Oh HELL no!!

Don't you find it very disturbing that Mainland China's "Public Peace" police will be allowed to patrol in Taiwan and arrest whomever they like? Why is Taiwan compromising its sovereignity? And why did only one news channel report about this?

More information in English:
Taipei Times Editorial
Earlier Taipei Times Article
The View from Taiwan
F.Varga

And for a side note:
Why Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) is really cool.
A similar story in English here.



From the Taipei Times editorial on May 12:

The problem, however, is that the level of trust necessary for this measure to be undertaken is lacking and crime-fighting in the Taiwan Strait does not threaten security to the extent that it would make this move imperative — not to mention the odious symbolism of the presence of Chinese police on Taiwanese soil.

Another factor that, in other scenarios, makes officer exchanges possible is mutual recognition of sovereignty among all participants and the limits on extraterritoriality that this implies.

When it comes to China, however, the fact that it does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state and claims it as its own poses additional problems. Among these are the specters of the application of Chinese law on Taiwanese territory and the reinterpretation of Taiwanese laws that could stretch the definition of crime to include “splittism” and speech on topics that are illegal in China.

Hsinchu: America the Beautiful

So, shall we begin discussion?

I choose team e. I will say, the answer is yes or no, but not always. We have talk about the trading system. I would say, the relationship between Taiwan and America is like a trading system. We try to find some mutual benefit. So I would say the relationship is based on what is our mutual benefit. So according to this point of view, yes, they’re are friend if w have the same benefits. So for the economic affair, yes we have the same goal or industry, like the electronics industry. The market in both places have the same benefit. So in this case, they’re a good friend. But for military and the foreign affair, no they’re not good friend. So the answer is yes and no, but not always, it depends on the benefits. If there’re no benefits, there’s no friend. It’s very realistic.


Well, I’m more with team b. for me. A true friend would stand by you no matter what the situation would be. You’ll always be there. So from this point of view, I don’t think there’s a true friendship between countries, there’s always a matter of interest. Maybe sometimes we can be friends, but its always quite superficial.

So you are more humanist, you always think the friendship is always kept. So if I’m you’re friend, I have to keep my loyalty to you!

Well, that’s my idea!—

[laughter]

—but I don’t always expect so.

So that’s why I say my ideas are realistic. Because the two countries are concerned abut their own benefit, or for their citizens. So you don’t think about what is your benefit to your people.

So two people, you can talk about friendships. But countries, represent a lot of people and the people in charge get changed, so we don’t call any country is the friend of any country. Not talking just about America and Taiwan, it applies to all countries. Because it depends on the people who govern, who have the most power, who can decide, who represent the country and have the so called friendship. So you have to consider the interests of your countries. So if you have something in common with your so called friend, sure, but if you have the opposite, then you have the enemies, and the enemies, enemy is my friend, because that helps me get what I want.

So we are the same team.

Yes.

And we are against you.

Oh shit! You can’t get any more in your face than that!!

You know, there is an interesting opinion in the Taipei class transcript. It says Taiwanese lose their identity. It says that Taiwan has no relationship with other countries. They’re more pessimistic.

They’re younger.

But I agree, because Taiwan is not recognized by other countries, but according to my experience, but I would say that it’s more recognized as an economic identity.

Yeah, ‘Made in Taiwan’ was a successful marketing campaign

But I agree if the country has the power to bargain with other countries it’s not good.

Not having the power to bargain is good?

I’m talking about that economic power is the realistic power, but cultural power is soft power.

But political power is military power, that’s not soft. And WHO, and information, that’s not really soft anymore, that’s hard.

But that’s why America got Taiwan into WHO you can get information as an observer.

Hey, no, not that much actually. I’m told the Taiwan delegation can only get into the main events, but there are a lot of closed-door events that they’re shut out of. And it’s like high-school. Certain people are afraid to talk to our people in the halls if certain other people are present.

I belong to an industrial organization, and we do distinguish between observer members and principal members. As an observer, you can collect information and give information to other members. You can give any opinion, but you need to get some approval. You need some approval.

Yeah, so you’re talking that you need patrons. It’s a hierarchical system, then. Not democratic or open.

So part of my job is to talk to members of what information we can contribute to the meeting.

You have to lobby first!

Who’s controlling the information and to what purpose, that’s the question you have to ask as an outside observer!

But this is an industrial organization, not a political one.

Actually, there’s no difference. They’re both political.

When I look at the article, I agree that the media power is very important, and when you want to turn America into our friend, yeah? I think that maybe, this is maybe a crazy idea, we could get that famous director, Ang Lee, I think that most Americans are not deep thinkers, most people actually, they’re most easily moved by easy story, and simply right and wrong, and simply have the emotions. If we can leverage the, because Ang Lee is the first, I mean that he can enter the American mega…his movies are well received.

He’s an insider in the movie industry.

Yes, I imagine he could take this advantage. But it’s just simply to influence some Americans to think about the relationship. But now of course, he’s not political.

