Contents Published by Rowman Littlefield Publishers,Inc A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman Littlefield Publishing Group,Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard,Suite 200,Lanham,Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com Estover Road,Plymouth PL6 7PY,United Kingdom Preface vii Copyright 2011 by Rowman Littlefield Publishers,Inc. All photos copyright 2005-2010 David Boraks 1 The World's Tallest Building All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by 2 Building Taiwan 11 any electronic or mechanical means,including information storage and retrieval systems,without written permission from the publisher,except by a reviewer who 3 From Farmers to Manufacturers 41 may quote passages in a review. 4 From "Free China"to Democratic Taiwan 59 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available 5 "America Is Boring at Night" 95 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 6 "An Opportunity Full of Threats":Cross-Strait Rigger,Shelley,1962- Economic Interaction 117 Why Taiwan matters:small island,global powerhouse Shelley Rigger p.cm. 1 Making Peace with the China Inside and the China Outside 133 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN978-1-4422-0479-9(doth:alk.paper)-ISBN978-1-4422-0481-2 8 The International Birdcage 165 (electronic) 1.Taiwan-Foreign relations-21st century.2.Taiwan-Foreign relations- 9 Why Taiwan Matters to America and the World 187 United States.3.United States-Foreign relations-Taiwan.4.Taiwan-Foreign relations-China.5.China-Foreign relations-Taiwan.6.Taiwan-Economic Bibliography 199 conditions-21st century.I.Title. DS799.625.R542011 Index 203 951.24905-dc22 2010051417 About the Author 211 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America
Preface Why Taiwan Matters is a book I have wanted to write for a long time.It answers the two questions I am asked most often about my work:What makes Taiwan so interesting to you?And,why is Taiwan such a big deal in U.S.-China relations? I hope when you finish reading the book the first question will be an- swered.My goal is to give you an inkling of the excitement I feel every time I step off a plane at the Taoyuan International Airport.I felt that excitement for the first time in 1983 when I was a twenty-one-year-old college student embarking on a summer research project.I will never forget how bewilder- ing,terrifying,and exhilarating it was to find myself standing alone with my suitcase on a hot,dusty sidewalk in Taipei,armed with nothing more than an envelope of traveler's checks,a couple of telephone numbers,and four semesters of Chinese language instruction.Today,arriving in Taipei feels like returning to a second home-but it is a home where time accelerates and people cram three days of living into every twenty-four hours. The second question-why does Taiwan matter so much to U.S.-China relations?-is more complicated.Taiwan matters to the United States and other countries because it is an economic powerhouse that supplies much of our information-technology equipment and because it occupies a strate- gic niche in the Western Pacific.It is unique in the world in having all the attributes of a state-territory,population,government-except recogni- tion by others.The People's Republic of China insists that history makes Taiwan part of China,and because the government in Beijing is the rec- ognized Chinese state,it should rule the island.Few Taiwanese share that view,but there is a lively debate about how to fend off Beijing's attentions Navigating between the two sides-developing amicable relations with vii
vin Preface Preface ix China while supporting a democratic Taiwan-is a challenging assignment Finally,I thank my traveling companions:David,Emma,and Tilly Bor- for leaders in the United States and other countries aks.You make every day an adventure. Still,I hope to convince you that Taiwan is more than just a "problem." Taiwan also matters because its history makes it a test case for values Ameri- Because Chinese is not a phonetic language,there is no one-to-one cor- cans and many others claim to cherish.For centuries,powerful countries respondence between Chinese characters and Roman letters.Spelling out treated Taiwan as war booty,an afterthought.In the past half century, Chinese words is a matter of deciding how they sound and writing down Taiwan's people rejected that status and stood up for themselves.In their that sound as best we can.There are a number of systems for spelling Chi- determination to claim a better future,they created one of the world's nese words;the most popular is the pinyin system used in the People's most successful economies and vibrant democracies.The United States has Republic of China.That's the system that gives us "Beijing"instead of the long encouraged free markets and democratic politics,both as a matter of old "Peking."Unfortunately,Taiwanese don't use any particular system national interest and as a reflection of its national values.Taiwan proves consistently.As in so many realms of life,Romanization in Taiwan is,shall it is possible to achieve those ends