Taiwan as an Entrepreneurial Model
Continuing from my last post about entrepreneurial periods in the U.S. history has shown that our economy is stronger during periods of entrepreneurialism.
One interesting thing to look at is Taiwan’s economic rise. They were one of the poorest countries in the world following World War II and are now one of the wealthiest per capita.
The reason for this is that the Taiwanese government nurtures the entrepreneur. They create as many opportunities for people as they can. Taiwan plays a very important role in the global marketplace and other countries can use them as a model for how to turn an economy around in two generations.
Basically, this post could not be more wrong if it tried.
1. During the heyday of econ growth here, the government had, and still has, the highest rate of government ownership of business outside the Soviet bloc states.
2. The government has never "nurtured" small and medium-sized businesses. It has mostly ignored them -- because traditionally the government has been controlled by the mainlanders who arrived post-45 and especially post-1949, and who were hostile to the local Taiwanese who made up the small business sectors.
3. Taiwan's poverty following post-WWII was unusual and transient. During the Qing dynasty it had a brisk trade with China and later Japan, and was a place of comparative wealth and progress. Under Japanese colonialism 1895-1945 per capita incomes probably exceeded those in Japan proper by the late 1930s. It had the most advanced infrastructure and the most progressive outlook of any Asian nation outside Japan. In '45 the Republic of China occupied the island and claimed it as part of China, and then thoroughly and extensively looted it. It then took the Taiwanese until the mid 1960s to reach the per capita income levels they had enjoyed in the late 1930s.
4. The Taiwan experience cannot be used as a model. It is unique, and was created by copious US aid and US trade assistance to Taiwan's export sector, because the US wanted a wealthy Free China as a model against Mao's Communist state.
Hope this clears things up a little.
Michael
