The Portuguese who discovered it at the beginning of the 16th century called it Formosa, the beautiful island. The Chinese call it Taiwan. Those who govern it nowadays designate it the Republic of China in order to assert that legitimate China is right there, even if the geographical China is elsewhere. In the contemporary world, there have been similar cases. One can very well understand that under some circumstances, which now and again may be tragic, a minority of citizens feel themselves to be the depositories, the trustees and the guardians of the nation's history and future. Moreover, in the present case this minority accounts for some 14 million of people, which makes Taiwan the 35th state in population among the more than 120 that share the planet.
He who comes back to Taiwan after a few years, and who makes some other stops in Southeast Asia and the Far East, is quickly convinced that one is quite wrong to speak exclusively of the "Japanese miracle." Of course, this miracle exists; there's no denying it. Tomorrow's history of the Far East will be written as much by Japan as by China. If the Japanese miracle is the most spectacular, however, it is far from the only one. There is the one of Hongkong, which has lasted for 10 years; there is the one of Singapore; there is the one of Malaysia; there is the one of Taiwan; and another is beginning in South Korea. One can say, also, that such countries as Thailand and the Philippines are beginning to enter a period of development which will raise them to the same level.
The example of Taiwan is probably me most significant. In 1949, when the Chinese of Chiang Kai-shek took refuge here, they found that almost everything had to be done in this small island inhabited mostly by peasants (largely natives of Fukien province) who were just emerging from 50 years of Japanese colonial administration. Japan governed Formosa economically as all parent-states do with colonial territories. Furthermore, the Taiwan of 1949 had to secure its defenses against a colossal enemy.
Setting up the state, defending it, industrializing the economy, fitting out the country—these were the tasks laid before the new masters of Taiwan. They had to fulfill them in an atmosphere of skepticism, if not hostility.
The United States helped Taiwan, not for love but for political reasons based on analysis of the situation. They helped others, too, and they still help some. The difference between Taiwan and so many other assisted nations is that the Chinese of this island, owing to their hard work, made such good use of the help that by 1965 they were able to do without it. Taiwan, sometimes called a satellite of the United States, is nowadays absolutely the master of its economic fate. This may be attributed to the industrious genius of the inhabitants and to the discipline they have accepted.
Taiwan was a rural land. Today it is an industrialized country which exports first-quality finished goods and which has set up at the harbor of Kaohsiung, a city of 800,000 inhabitants, a kind of a free industrial zone appropriate to modern industrial development. Without going into detailed statistics, we can point out that Taiwan's output increased by 10 per cent annually from 1965 to 1968, that agrarian income increased threefold in 20 years, and that with annual foreign trade of more than US$2 billion, Taiwan has attained a figure which, in per capita terms, is 16 times that of Communist China.
Taiwan and the free East Asia area afford economic liberty, individual initiative and opportunity for profit. This area stands out from Red China to show that, in economics as in anything else, Communism always loses. Red China represents the past, maladjustment to the modern world, waste and ineffectualness. The miracle of free Asia, as contrasted with slave Asia, cannot be seen to better advantage than in Taiwan, which is a sort of West Berlin of the Far East.
One must go further in analysis to rectify some of the other ideas widely accepted in the Western world. This Taiwan regime of economic efficiency is also one of social justice. The traveler, and especially one who has seen the country many times in the course of the last decade, has the impression that wealth is not only growing but is better distributed. Perhaps Taiwan is still a "poor" country, with per capita income of about US$260 (close to that of Turkey), but it is a country where misery is not on view, where there are no beggars and no underfed children. Everybody eats one's fill. Everybody is clean and well-kept. Primary school children of Taipei, a city of nearly 2 million people, even those of the less well off, wear polished shoes. Their socks are white and carefully washed and their yellow caps are pretty and neat. When one arrives in such a place, coming from Calcutta, the impact is tremendous.
Opposed to the workers of the town or of the land, who may not be rich but who live in decency and humanity, there is not to be found any great luxury to be coveted. Of course, here as anywhere, there are some well-off people and some privileged. The gap between these and the well off is within acceptable limits.