Probably his insider status depends on that…

So your point is…

Well, it’s just a crazy idea, it’s a way of influencing what people think.

So let me interpret it as the one who can control the media can own the power to control the society.

Yep it’s true.

Yep.

But you know the tycoon, that want to acquire the New York Times, he also wanted to buy Bloomberg

Who was that?

Those are major American properties, it’s like Lenovo getting IBM and all the American military secrets.

So yeah, it’s like Lenovo is the new evil empire.

So talking about that they said that Americans are not getting good education. We can talk about Taiwanese, well, Americans watch more and more TV, but also us, and read less and les books. Because we watch TV, and get the information very straightforward.

But it’s a controlled information.

Yes. And so we don’t do much thinking about what’s behind the information. And so we are too lazy.

And so that’s why the democracy is dangerous.

So yeah, that’s why Thomas Jefferson and them decided to make the electoral college..

I think America is nobody’s friends.

I think that’s true right now!

Especially European counties, they contribute a lot in the climate change issue, but only America and China refused to sign the Kyoto agreement. Of course you can understand why China wouldn’t sign, since they want to focus on economic issues, but of all those developed countries only America didn’t.

Of all the G8 countries.

But it’s not to do just with G7, because there was like milestones you have to decrease in how many years, you have to contribute it. At first Europe developed a system of carbon credits, but in the US, it’s easy, so they just buy the quota.

I heard President Bush said America would sign in 2012.

Yeah, cuz he won’t be president then.

If I remember right, it was in the last g7 meeting.

What’s the difference between g7 and g8, anyone know?

It means seven or eight countries.

Who do what?

They’re the developed countries. The US, Canada, France, GB, Germany, Italy, Japan,

[a Google search was then made, and it was found to be: G8 = Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States. Group of Seven Finance Ministers, not heads of state: = Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States of America.]

So these are like friendship cliques. It’s like high school, again!

[laughter]

Being Taiwanese

Questions to Ponder:
1. Is it more important to focus on disadvantages/faults or advantages/talents?
2. Another way to say it: is it better to try to correct faults or try to develop talents?

3. Is the internet a resource? Or just a very good tool for instant communication?
4. Do you think languages are like keys to different stores of information? [e.g. if you can read Chinese, you can read Chinese philosophy, theories and research information, if you can read English, you can read English philosophy, theories, and research information]

Discussion Question:

How do you see yourself as a Taiwanese, globally?
Does this clip change your perception of Taiwan?

The Video:
Commonwealth Magazine (天下符) recorded a very interesting speech by Kenichi Omae. Here’s a short excerpt of it.


The Transcript:
In the wake of 三通*, I think Taiwan could seek to become a super Silicon Valley because you have been very successful in establishing research parks, but not only for Taiwan, but Super Silicon Valley for entire East Asia. Anybody who’s gone to business school has seen this smile curve. Taiwan EMS concentrated on this lowest profitable area and still able to make money. See, and then driving the Japanese, Europeans, Americans from the bottom of the smile curve. So we in Japan had to go upstream, this is the materials, machinery, etc.
I think Taiwan’s strength is, number one knowing Japanese psychology, speak the language, buying the best machines--components. And also Taiwan managers established long term relationship, human relationship, with Japanese companies. They also manage larger operations in mainland china in mother tongue with full of Taiwan experience in manufacturing and management. Sell products worldwide in the English language, maintain high level contact with global brand owners, in other words communication capability in English, Chinese, Japanese seem to be what is behind Taiwan’s enormous success to date.
All of the companies that have IPO in IT industries in the United States—number one is Israeli, number two is India and number three is Taiwan. And so you have tremendous number of talents given the size of your country, it is overrepresented in that region. Take advantage of that, become Super Silicon Valley, count this for your innovation and R&D, trading engineers and manufacturers from china which, 三通* can enable, will enable, manufacturing support for Asian countries. Not only for China but for the rest of the world. All countries are looking for industrial parks, or science parks, to attract companies and capital. You have a very successful example of industrial parks and R&D centers. You can export this concept. Taiwan’s great success in East Asia, this is tremendous. And also contribution to china’s success. Taiwanese people should be celebrating this, but China should be very much appreciative of this. China's own emergence of the super power of the 21st century: Taiwan is lucky because you are the best beneficiary. You take advantage of this upward migration of china—no other country can do better than Taiwan can.

*'san tong' = 'the three links' = the direct communication and transport links that will soon be established between Taiwan and China

An Observation:
A friend said, when discussing this clip:
We have to compete with others with our advantages, not our disadvantages! But our education (in Taiwan) only focuses us on our disadvantages.

A Further Note:
In another section of his speech, I’m told, the speaker noted that the internet is an enormous influencing factor on the world today, and that most of the information on the internet is written in English. He said that only 1% or so of the internet is in Japanese, and this leaves Japan at a serious disadvantage in finding out new information.

