6 ms·

On the one hand you have a point, and they're drifting apart culturally - but at the same time Taiwan is not keeping up economically or culturally at all. If t

On the one hand you have a point, and they're drifting apart culturally - but at the same time Taiwan is not keeping up economically or culturally at all. If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, in a decade it's going to be hard to look at the evil communists across the straight who are much better off living standards wise. Taipei is a bit drab and ugly that hasn't seen any development in the last decade. It looks worse than second tier cities in China. Just my surface level impression is that you fly across the straight and people are dressed nicer and look better off on the subway there. On the cultural front they're also not doing hot.. the domestic culture is anemic. They don't make movies like they did in the 90s. Nobody cares about Taiwan's cultural output (other than bubble tea). The art scene is honestly.. pathetic here. In large part b/c they can't engage with anything historic other than recent history of the White terror. There is an eww factor with regards to engaging with Chinese history - its seen as the culture of the "other" and so you see it in every day life.. no tea ceremony, no hanfu, no interest in history. There is also no real "Taiwanese culture" that would be alien to a Chinese person (I can only think of Pili?). There is some stuff built on top of Fujianese culture.. but it's got no legs so far. The elephant in the room is that Taiwanese are also starting to consume more and more Chinese media - which was kinda garbage quality for a long time but has vastly improved in the last 5 years. I think this will take off. You can already see it on Tiktok and stuff.. people use a lot more mainland terms and expressions. If the Chinese were smart they'd build 10-20 ferries and offer people free trips to Xiamen/Shanghai. Most Taiwanese never travel to China and have little sense for the cultural similarities If the Chinese manage to ramp up chip production then Taiwanese is really screwed. TSMC is some insane percentage of the GDP. The other insane fraction is of course businesses that work in China like Foxconn.. China already has this place by the balls unfortunately

eru 2y ago
> If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, [...] Not going to happen. So far in all economies, catchup growth has inevitably slowed down as they moved to the global technological frontier. Taiwan was famously one of the Asian tigers. As you already noticed, her growth has slowed down a lot. PR China has seen enormous growth, but has also slowed down in the last ten years or so, and looks to slow down further. At the moment, PR China as a whole is a lot poorer per capita than Taiwan. Though you can argue that for our purposes here, Taiwanese people would compare themselves to the coastal provinces of PR China. (Of course, they would also look at Hong Kong as the obvious comparison for a (semi-) independent entity joining PR China. And just going by raw growth, officially joining China doesn't seem to have accelerated HK growth at all.)
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Computer programmers from Taiwan go to the PRC to earn more money. Heck, programmers from Japan and ROK find they can get more money in China as well with the right specialty. It is just one small segment of their economy, but the money China is willing to spend on tech is no joke, and dwarfs its neighbors in terms of salaries.
- contrarian1234 2y ago
  My point is that just from .. on the ground "feel" and quality of life .. Hong Kong, Taipei and large Chinese cities are all at rather similar levels (each having their own pluses and minuses). And I don't see them growing at the same rate from here on out. People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized (at least anywhere close to the degree the experts expected). Just over the period of the pandemic I saw personally a huge amount of development and growth in China, while virtually nothing in Taiwan. I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.). Similar to Hong Kong, a key economic driver was their function as a bridge between the West and China - but this has become mostly redundant now. All good things must come to an end. China will stall eventually too, for instance they're getting incredibly bureaucratic now, but they still have some runway.
  - eru 2y ago
    Thanks for elaborating. I'm living in Singapore, which has the interesting distinction of being (mostly) culturally Chinese, but politically independent. Singapore is one of the richest countries on earth (in terms of GDP per capita), and we are working our way up the list of richest cities, too. > I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. Growth slows down a lot as you hit the global productivity frontier. Taiwan isn't quite there, yet, but it's a lot closer that mainland China. I'm not sure what word you want to be using. Roughly and pragmatically speaking, you can catch up pretty quickly (with the right policies), but your per capita (non-oil) income can't really go (much) beyond the US. Once you reach American levels of prosperity, you will also find yourself reduced to roughly American levels of growth. That's not zero growth, just very slow growth compared to the preceding years of breakneck catchup growth. Have a look at eg Japan between WW2 and ~1990, and then from ~1990 to now. Naive extrapolation in the 1980s gave us some lovely cyberpunk, but reality looked different. You are right that Taiwan at about 33k USD per capita is still quite a while away from the US's roughly 76k USD per capita. And I suspect with the right policies, they could catch up more. Just look to Singapore for what's possible. But even our almost mythical city state has slowed down a lot compared to the halcyon days. > People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized [...] Just going by official PRC figures, growth has slowed a lot. And that's still compatible with your observation that observed PRC growth was higher than in Taiwan. > I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.). Yes, I am glad that Singapore has so far stayed clear of most of these issues. But I'm afraid that eventually, democracy will do us in. Where by 'democracy' I mean giving in to what voters say they want. Protectionism in various disguises is popular with ordinary folks the world over. And so are various measures to weaken work ethics, or to limit migration ('those foreigners are taking our jobs' is a cliched complaint for a reason). Our Gahmen is far from perfect, but I feel like the strongest policy disagreements I have with them is where against their better judgement they gave in to popular demands. I just hope that the decline in governance will be gradual enough, that it won't matter for me. (For comparison, cities like New York or London had pretty poor governance for probably close to a century now (depending on how you look at it) and they are still going strong, even if not as strong as they could have gone.)
maxglute 2y ago
Post HK crackdown protesters partying in and shopping in PRC. Lot's of buy China movement generating domestic brands across the spectrum happening. IMO yes, PRC cultural catchet will increase, most next TWers will look at sinicized next gen HKers and realize being "another" priveleged Chinese city not so bad. More new TW democracy dysfunction reveals itself, i.e. sunflower kids getting lesson in majority rule now, more jaded people will realize systems matter less than progress. The force against this is cohort voting math + entire LIO+Authoritarian propaganda layer with 100s of western NGOs on the ground. IMO pro-TW identity/independance bloc going to be too loud and too large past 2049.

