For newcomers to Taiwan, it is hard to imagine the island as anything but a bustling, wheeling-and-dealing society where the streets are clogged with Mercedes, where unemployment stands at 2 percent, and where the sound of construction work rumbles constantly in the background—in short, a place that is, as one popular saying puts it, “knee-deep in NT dollars.”
But all of this is new to people in their thirties and older. Taiwan got rich in a single generation. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was a struggling society just beginning to export textiles and household appliances to the West.
In fact, many of the biggest changes happened within the last five years. The lifting of martial law in 1987 set into motion liberalizations that touched all aspects of life. By the late 1980s it was legal to travel abroad, restrictions on new newspapers were abolished, and import tariffs were drastically reduced, bringing a flood of formerly unavailable foreign goods. At the same time, a booming economy and rapidly appreciating currency doubled the per capita income between 1985 and 1988. Perhaps most influential, the 1980s brought Taiwan its first overnight millionaires, people who made instant fortunes through the stock market and real-estate speculation. These nouveaux riches produced a new generation of wanna-be millionaires.
The late 1980s were Taiwan's kid -in-a-candy-shop years. Everybody made up for lost time by enjoying the newly available good things in life. Parents, especially, made sure their children had everything they themselves had missed out on. Children's clothing and toy shops boomed. What were considered luxury items to Mom and Dad became daily necessities for the kids. What were fanciful dreams to the older generation became real-life expectations for the young. During those years, students stopped asking for new shoes, they demanded US$100 Air Jordans. They didn't dream of buying a motorcycle anymore, they set their sights on a new sports car.
Lifestyles and life goals also changed drastically over the past two decades. While Mom and Dad might have witnessed a move from farm to factory, Junior leapt straight to a multinational trading office or a foreign university. While Western families went through such changes in several generations, Taiwan has gone from bikes to BMWs, from the tea farm to a graduate school overseas, in a matter of years. The result is a vast generation gap between today's twentysomethings and their parents. Teachings of traditional values such as hard work and frugality seem irrelevant in a society where the media celebrates a new entrant into the nouveaux riches every day.
Another major disruption in Taiwan society was the sudden exposure to things foreign. With growing international trade ties, liberalized import regulations, and increased spending power, imported goods were suddenly available and young people rushed to prove their cosmopolitan cachet. During the 1980s, owning foreign-made clothing, cars, or electronic goods established a person’s wealth and worldliness. Holidays in Europe, Australia, or the United States became commonplace, and many young people rushed to learn English and Japanese.
Taiwan is developing a truly international culture. In Taipei, so many people speak English that it is possible to get by using that language exclusively. Even traditional Chinese feasts given at weddings and birthdays now have an international twist: the toasts are made with French cognac and the entertainment includes Japanese-style karaoke singing.
Having grown up in this environment, Taiwan's twentysomethings are more aggressive, savvier, and more worldly than their elders. In many ways, their access to communications technology, international travel, educational opportunities, and new career options have made them better equipped to function in an increasingly interconnected world.
But are these skills enough? The younger generation is often criticized for failing to preserve traditional values and culture, and they have garnered a reputation for being materialistic, selfish, and frivolous. If Taiwan is to preserve its unique brand of Chinese culture, and maintain a society with traditional values and a sense of social responsibility, some of the energy now expended on the pursuit of material goals must be re-directed toward attaining social goals.
As young adults graduate from college, enter the workforce, and move out on their own, they must take a closer look at the society they have inherited. The flip side of Taiwan's booming economy does not look so rosy. In the process of building the island into an industrial and trading powerhouse, the environment has been severely damaged. And money has not solved social problems; while salaries have risen rapidly, many families can no longer hope to buy a place of their own because of sky-high real-estate prices. Meanwhile, Chinese culture is in danger of being replaced by a generic commercialism in which holidays are marked by shopping promotions and traditions are replaced by fads.
These are problems that can no longer be ignored, even by the most dedicated seekers of the good life. What good is a new sports car if traffic congestion is so bad that there is no place to drive it? Vacationing at one of Taiwan's new upscale resorts loses its appeal when the beaches are littered with garbage and the water is too polluted for swimming. As future stewards of society, the twentysomethings must evaluate the direction Taiwan has headed over the past decade and actively help chart a safe course for the future.