Taipei: Being Taiwanese

Participants: Mary, Maggie, Willie, Fanny, Kerry, Angela

I’m very interested in question one, because when we were children, we were trained to correct our faults. But this is the first time someone lets us know what’s our advantages, and what’s our disadvantages. And for countries, is it so important to stress our advantages, or not so important? For my point of view, it’s important to know both our advantages and disadvantages. When we know our strengths, we can find the direction of our life, and I think also for countries. So like, now, our gvt want to develop Taiwan to be a center of finance-something. The first step is to address our advantage and disadvantage, compared to other countries. Do you guys agree with my point? Or you have different views toward this?


In my field, science, I think Taiwan’s advantage of Chinese medicine, because we often use the Chinese medicine, much more often than America or Europe. Because we use these plants, so we have several point to attach the center of the secret of Chinese medicine. So this is Taiwan’s advantage of this field. But I think the financial field, I’m not so good at.

So what do you think?

About question one?

Whatever.

For me, I prefer question two. I think it’s better to correct faults, because I don’t think it’s important to focus on advantages or disadvantages.
I don’t have much inspiration for these questions, to be honest.

Why?

I don’t know, maybe later, after I listen your opinions, your words might inspire me.

What I’m burning to know is, what do you see Taiwan as?

For me, before I saw this video, I heard similar points from others, because I am in financial world. I observe many similar information from other resources, so it was not so shock or stun to me, to hear his opinion.

So, but, how do you see Taiwan’s place in the world?

Maybe when it comes to Taiwan, people in the world will think it as a big manufacturer, or a, um a people of high technology. Like, when it comes to India, people will think about math and engineers.

Or really really poor people, and farmers killing themselves with pesticide.

Oh, I heard from others, in business world, American or European company like Taiwan company, because they think Taiwanese as very hardworking people.

They don’t see Chinese as hardworking?

I don’t know,…I

I think Taiwanese and Chinese are different. Chinese devote their labor efforts, while the Taiwanese have higher level education, so, and I think, um, from the working side, they are different.

And I assume in the bioscience world, Taiwan also have its cutting edge?

I think Taiwan have higher standard? Standard, no. The medicine system is better than china, but we still can’t join the WHO. This is unfair! I’m angry about these things. Because it’s political issue.

How is it bad for Taiwan, that it can’t join?

It’s about public health. We can’t join WHO, so we can’t connect with the world public health, so many problem, just like about the mosquito disease, dengue fever, and SARS. During SARS, we couldn’t have any support from who or other country. So we had to help ourselves. All our medication solution is come from ourself. So WHO totally take us for granted. So it is a disadvantage that we can’t join?

It’s a bad thing for them, as well as for us. Taiwan has things to teach the rest of the world, too, and they’re losing that.

Taiwan is a lonely island in the world.

It’s all Chiang Kaishek’s fault. If he hadn’t been like, it’s China or us, you choose, we wouldn’t have lost our place in the UN.

So Mary, what do you think about Taiwan’s place in the world. I think some people, they come to Taiwan, they come to learn Chinese culture, and to learn Mandarin.

Yes, that’s true.

I was kind of surprised, that at the hostel I work at, when you speak English, they speak Mandarin to you, and they want you to speak Mandarin to them. And their Mandarin is really quite good. They’re from like Portugal, and Spain, the Mediterranean.

Why don’t they go to china?

They actually go to both places, a lot of them.

Well, actually, why do they come to Taipei, too?

Some of them, they have to transfer flights here, and then they go to Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. And I know some people come to Taiwan for the food.

Yes, delicious “shiao chi” [=lit. ‘little eats’, a Taiwanese specialty, small stands on the street selling noodles and side dishes].

And it’s not that expensive!

But what I want to know is, how do you see Taiwan’s place in the world?

So you want to know our opinion about the Taiwan’s place in the world, not others.

But what you think others must see Taiwan as.

Maybe it’s that Taiwan is a country that produce very good computer product. If you come buy a camera here, it’s 30% cheaper.

In my opinion, from the geography side, Taiwan is very small, so many people ignore this place. And I know, some people think, Taiwan is the same as Thailand. So I say from the geography side, it’s quite small. But from the IT industry, Taiwan occupies a very important position. Taiwan is a very important component of the IT industry. Like Mary said. Taiwan has ability to produce cheaper computer products.

Maggie, what’s your view?

‘Lonely Island’

Well, yes, but can you elaborate?

We always isolated by the world. So we can’t join the worldwide organization, and we not accepted by the world, so I think…but we still live in the world. The people in the Lonely Island still live in the world, so I think it’s fine, because we are used to being alone. No, I don’t know how to say that, but, I think we accept the situation, and we are happy. Next? Willie, what’s your opinion?

I don’t think Taiwan is the lonely island, actually. I think it’s that we can’t publicly establish those relations in those official organization. But I think privately, if gvt is not involved, Taiwan does pretty okay. Those non-gvt organizations, like companies, Microsoft, Google, those companies have pretty big impact in the world, band they also have their site in Taiwan. Also in Beijing. I mean, Beijing is their center, but they also have big spots in Taiwan, pretty beautiful. So privately we’re doing okay. If you travel in Europe, it’s a problem, because Taiwan hasn’t formal relations with those countries, and that’s a trouble. I’m not sure, lots of Japanese and Koreans, they come here, they know Taiwan very well, and they’re interested in visiting Taiwan. Also I think those production, we’re known for our production, especially IT products. And also, everyone knows that, for example that Google will have their own phone, like an iPhone, in September.

