country abruptly became prideful and complacent, and squandered countless amounts of energy on the controversy of national identity, while the ambition to develop the economy, however, disappeared from the rooster of priorities in governance.

In 1998, South Korea’s per capita GDP stood at US$8,000, in the same year, Taiwan’s per capita GDP was US$12,800. The per capita GDP’s of South Korea and Taiwan presented a "cross of death" in 2003 during the Chen Shui-bian administration. From that year on, the GDP curves of the two countries parted ways further and further, and Taiwan never caught up. At that time, Chen Shui-bian pushed for the political adventures of "one country on either side of the Strait" and "changing the national title and authoring a new Constitution," while under the table, he engaged in personal graft and corruption. Taiwan has not only been imprisoned in the ideological cage of “closed-door policies,” but in economics it also turned to complacency and self-pomposity.

South Korea’s democratization was, in reality, filled with crises and turmoil, with never-ending changes of government; however, no matter how radical the political struggles were, national identity was never a question. The South Korean society has had unanimous consensus with regard to "the country needs to be rich and powerful, and its industry needs to be upgraded." In contrast, after the advocacy of Taiwan’s “Asia-Pacific Operations Center” of the 1990s, it has never initiated strategic planning at the national level. The DPP, which has pursued Taiwan independence, because it cannot plan an economic development strategy separated from Mainland China, could only become mired in self-debilitation.

How should Taiwan, old and poor, ponder on its resurgence?

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