THE MARKET IN TRUTH
Martin Vander Weyer finds Taiwan
embracing capitalism, but not the freedoms that should go with it
`DON'T ASK WHY!' snapped charmless Chen, the Chinese minder. 'Just sit in bus!'
This was the halfway point, and the defining moment, of a week-long 'seminar for European journalists' provided by the Taiwanese Government Information Office, of which Mr Chen is a junior offi- cial. After a hot tour of a drought-stricken national park, Chen was proposing to bus us into the featureless industrial sprawl of Kaohsiung port. Our self-appointed shop- steward, a feisty Austrian girl, protested, and a tense argument ensued. To our sur- prise, the incident turned into a rare victo- ry for European individualism over Confucian discipline. Chen produced a face-saving formula: the bus-driver, he announced, had suggested an unscheduled stop at a beach hitherto unknown to Chen. It turned out to be perfect: secluded, empty and sparklingly clean.
While we were there, an army lieu- tenant swam across to practise his Ameri- canised English. He should have been on manoeuvres with his unit, he said, but he was within days of the end of his two years' compulsory service and had slipped away to the beach instead. He thought lit- tle of his superior officers, or of Taiwan's political leaders; as far as he was con- cerned, they were all hopelessly corrupt. He was going to study electronics in the United States and make a career in com- puters.
Taiwan is like that these days: sullen officialdom on one side, cheerful free enterprise on the other. It is a place where the state — its institutions, its leaders, its bureaucratic habits — has not caught up with the nation. Chen, who evinced in full measure the two most essential qualifica- tions for government spokesmen, namely hatred of journalists and economy with the truth, kept showing us the old-fashioned face; the other one we had to find for our- selves.
It was not easy. The co-existence of the corrupt, bureaucratic past with the rapidly changing present also means that things are never quite what they seem in Taiwan. Last month, for example, a nationwide `vice-scoop' was trumpeted. All the most prominent houses of ill-repute — to the confusion of the visitor looking for a hair- cut, many of them are called 'Barber Shop' — were suddenly shut down. Within a week, however, it was business as usual. Far from being a clean-up, a local told me, the whole exercise had been a dispute over the quantum of protection money paid by brothel-keepers to the police — known as the 'white road', as opposed to the more easily negotiated 'black road' of gangster protection. In the heart of Taipei's smartest business district, the Rih Jing Sauna, owned by a senator and two city council men, and, by all accounts, one of the most rococo knocking-shops in Asia, was lit up like Regent Street at Christmas.
Needless to say, such exotic byways were not on our official itinerary. We began at the most dignified end of the town, in a former Japanese colonial palace, at a press conference to mark the third anniversary of the presidency of Mr Lee Teng-hui. The occasion was carefully stage-managed, but a sign of relative openness compared to the bad old days of martial law before 1991. `President Lee stands over six feet tall,' the hand-out said, but when the great man shook my hand on the way out I clocked him at about five feet nine. Had he said anything new or controversial? No, said Chen, absolutely nothing new at all.
Later I learned that the President had, in fact, alluded for the first time to the possi- bility of calling a direct presidential elec- tion at the end of his term. He had also given a lucid defence of the shift from one- party Kuomintang (KMT) rule — right- wing militarism sustained by Confucian rhetoric — towards a western model of multi-party politics and gemeinschaft. It is a bold change which threatens, among other things, to undermine a pervasive Italian- style network of graft.
But Chen, locked in his own pre-demo- cratic, propaganda-ministry mindset, defi- nitely wasn't going to let us see Taiwan's adolescent democracy in action. When our route through Taipei brought us into the thick of a demonstration over land rights by 15,000 farmers (or, in Chen's version, his only voluntary elucidation of current affairs all week, people paid by dark °NV' sition forces to pretend they were farmers), he panicked and spirited us away, past `Take me to the leader of your pack.' armoured ranks of police standing at attention in side streets.
Instead, Chen showed us a state-owned shipyard, super-efficient by world stan- dards but with no orders at all beyond the end of next year, and spoke glowingly of Taiwan's much vaunted $300 billion six- year plan, an ambitious programme of infrastructure projects — whose show- piece, the Taipei Rapid Transit System, is bogged down by disputes with contractors, labour shortages and difficulties of land acquisition. A visit in pouring rain to a subway construction site gave no impres- sion of frenzied activity. Miserable-looking contract workers from Thailand stood idly by. No opening date is in prospect.
And yet the Taiwanese economy is booming, mostly thanks to the explosive development of business ties with commu- nist China, where a flood of Taiwanese investment is revolutionising large parts of the mainland's industrial base and sustain- ing Taiwan's own exports in spite of the world recession. Why had Chen not spo- ken of that? Once again, he proved typical of his country's backward-looking estab- lishment. Still hung up on its big, red enemy, Lee's government prefers its busi- nessmen not to make the journey across the straits, and shuns even semi-official contacts, lest the mainland consider them to be a step towards reunification on the basis of the 'one country, two systems' for- mula which will re-incorporate Hong Kong. All discussion of China is therefore hushed and strained. Even when Chen took us to see a high official of the Straits Exchange Foundation, the 'private' body set up to liaise with the mainland, non- information triumphed: the man spoke no English at all, and Chen's interpretation Plumbed new depths of opacity. 'Dire Straits indeed,' muttered a distinguished German writer, as we left none the wiser.
Wary of talking too much about politics, unsure whether it was wise to focus too Much on why the economy is booming, Chen decided, finally, to point us towards an alternative theme: Taiwan as a holiday paradise. Would we see the spectacular mountain gorges, or the rugged, unpollut- ed east coast? No, but we would experi- ence the glamorous Caesar Park Hotel in Kenting National Park at the island's southern tip, where, the director of tourism told us, we could snorkel undis- turbed among sparkling coral and rain- bow-tinted fish.
Alas, the Caesar Park keeps its swim- Ming-pool as hot as its coffee and serves no food after 8.30 p.m.; it is separated by a busy highway from a smelly beach, whose crowded surf is churned to soup by a dozen petrol-leaking jet-skis. For five months, no drop of rain had fallen to brighten the barren surroundings. And, Yes, a mile across the bay, spoiling the view, stood a monument to Taiwanese state insensitivity: a big, grey nuclear Power-station.
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