peacefully,and to do so in a way that we say,democratic.In this book,I have not attempted to impose any order respects and enhances its turbocharged culture.For that,it matters. on the chaos of Taiwanese spelling,but instead have used the most popular spelling of each word.For place names I use the most familiar form;for Why Taitan Matters is the culmination of all the work,all the reading,all the personal names,I use the spelling preferred by the individual in question. trips,all the interviews and encounters I've had in nearly thirty years of travel- ing to Taiwan.Throughout the text,I include many quotations from people I've talked to over the years,indluding hundreds of formal interviews and in- formal conversations.No one gets to know a place well without lots of help, but the student of Taiwan is especially blessed because hospitality,generosity, and conversation are (along with baseball and eating)national pastimes. Thanking everyone who has helped me get to know Taiwan over the past thirty years would make the book unconscionably long,but there are a handful of people who have provided extraordinary support,encourage- ment,and information over the years.Chen Chu,the mayor of Kaohsiung was the first public figure I met in Taiwan.Without her help,my efforts to learn about Taiwan politics would have come to nothing.Scores of Taiwan- ese,American and PRC officials,politicians,and activists have talked to me over the years,on and off the record.Those conversations shaped my views fundamentally.I also owe an enormous debt to my fellow political scien- tists,especially those in Taiwan,whose patience with a foreign scholar's efforts to understand their homeland is humbling. I have benefited from the scholarship of researchers in Taiwan,the PRC, the United States,Canada,Australia,and Europe,nine of whom rendered especially generous (and timely)service to this book at a critical moment: Richard Bush,Tun-jen Cheng,Dafydd Fell,Sara Friedman,Steven Phillips Michael Szonyi,Alan Wachman,Vincent Wang,and Joseph Wong.And I thank my friend,guide,mentor,and confidant Fan Meei-yuan for making time for me in every visit. Funding from the Smith Richardson Foundation made my work on this and other books possible,and I thank the foundation most sincerely.I have also received funding,administrative help,and bounteous encouragement from Davidson College.Thanks also to my research assistants:Shuo-ting Chen,August Ho,Yi-long Huang,and Aaron Saltzman
1 The World's Tallest Building Taipei 101,the blue-green glass tower that reigned for six years as the world's tallest building,is everywhere in Taiwan.Its image appears on advertisements,magazine covers,brochures,guidebooks,and billboards; the soaring structure itself is visible from nearly everywhere in Taipei City. As ubiquitous as Shanghai's Oriental Pearl TV tower-and considerably more graceful-Taipei 101 has become the iconic image of contemporary Taiwan. Patterned on the tiered design of traditional pagodas,the 101-story tower consists of eight cubical sections with gently sloping sides rising out of a massive 20-story base (a less generous description:a stack of Chinese take- out containers).The topmost floors and spire take the shape of a stupa,a Buddhist monument,and the building is decorated with traditional motifs symbolizing fulfillment and health.Taipei 101 is an engineering marvel, the world's tallest building-built atop a tectonic fault,stabilized by a mas- sive,gilded sphere perched on giant pistons twelve hundred feet above the ground.According to C.Y.Lee,the architect who designed it,Taipei 101 blends recognizably Chinese elements with cutting-edge global aesthetic and technical standards.In his words,the building embodies "Oriental philosophy and Western technology. Lee's magnificent building is beautiful from any angle-from any angle, because Taipei 101 stands completely alone.Unlike skyscrapers in Shang- hai,Hong Kong,and New York,Taipei 101 does not compete for sunlight with a forest of similar buildings.It was constructed at the edge of Taipei as part of a redevelopment scheme to update a sleepy residential neighbor- hood.The next tallest building in the city is less than half its height,and three miles away.Taipei 101 thus stands absolutely alone;no man-made 1
2 Chapter 1 The World's Tallest Building 3 object obstructs the views from its eighty-ninth and ninety-first floor ob- ties that made Taipei 101 possible-ambition,invention,perseverance, servation decks.On a clear day,one can see the point where Taiwan disap- and a strong tolerance for risk-are the same qualities that allow Taiwan to pears into the Taiwan Strait to the west and the East China Sea to the north. survive and prosper as a major global player. When he accepted the commission,architect Lee knew he was designing The purpose of this book is to explain what it is about Taiwan-an island a building that would embody Taiwan's grandest aspirations.Originally slightly larger than Belgium with a population a little less than Ghanas- envisioned as a typical office complex-a sixty-six-story tower flanked by that has won it such a prominent