Everyone except me!

And me!

Well I knew.

Anyways, it’s going to be open source, for those excellent programmers on the internet to finish the job for them. And the company which produce the phone for them, is from Taiwan.

I think it will be public at the end of the third quarter. I also think the reason why the production is well know in Taiwan is that “made in Taiwan” has been mentioned in Hollywood once or twice.

Which movies?

Armageddon.

Really?

Did anyone see that movie? With Liv Tyler?

At the end, they’re trying to escape from the comet.

But did they mention Taiwan?

Yes!

China?

No!

Because their spacecraft didn’t work, and the Russian astronaut said ‘that shit’s made in Taiwan’

But that’s not good!

Or in Toy story! Woody the astronaut. He always thinks he’s a real astronaut. But at the moment he opened the cover of his arm. Brrt! Made in Taiwan. So he realized he was a toy. At the 20 years ago, Taiwan makes the many toys, many small plastic items.

Why is that significant?

Because now china makes the small plastic things.

Oh, 20 years ago, Taiwan has many local and high-quality—

High quality, are you sure?

—okay, middle quality, labor force.

20 years ago, we had a lot of plastics manufactories. Now the techniques is better than Chinas, but the benefit is more than produced by china. So many plastic products is made in china.

So, to be honest, I was so surprised to realize that, even in nowadays, in western countries view, Taiwan’s products is mean low-quality products.

Well, now it’s ‘made in china,’ grrrr, cheap. I don’t know about Taiwan anymore.

But Germany, it’s considered high quality.

And expensive.

And not so beautiful. Made in France and England is more stylish, but the German is high quality, undoubtedly. Just like the Birkenstock. The shoes is not very stylish, but they’re well known.

But not good looking? What about Mercedes?

Oh, yes, they’re beautiful.

Or else, like Porche. And they’re an example that German’s products are not as beautiful as other countries. Volkswagen is a byproduct of Porche.

I didn’t know that.

I didn’t either.

I don’t think these cars…well when you mention sporting car, most people mention Ferrari or Lamborghini, than the Porche.

Hey, maybe Taiwan can follow Italy. They used to have no work, and no reputation, and their currency was bad, but then they got well known for fashion design and certain high end products like furniture.

That’s an interesting point, at the moment, most people are looking at Ireland.

So what are the strengths of Ireland?

Okay, it’s their open-mindedness to Europe, and their lower tax rate. Before, Ireland was an island of few people—

And socially conservative, and really backwards.

—but when they start to develop their education, and lower their tax rate, they attracted a lot of companies from all over the world to invest in Ireland. Then support their economic development.

But sometimes I think Taiwan sees itself as not as good as the rest of the world. Not as democratic as America, not as large as China, not as well-run and neat as Singapore…it’s like Taiwanese look at the world and always only see their own shortcomings.

I agree, my colleague’s point is just like you. We, Taiwan is always thinking we’re weaker than other company, even though our company do very success in the world, like Giant, or Acer. But we still think we are, our quality worse than others. I think maybe the reason is like, the comment from the observation, in our education, not focus on how to find out or develop our advantage. We only focus in our education, nobody tell us to think about the value of individuals, or your points of your future. So, companies in Taiwan never think of serious, what’s their cutting edge, their planning for company’s future. They only want to copy other’s experience. Because they have chance to train themselves to the thinking of something like this.

But Lynn said that in her company, a textile manufacturer, it’s no good to come up with innovative fabrics, because China will like copy them within a week, and sell them for a price that undercuts their profit.

But what china can not copy is our communication capability, and our ability to establish personal relationship. That’s from some factors from our history and culture. Because we are an island, we were colonized by so many countries. So in our blood, we know how to deal with people from different cultures.

That’s an interesting point, I never put those two together.

That’s why Taiwanese can do business around the world, you can see Taiwanese, in us, in Africa, in anywhere, and most of them are so successful.

I think in some respects, Taiwan is better than china, like she said, Taiwan has some strengths in dealing with multinational relationship. Right now Taiwan is open to all over the world, so maybe, um after a period, china might be better than Taiwan.

So, is Taiwan to china like Ireland is to Europe?

I think entering china is more dangerous than before.

Well, do we have to enter china to take advantage of it?

Well, we all know there’s kind of human costs, there are many interruption, or some difficulty, by the gvt, by people. Interference. In china, I think, from, a lot of people who have been to china talks about the interference of gvt. And those rules are not exactly the priority in china. So the difference between Europe and china, the technical advantage of china…

No, I think it means…

Does that mean we’re using Chinese resources or..?