Education keeps most children in school until at least 15. Illiteracy is being wiped out. All this means that the true face of Chiang Kai-shek's China is a far cry from the caricature drawn by the wits of Western intelligentsia. At the risk of definitively shocking those intellectuals, it is necessary to tell them that this China is infinitely closer to genuine socialism than the other when socialism is defined as equality of opportunity.
The Republic of China presents itself as a free nation. It is obvious that the political regime of Taiwan is not the same as those of Western Europe or of the United States. These latter, incidentally, are not exactly perfection incarnate. This is an Asian regime, the regime of a nation at war, of a threatened nation. Nevertheless, the nation is constitutionally governed and has regular elections and large liberties. Regimes cannot be judged according to any absolute criterion; they can only be compared. Taiwan is to be compared not with the British regime but with that of Red China. The verdict is clear and unmistakable. Contrasted with the totalitarian dictatorship of Mao, in which all liberties are suppressed, and where 7 million men and women are obliged to organize their lives according to the "thoughts" of a ridiculous red, booklet (this does not prevent our "Incroyables" of French thought from going into an ecstasy of delight at its reading), compared with all this, the regime of Chiang Kai-shek is a model of liberalism, equity, temperance and humanity.
Moreover, this is also the mind of the Chinese people of Red China when they can express it. One hundred and fifty thousand of them have escaped to Taiwan since the Communists took over the mainland in 1949. Millions went elsewhere, mostly to Hongkong. Most are youngsters who knew only Communism. Their origins are diverse: from peasants to university teachers. Their mind is unanimous: life in Red China is hard, miserable and without freedom.
In Taiwan, they feel free and as happy as anyone could be after leaving his relatives in the power of a despotic, tyrannical regime.
Many underdeveloped countries are glad to have technical help from the Republic of China. The China of Mao Tse-tung exports subversion. The ROC exports its technics, its technicians and its taste for work. All are qualities which made the Chinese the first civilized people of our world. More than 30 countries of Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia welcome experts in agriculture and other endeavors from Taiwan. Institutes and schools of the island have trained thousands of technicians from throughout the world, mostly from developing countries.
In 1969, some 9,000 students of overseas Chinese communities were attending school in Taiwan. More than 40,000 have been trained in the last 17 years. The Republic of China is far from a country of nostalgic old soldiers. While Peiping tries to destroy society, Taipei undertakes to repair society and make it better.
Taiwan's lesson goes deeper. This is a country with a soul. Here is preserved the best of China, symbolized in the 25,000 treasures of the National Palace Museum. Here is the Chinese civilization of 5,000 years. To the visitor, Taiwan is healthy in mind and body. The impression is of a serious modesty. One feels a taste for work and research. Despite yearnings born of parting from the native land, the people are not sad. The people of Taiwan are joyful. They like life and their cooking is the only one in the world that can challenge that of France.
This joy of living is more in evidence after the hard first years of establishing the new Taiwan. It shows in the calm of the members of the government, who are less tense than formerly.
But love of good living is not the highest value of the people of the Republic of China. Their patriotism and civic spirit can be felt and seen in their way of acting. This is a country where the flag still means something and where the word "motherland" has real significance. Here is found a good lesson for a world where nothing is holy, where decadent intellectuals proclaim that God has died and that the "mother country" does not exist. The crowds who gather at monuments to honor the dead of a long and costly war are reverent. Their attitude shows the great respect they hold for the fundamental values of civilization.
This China is the China of forever. It is the true China, regardless of the reverses suffered in a tragic war. Even if those who now lead the Republic of China committed errors before 1949, these have nothing to do with the atrocities in Communist China, nor aggressions the Maoists have perpetrated throughout the world.
History cannot be remade but it can be corrected. When one stays in the orderly, diligent China of Taiwan and is moved by its efforts and its moral dedication, he can tell himself that the world would have another present and another future if this were the China on the mainland today.