eru 2y ago

> If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, [...] Not going to happen. So far in all economies, catchup growth has inevitably slowed down as they moved to the global technological frontier. Taiwan was famously one of the Asian tigers. As you already noticed, her growth has slowed down a lot. PR China has seen enormous growth, but has also slowed down in the last ten years or so, and looks to slow down further. At the moment, PR China as a whole is a lot poorer per capita than Taiwan. Though you can argue that for our purposes here, Taiwanese people would compare themselves to the coastal provinces of PR China. (Of course, they would also look at Hong Kong as the obvious comparison for a (semi-) independent entity joining PR China. And just going by raw growth, officially joining China doesn't seem to have accelerated HK growth at all.)

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Computer programmers from Taiwan go to the PRC to earn more money. Heck, programmers from Japan and ROK find they can get more money in China as well with the right specialty. It is just one small segment of their economy, but the money China is willing to spend on tech is no joke, and dwarfs its neighbors in terms of salaries.
contrarian1234 2y ago
My point is that just from .. on the ground "feel" and quality of life .. Hong Kong, Taipei and large Chinese cities are all at rather similar levels (each having their own pluses and minuses). And I don't see them growing at the same rate from here on out. People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized (at least anywhere close to the degree the experts expected). Just over the period of the pandemic I saw personally a huge amount of development and growth in China, while virtually nothing in Taiwan. I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.). Similar to Hong Kong, a key economic driver was their function as a bridge between the West and China - but this has become mostly redundant now. All good things must come to an end. China will stall eventually too, for instance they're getting incredibly bureaucratic now, but they still have some runway.
- eru 2y ago
  Thanks for elaborating. I'm living in Singapore, which has the interesting distinction of being (mostly) culturally Chinese, but politically independent. Singapore is one of the richest countries on earth (in terms of GDP per capita), and we are working our way up the list of richest cities, too. > I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. Growth slows down a lot as you hit the global productivity frontier. Taiwan isn't quite there, yet, but it's a lot closer that mainland China. I'm not sure what word you want to be using. Roughly and pragmatically speaking, you can catch up pretty quickly (with the right policies), but your per capita (non-oil) income can't really go (much) beyond the US. Once you reach American levels of prosperity, you will also find yourself reduced to roughly American levels of growth. That's not zero growth, just very slow growth compared to the preceding years of breakneck catchup growth. Have a look at eg Japan between WW2 and ~1990, and then from ~1990 to now. Naive extrapolation in the 1980s gave us some lovely cyberpunk, but reality looked different. You are right that Taiwan at about 33k USD per capita is still quite a while away from the US's roughly 76k USD per capita. And I suspect with the right policies, they could catch up more. Just look to Singapore for what's possible. But even our almost mythical city state has slowed down a lot compared to the halcyon days. > People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized [...] Just going by official PRC figures, growth has slowed a lot. And that's still compatible with your observation that observed PRC growth was higher than in Taiwan. > I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.). Yes, I am glad that Singapore has so far stayed clear of most of these issues. But I'm afraid that eventually, democracy will do us in. Where by 'democracy' I mean giving in to what voters say they want. Protectionism in various disguises is popular with ordinary folks the world over. And so are various measures to weaken work ethics, or to limit migration ('those foreigners are taking our jobs' is a cliched complaint for a reason). Our Gahmen is far from perfect, but I feel like the strongest policy disagreements I have with them is where against their better judgement they gave in to popular demands. I just hope that the decline in governance will be gradual enough, that it won't matter for me. (For comparison, cities like New York or London had pretty poor governance for probably close to a century now (depending on how you look at it) and they are still going strong, even if not as strong as they could have gone.)

maxglute 2y ago

Post HK crackdown protesters partying in and shopping in PRC. Lot's of buy China movement generating domestic brands across the spectrum happening. IMO yes, PRC cultural catchet will increase, most next TWers will look at sinicized next gen HKers and realize being "another" priveleged Chinese city not so bad. More new TW democracy dysfunction reveals itself, i.e. sunflower kids getting lesson in majority rule now, more jaded people will realize systems matter less than progress. The force against this is cohort voting math + entire LIO+Authoritarian propaganda layer with 100s of western NGOs on the ground. IMO pro-TW identity/independance bloc going to be too loud and too large past 2049.