In Japan, as in Taiwan, interest in President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inaugural address on Wednesday last week for her second term was widespread.
In her speech, which I listened to online, Tsai talked about how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the global political economic order and altered global supply chains.
This is an issue that Japan must also face, so I would like to present an idea for the people of Taiwan to consider.
In the wake of the pandemic, Japan and Taiwan must consider the risks arising from supply chains’ dependence on China, as well as the risks that arise from different value systems.
This will lead to supply chains being restructured according to the principle of the three kinds of proximity and three types of appropriateness.
These are: close proximity, close value systems and close degrees of technological development, and appropriate market scale, appropriate land and appropriate infrastructure.
Close proximity reduces transport risks, while close value systems reduce the risk of disputes.
As for closeness of technology, it facilitates horizontal division of labor and sparks innovation.
The importance of market scale, land and infrastructure go without saying. Japan and Taiwan are close to one another not only in geographically, but also in their value systems and degree of technological development.
Additionally, Japan has a large amount of relatively cheap land, along with well-developed infrastructure. Labor-intensive industries can deploy remote-controlled robots, which is one of Japan’s major strengths.
In her address, Tsai promised to promote technological integration between the military and the private sector.
This is another one of Japan’s strong points. As Taiwan’s military experts are aware, many US fighter jets incorporate Japanese civilian technology.
In my capacity as a writer and commentator, I encourage the Japanese government to promote cooperation between Japan and Taiwan in fields including national defense and security.
Let us hope that during Tsai’s second term, the cooperation between Japan and Taiwan will grow closer than it already is.
Gemki Fujii is a political commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
RSS