I think countries from Asia and Europe and America, I think they can use Taiwan, Taiwan’s people, Taiwan’s resources, to help them into the mainland china market. So in their world, Taiwan is in the position, in the middle, of, to be a bridge to connect china and those countries. I think that’s what this guy is saying to how Taiwan to take advantage of china.

So why don’t they do this through Hong Kong, I think that’s a point.

But, Taiwan is famous for its IT industry.

And Hong Kong is not.

It’s famous for it’s financial field. So for the western people, so they think Taiwan is a good gate to enter the mainland china market. Because they have the same language, and the secondly, Taiwan and china have the same culture, so the habits are the same.

I would say similar, but not the same. Because china is an ex-empire, or an empire in a low point, but Taiwan is an immigrant country.

I work in a manufactory company to produce some consumer goods, and after I enter here for one year, the original team classify Taiwan to the china cluster. So Taiwan is part of china, not china part of Taiwan.

Yah, but what I’m saying is that they’re not a part of each other at all, they’re different countries with different histories. Actually Taiwan’s history is one of colonization. First the Spanish and Portuguese set up colonies, then there was the separatists Koshinga retreating here from the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, and then the Ching Dynasty rulers held the island for like 50 years before they sold it to the Japanese, then after WWII the Japanese left and the KMT colonized it till the island threw off martial law in the 80s. And all through that, various waves of immigration, the Hakka, then Minnan people, and most recently the Waishengren after the war. Now you could say you’re a democracy. But China, well, it’s been a cohesive empire, or at least the idea that the people believe in that it’s supposed to be an empire, has been, for a long long time. People on their own turf, not coming from other places. And there’s this weird idea of a greater racial China, the Huaren idea. So, like Singapore, or the Chinese in Malaysia still identify as Chinese, not with the country they’re actually living in.

But technically people don’t connect Singapore with china.

So, I’m curious that, if it’s very possible for Taiwan, to take advantage, like Fanny said, to use Taiwan resource of people to enter china, actually. Because I think the best timing for Taiwan to do this is past already.

Nowadays, the change not exist.

Its not as easy, actually. I just talked about this problem with classmates today. We both think that the time is missed. There are many foreign countries, like Google.

They’re not countries yet!

Google country!

I think Google is richer than second or third world country, or something like that, but anyways. We know that many companies have already established their base, and Chinese have already copied. There’s a company who copied Google, in china, and it’s local, but they’ve done it first, and so Google can’t really enter china. So they want to go in, but they can’t join china now, the opportunities aren’t the same as before. The ones that got in early are set up, and now you can’t compete. They’ve lost the advantage of time. So for Taiwan, I don’t think it’s the right time to enter china.

We don’t need to enter china, for now it’s not a good time to enter but we can think of how to become a good connection to benefit from china and Japanese, or benefit from china and America, or benefit from china and Europe, no I think is too far. But by geography, we are in the middle points of china and Japan and America.

Yeah.

I heard, one of my colleague is familiar with Japanese. He said that most Japanese fail to deal with Chinese people.

Because of language?

Because of maybe some history record, maybe. But Taiwanese are so familiar with Japanese, and also, in business it’s easier for us than Japanese to do business with Chinese. So we can think about this point. But, even though I have this discussion with my colleague, but we didn’t found the answer yet.

Hsinchu: Being Taiwanese

Participants: Wilson, Peter W, Kevin, Robert, Angela

You know, the this-week article is easy to read, but the question is not easy.

Why?

Because you say globally, from a global view.

Why is that difficult?

In Chinese, we say, we are easy to find the advantage or disadvantage of others, but not yourself.


I was saying, like Americans are perceived as loutish, insensitive ignorant aggressors. But they’re also sometimes seen as generous and open-hearted people, so what I’m saying, is how do you think Taiwanese are perceived in the world?

So start from this question first?

Sure. Any takers?

My first impression, is when people ask what’s your relationship with Chinese, that’s what people normally ask first.

What’s your answer?

Well, you’ve heard my spiel on that before.

You know, when we participate in a conference in a foreign country, Taiwanese is not individual. I would say most of the people, first time when they see the Taiwanese, they think you are Japanese.

Yeah, but that’s cuz white people can’t tell Asian people apart.

Not, but they can distinguish Korean from Japanese, but they can’t distinguish Chinese and Japanese.

So Angela, are Americans, can you identify Chinese people, Taiwanese people or Japanese?

Well, I grew up in a very mixed neighborhood, and went to a racially very mixed high school with largely low-income kids, and there were a lot of Vietnamese there, and some Chinese, besides Black and Hispanic and then like a minority of whites, too. And when I was in college in NYC, there’s just everybody from around the world. But a couple of years ago, I was in this hostel in Seattle, and there were some Taiwanese staying there, and this white woman there was commenting on the ‘Japanese’ people. I don’t know, I haven’t lived in the US for more than 10 years, so I really can’t say, but I think maybe Asian foreigners are mostly identified as Japanese first, because of the economic race with the Japanese?

So maybe after several decades—

Right! They’ll assume they’re Chinese!