role in global economics and politics. two smaller buildings-investors and politicians talked themselves into To understand why Taiwan matters we will explore how the people living something far more ambitious.Given the mandate to design the world's there built a society capable of economic and political feats so astonish- tallest building in a city in which fifty stories had seemed massive just a ing that scholars call them "miracles."We will also consider the unique decade before,Lee predicted,"The location and height will reshape the international predicament that compels Taiwan to seek the global limelight Taipei skyline.The impact will be enormous;it will be [an]icon not only and that powers its domestic politics.We will see that Taiwan matters for for Taiwan but to the world as well." practical reasons (its companies make most of our notebook computers C.Y.Lee accomplished his mission:Taipei 101 is a magnificent building, and flat-screen devices)and moral ones:Taiwan proves that a determined an icon,unquestionably.But does Taipei need an iconic building?Did it nation can attain democracy,freedom,and prosperity peacefully.And I will make sense to spend almost two billion dollars constructing this behemoth try to persuade you that Taiwan matters for a more fundamental reason:it in a city with plenty of office space?Why expend vast resources engineer- matters because its people,like all people,are ends in themselves,not mere ing solutions to typhoon winds and frequent earthquakes when there was instruments of someone else's destiny. ample vacant land nearby?What does it say about Taiwan that the island would become the home of a project so expensive,so hubristic,so gratu- Taipei 101 is at the eastern terminus of Hsinyi Road.At the western end itous and disproportionate? stands a tall building from another era,Taiwan's presidential office.In its It is easy to dismiss Taipei 101 as the product of an overeager society of day,it too was a skyscraper,with a two-hundred-foot tower rising above a strivers with a serious inferiority complex-and that possibility is not lost magnificent marble entrance flanked by massive,elaborately decorated six- on the building's neighbors.Taiwanese are proud of the achievement,but story wings.The building was completed in 1919 as a headquarters for the not too proud to make fun of the building and criticize everything about governors-general who ruled Taiwan for fifty years on behalf of the empire it-from its architecture to its feng shui.As a symbol of contemporary Tai- of Japan.In 1895 the Qing Dynasty ceded the island to Japan in the Treaty wan,Taipei 101 cuts two ways.It captures Taiwan's vitality and optimism; of Shimonoseki-a treaty whose legitimacy Chinese nationalists deny.Japan the fact that Taiwanese could finance such an undertaking reflects the is- viewed the island as an opportunity to prove its bona fides as a rival to im- land's extraordinary economic dynamism.At the same time,the building's perialist powers in Europe.Within a decade,Tokyo was ready to declare its solitary profile parallels Taiwan's isolation.From a distance,it can look Taiwanese colony a success,and in 1906 it invited its best architects to submit fragile,lonely,and exposed. designs for a government building capable of crowning its achievements. Taipei 101 may be a vanity project,but if ever there were a country The winning design took years to build,but the result was the impos- that could be forgiven such a folly,it is Taiwan.For centuries,even as its ing ornate building that still stands today.It was badly damaged by U.S. economy and culture flourished,the island was regarded as a political bombing during World War Il,when Taiwan served the Japanese empire as sideshow,the object of other nations'attention,never as the subject of its a source of food and soldiers.After their surrender in 1945,the Japanese own history.Taiwan and its people have been traded back and forth among cleared out and,following renovations,new occupants moved in.The flag great powers,their fate decided in distant capitals,their voices absent from they hoisted atop the tower belonged to the Republic of China. the negotiations. The ROC had been established in 1912 after Chinese revolutionaries Since World War II,however,the island has developed an identity and striving for democracy and development overthrew the Qing Dynasty. aspirations of its own.Its people have resisted outsiders'efforts to absorb, From the beginning,the Republic faced profound challenges.Warlords- subjugate,and marginalize their homeland.Keeping Taiwan alive as an au- independent military leaders loyal only to themselves-controlled much of tonomous actor in international politics and economics requires determi- China.Differences in political ideology and personal loyalties drove vicious nation and energy.It also requires creativity,as Taiwan has been forced to infighting within and between the two main political camps,the National- work outside the world's conventional structures and practices.The quali- ist Party,or Kuomintang(KMT),and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)