Since coming to power, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has used “opening up” and “deregulation” as excuses to lean heavily toward China.
It has also invited renowned intellectuals to Taiwan in the hope that they will endorse this approach.
To the government, Japanese global strategist Kenichi Ohmae, who recently visited Taiwan, fit the bill. The government must have been pleased to hear him propose some sensational ideas on the cross-strait relationship. Pro-unification media outlets promoted Ohmae’s ideas in an attempt to push a Taiwan blinded by China fever further toward the edge.
Ohmae likes to talk about the cross-strait relationship, often making astonishing and contradictory comments.
The talk he gave on this visit was no exception; as a result, no one knows if he came to endorse the government’s economic and trade policy or to criticize its pro-China tendencies.
Ohmae used to work at the renowned consultancy McKinsey & Co. He is a prolific writer, and this has given him stature as an analyst of international financial and economic trends.
He is also a frequent visitor to Taiwan and has written much about cross-strait economic and trade issues.
His stance has mostly been pro-unification, suggesting that the two sides speed up economic and trade integration. This gives the impression that he is uncritically pro-China, but this is not the case.
Even so, his analyses have frequently been proven wrong by events.
His most contentious idea was a bold prediction in his 2002 book The Emergence of the United States of Chunghwa that China and Taiwan would unite in 2005. In 2009, however, Taiwan and China are still independent countries.
In 2001, before coming up with his Chunghwa theory, he predicted that China would collapse — an idea well received by then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Two years later, however, Ohmae changed his mind, publishing The Emergence of the United States of Chunghwa. In a short period of time, his views did an about-face: Instead of predicting China’s collapse, he began to praise it.
His recent visit was also filled with contradictions, generalizations and grand predictions based on fragmentary evidence. This time he said Taiwan has less than a year to use its experience and other advantages to move into the Chinese market because the “window of opportunity has almost closed,” while also blaming the previous government for letting an opportunity slip through its fingers.
An enthusiastic Ma welcomed this analysis and bragged that he had initiated a series of measures to improve cross-strait relations aimed at rapidly completing everything the previous government neglected to do.
But has Ma really found a soul mate in Ohmae? No.
Ohmae may have scared Taiwan by saying it only has a year left to make use of its advantages, but later, when he met with Taiwanese reporters, he said it was inappropriate for Taiwan to lean toward China. He said that although cross-strait relations and direct links have brought many business opportunities, the Chinese economy, while large, still only makes up one-quarter of the global economy at most.
He also warned that as Taiwan looks to the future, it must consider cooperating with the five biggest economic entities and that government and business must avoid leaning too closely toward China. He also warned that Taiwan must not remove all restrictions on Chinese investment lest China buy up Taiwanese businesses at will.
Ohmae’s ideas may be contradictory, but a careful look at his analysis of the Chinese economy allows us to conclude that he is one of its cheerleaders. Even so, despite praising China in this way, Ohmae knows that caution is necessary.
The Ma administration, on the other hand, has thrown all caution to the wind with policies that pay no attention to looming dangers.
Ohmae once jokingly said: “I’ll give you Aso if you give me Ma Ying-jeou,” implying that he would rather have Ma as Japan’s leader than Prime Minister Taro Aso — an indication of how much he likes him. The irony is that this jesting may have provided a solution to Taiwan’s problems: If Ma steps down, Taiwan may have a chance to ride out the crisis and move toward a more secure future.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not