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I have relatives in Taiwan and you are grossly exaggerating the situation to support your argument. > Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Ta
by codexon 17y ago
I have relatives in Taiwan and you are grossly exaggerating the situation to support your argument.
> Okay, my mother worked as a child sweatshop laborer in Taiwan in the 60s, before the country bootstrapped itself out of abject, agrarian poverty, and I take issue with this.
Much of Taiwan was poor because of Japanese occupation. Some were rich because of it. That divide is the sole reason Taiwan seemed poor to you.
My relatives prior to that, had enough land to farm and have a comfortable living. They were able to hire people to help. And from what I heard, that was the middle-class at the time. It is annoying that people look at the poorest farmers who probably had barely-arable land and tilled by hand as proof that all farmers are better off being in a sweat-shop.
When WWII came around, the Japanese began to militarize. They seized some of the best land, and they demanded ALL the rice and other staple crops from every farmer. One of my relatives hid some rice to eat, and was beaten to death when the Japanese found out.
Meanwhile, the Japanese were trying to assimilate Taiwan quickly, so they artificially consolidated economic power into the Taiwanese who hated China: the rich and nobles who fled from the Communist uprising. This redistribution of wealth impacted my relatives for generations, even today.
The outcome? The new upper-class were able to own the natural resources, the capital, and the businesses, while my relatives and many others were left with less land and a decade of lost wealth. Those people lived the life of luxury throughout the 1960's. Tales rebounded of bosses that sat around playing mahjong, harassing female workers, or flying all over the world, while exploited workers worked for their enrichment from 6AM-10PM. However, even this did not last very long.
Many companies already started to relocate their sweatshops to China by the late 60's.
Taiwan did not need sweatshop labor to pull itself out of poverty. That is highly insulting. It was not because of laziness or stupidity that much of Taiwan was so poor. Like you, my parents' brothers and sisters all graduated from college with graduate degrees. They were forced to to waste 4+ years of their life and money, just so they could be of service to the ruling-class.
Meanwhile even today, my college graduated uncle with 15 years of experience is being outranked at a bank by one of the privileged who is fresh from high school. Because businesses pay out workers far less the owners, the gap created by Japan will never be closed.
This is why I am not a gung-ho free-capitalist, but I realize that if I were in their shoes, I would definitely be one.
- potatolicious 17y ago> "Tales rebounded of bosses that sat around playing mahjong, harassing female workers, or flying all over the world, while exploited workers worked for their enrichment from 6AM-10PM." It sounds like your beef is with the KMT, not the Japanese - it is true that the Japanese occupation enriched (justly or otherwise) a lot of Taiwanese families, but the ones doing the "sitting around" after the occupation ended were primarily KMT bureaucrats. As a matter of fact, this is something the older generation complains about endlessly. Despite being second-class citizens under Japanese rule, the government ran like clockwork; contrast with post-KMT-takeover Taiwan where the government became unfathomably inept and corrupt. This trend did not even begin to reverse itself until legitimate, sizable political opposition began to form against the KMT. Side note: Said opposition (the DPP) turned out to be just as corrupt, if not moreso, than the ones they formed to replace. Thankfully years of pressure from a significant opposition party, and several more of even-more-inept DPP rule has created some saner political choices in Taiwan. > "Taiwan did not need sweatshop labor to pull itself out of poverty." Then what did it need? Imaginary capital investments in our many fine local delicacies? Become a tourism-driven banana republic? Grow fruit for American mega-conglomerate fruit companies? The industrialization of Taiwan generated the necessary economic lift that, to be fair to the KMT, under sound governmental oversight, resulted in the country we see today. I think it's incredibly disingenuous to pin the blame for everything on the Japanese - the KMT fucked up just as much as they got right. If you want to talk about government corruption, nepotism, and downright incompetence, the KMT is a far better example than the Japanese. > "That is highly insulting. It was not because of laziness or stupidity that much of Taiwan was so poor." I'm not sure what I've said that insinuates this... but that's certainly not what I meant. I'm also not sure how this point relates at all to the necessity of industrial economies for developing nations.
- codexon 17y ago> It sounds like your beef is with the KMT, not the Japanese The Japanese were the ones who empowered the KMT, and they were the ones who took away the crops. They were so empowered by the Japanese, it took several decades before political opposition could be built against them. > Then what did it need? Imaginary capital investments in our many fine local delicacies? It didn't need sweatshops. Taiwan would have recovered by itself with the millions in US aid. Taiwan already had a deluge of capital that was being concentrated and wasted by the Japanese entrenched upper-class. Sweatshop work was the short term solution for a long term problem. Like I mentioned before, sweatshops quickly disappeared to China as early as the 1960's. How many man-years do you think were wasted in low value trinkets instead of going straight through education and more lucrative industries? > I'm not sure what I've said that insinuates this. Most of what you said insinuates this. You claim that sweatshops were necessary to bootstrap Taiwan out of abject agrarian poverty and that all people who were farmers were better off as sweatshop workers.