I think this article has a strange view. I don’t know, I don’t think most of Taiwanese people are very confident when we go out, when we face the other foreign countries. So it’s very strange, you know, Kenichi Omae is a Japanese, and he encourage and appreciate the Taiwanese people’s contribution to the Asia global area and to china economics, and even think Taiwanese could take advantage of economic strength even better than Japan in future.

Yeah, we don’t normally hear stuff like this, right?

So the Olympics, in the game a good performance, so this article reflect the effects is, Taiwanese need the, another words we have perform or achieve the better, a better or a do the better job than our expectation, from the outside, from the foreigners’ view. But I don’t know, it’s normal or common for Asian peoples, because we read a lot of articles from Omae, he’s always release a warning to Japanese gvt, and emphasize the Japanese it’s a competition in the future, in the next decade if the Japanese gvt don’t take any effective economic action, or the education, or globalization, because Japanese is a relatively closed country. Because I heard that in Japan, the most technical articles, they will translate to Japanese, so that’s why most of the Japanese people don’t feel the immediate pressure to learn English or Chinese or some foreign language.

Our education system can’t educate our students for systems integration. Also for engineering. So our gvt hire a lot of experts to build up our system, but sometimes it’s not successful, for some public engineering case, like the transportation system. For aerospace, we want to import some foreign company to help our industry to build our space satellite for outer space, to put our satellite in outer space. But our experience is not successful.

But didn’t they actually get it up?

Yes, but the original goal was not reached. We wanted to transfer some technical experience, but sometimes, you can’t transfer this to local company.

Why not?

Yes, why can’t they get the experience from the foreign company?

Because the language barrier?

Not exactly.

But if you dedicate yourself, you’ll get something back. Like semiconductor, we pick it up little by little then we start building 6 inch, then 8 inch, and then every have some kind of experience and now the 12 inch, although it’s not that much of an issue. But the point is, if you want energy in, you have to give some back. Learn and watch, still can gets something.
Even you go to SE Asia, you can see the building is just like square, actually you don’t need architect, you could just do it yourself but for instance, they’ll have a guard on the second floor, because the ground floor is the parking plaza. But in Taiwan you never saw this, l never.

I want to point out the, I heard someone say, if the individual Taiwanese, they have advantage to do work perfectly, but if a lot of Taiwanese is put together, their strength is lost. And they say we are good at mimic something, for example, maybe we have the advantage to copy the concept or concrete concept from outside company but if we put our power on redesign, we can’t. You know why? It’s a good question to ask our education system. Maybe can train our students to redesign or initiate a new concept.

Actually, I’ll give an opinion. The problem is not creativity. It’s market size. If they do innovation. If I do this product, how much can I sell. This one is OEM product, but this one is copy. But this one is already on the market, I don’t have any risk, it’s easy to sell. It’s safer and more profit. Because Taiwanese business usually small and middle sized. Korean ones are a giant monster, very big. So small sized ones have to be more flexible. So normally they will cut it in this way. So they try to make similar one. As long as the performance is good as the original one. But if you sell your own brand how will people accept that?

You said, we have to focus not only the local market, but we have to target on the global market. And another example is for the South Korea enterprise. Samsung is a gvt sponsored business so the scale is large, and its not a useful model for Taiwan. I heard someone say that the Samsung model is not appropriate for Taiwan, because south Korea’s local market is larger than Taiwan, and it’s gvt sponsored, so they can dominate the market and also compete with the global market. But in Taiwan we don’t have this advantage. And the other example is Israel. They don’t have the local market.

So where is the market for Israel product?

Global.

Their largest industry is military, right?

Yes, and aerospace.

India, too is very strong for military products. Not for consumer products.

Because consumer products you have to be competitive, but for military, you don’t have to be. It’s a different business model.

I remember the 60s, the background of Taiwan and Korea, they’re both focused on manufacturing, but they choose different approach. Taiwan was small and medium sized enterprise. But Korea followed Japanese style, large enterprises. So they got Samsung, Golden Star, what’s now LG, so they tried to follow the Japanese business model. So actually you can look the actual enterprise, only three or four large companies, but Taiwanese have so many, so it’s a very different business model. So I’m working in a foreign company, I can see, even though Taiwan is a very small country, you can find many different kinds of products here. Like facemasks used in industry.

The public safety industry.

Yes, but you won’t see this in another country, because it’s not a big enterprise, so people won't get into this, but here there’s small business, so they’ll find any niche they can. So talking about marketing, it’s not so strong. The giant guys they have R&D. But small and medium size, no marketing, and first generation, their English is not so good, maybe Japanese is good. But they’re not doing trading business, like Singapore. Those guys are very good at marketing. And their language capacity is better than Taiwan. And they’re businessmen, that’s their style. Be we do manufacturing. Singapore just buy and sell. So the good thing is we can make and sell, but the bad thing is we don’t have a strong brand.

I think the interesting thing, is Taiwan’s global brands, people don’t actually know they’re Taiwanese. Like Giant bicycles.

