"Four tigers" no Third World models Taiwan brags about 
imports from United $tates

by MC5

Figures released February 21 by the U.S. Department of 
Commerce show that in the year 2000, Taiwan bought $24.38 
billion in goods and services from the United $tates, 
compared with Mainland China's $16.25 billion excluding Hong 
Kong.(1) Seeking to prove its value to its master, the 
Taiwanese lackey regime continues to publish trade 
statistics in a light favorable to itself relative to 
Mainland China, but Taiwan's analysis of itself is a 
capitalist distortion of the path to Third World 
development. 

The Taiwanese lackey regime points out that 
state-capitalist Mainland China is 58 times more populated 
and 265 times larger geographically, but Taiwan buys more 
goods.(2) The point the Taiwanese regime is trying to make 
is that Taiwan is a better trade partner and hence it is in 
the United $tates's best interests to protect Taiwan from 
reunification with the Mainland. 

Strictly factually 
speaking, Taiwan's numbers game is misleading. Combined with 
Hong Kong, Mainland China with $30.88 billion in U.$. 
imports in the year 2000 does buy more from the United 
$tates than Taiwan does. Excluding Hong Kong, Mainland China 
exported over $100 billion in the year 2000 to the United 
$tates alone compared with Taiwan's $40.5 billion. 

MIM reminds readers that Mainland Chinese goods and services 
come from a social-fascist country where wages are very low, 
averaging about 50 cents an hour. The actual value of those 
goods and services within the United $tates is more like $1 
trillion, for a transfer of value from the Chinese 
productive sector to the United $tates's unproductive sector 
of about $900 billion. 

Bourgeois propagandists are trying to 
convince Third World intellectuals and masses that the 
Taiwan model is the way to go, because Taiwan has indeed 
succeeded in getting rich in two generations--with 
capitalism and ultra-dependence on the United $tates. The 
GNP per capita in 1999 was $13,235.(3) Approximately 56% of 
the domestic product of Taiwan is for export and that is 
exactly why Taiwan is not possibly a model for the world to 
follow. For the United $tates alone, Taiwan averages over 
$1800 a year in exports per Taiwanese persyn. Hence, for 
every billion Third World people, it would take over $1.8 
trillion in U.$. imports to equal the Taiwanese model. Since 
total imports from the whole world by the United $tates in 
all of the year 2000 were less--$1.469 trillion--we can see 
how unrealistic it is to think that the Third World can 
follow the Taiwan model. If the United $tates bought every 
last pizza and hamburger from abroad without making a single 
durable or non-durable good for persynal consumption at home 
(and of course that is also impossible), the total purchases 
in the year 2000 would have been $2.8 trillion. That is not 
enough for India and China with over 2 billion people to 
follow the Taiwan model of over $1800 a year per persyn in 
exports to the United $tates. 

It's relatively easy for the 
United $tates to make a place like Taiwan look good on 
paper, because it only has 22 million people, but there is 
no chance of that happening for the world as a whole. The 
recent development examples of Taiwan and southern Korea are 
no model for the Third World to follow and do not prove the 
success of capitalism. They are tiny exceptions in a sea of 
capitalist failures. If it were not for the communist 
revolutions in those countries, Uncle Sam never would have 
given Taiwan and southern Korea special trade relations and 
they never would have had the land reform necessary to start 
modernizing a country.

Notes: 1. "U.S. International Trade Summary, 1998-2000," 
http://www.export.gov/ 2. Taipei Update, 24Nov2000, 
http://dc.roc-taiwan.org/tpupdate/no007.pdf 3. 
http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/stats/