Right, well Taiwan market is too small, so they have to go overseas, but they don’t have enough resource for R&D and financing, so they starting the aftermarket. It’s not like apple computer. It’s not that they can’t design, it’s that if they design, nobody will buy it.

Well, can I give you an opinion as an outsider? One of the things that really shocked me when I began working in Taiwanese companies is how people would cover for the one who couldn’t perform well. Like, me. My Chinese was so bad, and I didn’t know meeting etiquette, and I didn’t know the building code, and my coworkers just covered for me, constantly. They just put up with what I didn’t know and worked around it, because I was their teammate. But I think in an American company, a similar situation, I would have been just hung out to dry. So when you said earlier, that one Taiwanese on their own is fine, but when you get a group, it gets mediocre, do you think this might have something to do with that? That people are spending their energy covering for the useless people, to keep face for the team?

It’s from Confucius, we want to keep harmony, we don’t want conflict on the team, so we will tolerate some troubles or some fault for their colleague.

Yes, but Japan is also like this, but they’re more successful.

Even more serious. Japanese focus on team opinion. But I would say Taiwan style is in between of Us and Japanese style. US is very concentrate on opinion of team leader, and also public opinion, and even you don’t like you still have to follow. The decision of Japanese is very slow, and difficult to change. But also stable, and well sorted. They think everything carefully, and everyway, then start. But in Taiwan, we go 50 percent, and then go, we move, and then adjust. But Japanese think it through, and then when they movie, it’s very clear.

So Taiwanese are flexible.

Sure, but not well sorted, and it’s risky.

And Japanese, the way they do business, they follow the SOP, the company their bosses set, and the member in the team, normally they will follow every detail, their steps, their company or standard procedure. But I agree with Kevin, usually in a meeting, the boss usually speak, and everyone keeps silent, this is similar to Taiwanese style. In my experience, when I travel in the meeting, the junior engineer, or even senior engineer, if you don’t ask questions, they keep silent. So I don’t know the real reason why we lack confidence. For Japanese people, because the major language we communicate with Japanese customers or vendors still we discussing English, okay, so I think the most the Japanese people is not so confident in their communication in English, so but my experience contact with the Japanese people, usually some, if Japanese people who can speaking English, usually can become leader of crosee countries project, and go more opportunities or promotion
So I think more and more of Japanese people who like to travel to Taiwan and maybe short term stay for two or three years, and normally after finish the supporting mission in Taiwan, they got a lot of improvement in English communication ability, and they get a promotion.

But my idea is more Japanese, they want to send overseas, because they don’t want to be fixed in their life, they don’t have to be relaxed. If you work in Japan, you have to stay from 8:30 to 10:00, but in the US, they can go home at 6. So if they have to go back to Japan, they’re sad. Life in Japan is strict, you have to follow, even if you don’t want. The people in Tokyo are really pressed. High density, high pressure. I was in there for about 2 years, I know the life there. You are just pressed like a dog life.

I heard someone say, if you are a Japanese, you shouldn’t go home before 8, even they’ll go to bars, other wise they’ll show they’re failure.

So if you’re out on the street late in Tokyo, you’ll see so many people in suits. And they have to get up very early, because of the traffic, so they have to get up like at six. And the commute is like one and half hour. So the life is hard.

But the Japanese people I contact, even they’re in Taiwan, they work very hard. They might work overnight, without inner, work harder than local engineer.

I’m saying it’s a different work style. I worked in a joint venture in Japan. They say, just work there, we work overtime, but their arrangement, if you work overtime, you work another 12 or 24 hours. But for us, it’s just ridiculous, its not good for your health or your energy. So we would split into two shifts. But the Japanese would just assign one person for 24 hours. Okay, you work 24 hours, so you just sleep in the chair. I don’t know if they work harder, but their style is different.

So that’s what I want to say, you know the discipline, I think they’re more disciplined. They try their best to achieve their boss’ assignment before the deadline. I don’t know, on the other hand, we can say the Taiwanese people is more flexible, but we also can say that most of Taiwanese engineer lack discipline.

But we’re still better than china.

Yes, but right now, we have to compare to higher developed country, not developing country. But even some Chinese company, their discipline is even better than Taiwan. So the quality, of course now the market price of those made in Japan is higher than Taiwan, and higher than china, but it’s the quality image. But I think that will be changed. I think this depends, still the discipline is very important. I think maybe we define maybe 10 assembly steps for one product procedure, and the japan do it one by one, and maybe the Taiwanese will remove 2 or 3 steps, but in china maybe they only take 5 steps. So I think the, you just take the Samsung example, or some big enterprise, it’s nothing to do with the enterprise scale. I think the size of the enterprise is the result of your company globalization. Not strategy. So over 85 percent of Taiwanese company is small to middle size scale. But their efficiency, I think most of them is better than big international company. So, in the article’s Omae mentioned the smile curve. Because most of the Taiwanese company are OEM, the biggest one, Foxconn, is the biggest EMS company. But the smile curve emphasize the added value in your company, for your product. And the lowest added value is the manufacture stage. For the upstream the process is R&D, new product development, and downstream, the sales and marketing, so the two ends of the smile curve is the weakest point for Taiwanese company. But these two sides are the area with the highest added value. So that’s why the acer invest the resource to build this global brand, like BenQ.

Well, BenQ was a failure.

Well, you don’t know the next ten years.

Well, the merger with Siemens was a mistake.

Well, you’re talking about the working style of the Japanese, well, think about the consumer electronics industry. They have a lot of innovative products. You say they’re discipline, and have lots of new ideas. It’s very interesting, they can leverage the discipline, and they have lots of great new concepts. And the other one is for china. One of the biggest private company in china is Huaway, it’s a telecom company. Now it’s the biggest telecom company in china. But it is fully private. The scale is very large. You say in Taiwan, our company is mostly small and medium sized. But Huaway’s scale is very large. So they can compete with the global industry. So you can say the telecom industry now in the global market worldwide, the biggest is Motorola, Nokia, but Huaway the scale is large enough to compete with these companies. So in Taiwan you mentioned Foxcom, and Xycell is become to one part of the third party to Huaway, is not compete with. So scale is sometimes important to global market.

The point I mentioned is not to, of course, you want to compete other international company, you have to upgrade your company’s globalization degree, but I emphasize the efficiency or the effectiveness. Most big companies were originally small. Also Acer is not international brand company, but they also started small, founded by doing some oem business. So of course the Samsung, I don’t know if you remember, he also damaged from the financial crisis of 97 in Asia and Korea. But now it has become the international, the first-tier company, I think its because of, of course the resources is coming form Korean gvt, but most important, it has built his own brand, and his strong of product develop capability. That’s the root cause for become the leading position in many industry. Okay, so, I don’t think the finance supporting or the conversion for explain the success.

Yeah, but what about the lack of competition, of the monopoly, the protection by gvt?

I’m sure, it wasn’t the fair competition, for example 30 years ago, Yulong, the car maker.

Yeah, but they almost died from too much protection.

Yeah, but not yet, they’ve a new car the Luxgen, it’s coming out next year. They want to have their own brand car, that’s the dream of the founder.

It’s just a dream.

They had a lot of money to waste.

But back to Huaway, you know their R&D budget is bigger than Taiwan gvt’s budget.

But basically, the market in Taiwan is too small. The LCD factories, the DRAM, its just not big enough.

Anyways, it’s not just support from the gvt, you have to find your core value.

But you cannot deny that if you have backup form the gvt it’s better, right.

Can we change the topic, Omae said in the wake of the three links [= travel and communication links between Mainland China and Taiwan, which up till now have not been allowed to be directly linked]. But what does that have to do with silicon valley? They are talking about Asia pacific operations area: manufacturing, air and ocean hub, telecom, banking, Chinese media, like books, newspaper. But look at banking, its impossible.

Why not?

We don’t have the character for banking.

But, there’s like more banks per square foot here than any other place I’ve been.

But it’s not like we’re Hong Kong. Manufacturing, we’ve got that down. Ocean shipping, we’ve got Kaohsiung, maybe Keelong. Telecom okay. We’re really weak in banking. Media okay.

Well, a huge market for publishing.

Yeah, and ten years old Taiwanese songs are now popular in china.

But I think the silicon valley idea is the idea of innovation for new companies. So the environment is motivated for the new company to set up. And because you say the local Taiwanese market is not big enough, so our target market is global, so new company if they want to set up target market, then that’s the sprit of silicon valley.

Another think I’m curious, because he says we can take advantage of upward motion of china. Maybe we’ll be marginalized.

I would say it’s because of the communication gap, because there’s no communication gap between Chinese and Taiwanese industry.

It’s funny, take advantage, hard to say.

And we mentioned the teamwork culture, maybe the Taiwanese working style is more similar to the Taiwanese worker.

What about Ireland, is that a viable model for Taiwan?

I heard about one strategy or policy in Ireland, is that everyone can vote, even if they’re not a citizen.

Yeah, this is such a refreshing idea. It’s post nationalist, it’s global. Where you are is where you are, not where you are from. Like the mayor of one town, he’s actually a citizen of an African country, but he was elected mayor. He *could* be elected, even though he’s not an Irish citizen. And *was* elected!

So did it change your perception? I’m guessing not.

Actually I’m not sure about the main point, it has to do with the three links? And are we really in a position to take advantage of china’s rise?

How about the note. Internet, only 1% written in Japanese, so this is a disadvantage for the Japanese. But I would say it’s similar to Chinese.

Language as information access tool. Korea only knows what Koreans know, but we don’t know what Koreans know.

In Taiwan we have over 8 million internet users. 2 million are the maybe internet society users, on Wretch, so they’re familiar with Chinese webpage, so the ratio is one fourth. One fourth are doing Chinese pages. So I’m curious about this 1 percent.

I think it’s the whole world, not just in Japan.

So that’s a business opportunity if you know Japanese.