According to findjobdescriptions, Taiwan is an island state of Asia, located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern China and separated from the mainland by the Strait of Formosa; it includes the homonymous island and some smaller ones (P’enghu, Matsu Tao, Chinmen Tao). It occupies a marginal position with respect to the body of China, which has made it an island with particular functions over the centuries. Land of ancient Malay populations and relatively late Sinization, then the basis of European expansionism in the Far East (the Portuguese sighted it in 1544 and called it “Ilha Formosa”, that is a beautiful island), subsequently a land of Japanese conquest, starting since 1949 Taiwan has become the seat of the Kuomintang, the nationalist party,, bourgeois and representatives of the capitalist class formed in China with Western commercial penetration. With this latter function Taiwan (or the National Republic of China) has also become a bulwark of US imperialist and anti-communist politics in Asia. In the central decades of the twentieth century, the country was also the protagonist of a notable economic growth that led it to be counted, with full rights, among the newly industrialized countries. The protagonists of that political line have disappeared from the world scene (starting with its main advocate, Chiang Kai-shek) and thanks to the detente between the US and China first and the changed international geopolitical structure then, Taiwan has seen its strategic importance reduced. In the last years of the twentieth century and especially in the early years of the recently opened millennium, relations between Taiwan and China seem to be going through a new phase, characterized by the opening of commercial channels and the free movement of Chinese citizens on the island. At the same time, an attempt to pacify the area overlooking the Taiwan Strait seems to be underway, a prelude to a rapprochement, including a political one, between the two state entities, which the governments of both states are hinting at as a no longer remote hypothesis.
ECONOMY
The beginning of the country’s economic development is of recent origin, practically dating back to 1949, the year of independence. The starting point was the huge US aid that allowed the country both to modernize its traditional activities, especially in agriculture and fishing, and to undertake the development of the industrial sector. Initially the government carried out a vast agrarian reform and favored, with a series of concessions and loans, the modernization of cultivation techniques and the general improvement of living conditions in the countryside, which began to bear fruit already in the early 1950s. of the twentieth century. The low cost and high specialization of labor attracted the interest of investors in those years, in particular of the Japanese and the United States, who have relocated some industrial productions to Taiwan. At the same time, the regulation of foreign trade, with the removal of some tariff barriers, has allowed the opening to foreign markets and favored exports, which have been rapidly expanding since the 1960s. In addition to not being particularly favored in terms of mineral resources, the Taiwanese industry is structurally rendered fragile by the wide dependence on foreign countries for the supply of raw materials and by the fact that it is eminently at the service of exports, with all the risks deriving from frequent crises in international markets. But this economy has shown considerable flexibility and diversification capacity over the years. In the seventies the The increase in the prices of oil and raw materials required timely interventions, aimed at further opening the market, state support for industry, the strengthening of infrastructures and the tertiary sector, which gradually increased its importance in the following decades. Since the mid-1980s, the country has begun to invest in high-tech production (electronics, biotechnology, photoelectronics, precision mechanics, pharmaceutical, aeronautics and aerospace industries), whose contribution to exports has passed in the period 1985-2006 from 18.8% to 51.8%. In the following years, the productions of the traditional manufacturing sectors were relocated to other Asian countries with low labor costs. In 1995 the Taiwanese government started a new project in Asia-Pacific Regional Operation Center) which provided for the development of high-tech production, financial and telecommunications services, the improvement of infrastructures and air and sea transport. The implementation of the project was favored by the economic and commercial openings of the People’s Republic of China both in the sense that they offered an outlet, unthinkable until a few years ago, to the products of the Taiwanese industry (it is no coincidence that today among the largest Taiwanese commercial partners are China and Hong Kong), both in the sense that they have favored the settlement in Taiwan of foreign companies that, wanting to invest in China, have been able to find on the island a series of services that facilitate the achievement of their goal. These prospects for economic development have had and continue to have repercussions also in the political field, with the granting of greater internal freedom and the elimination of some restrictions on the Chinese market. The crisis in the Asian markets in the second half of the 1990s also had less impact in Taiwan than elsewhere. Competition from emerging Asian countries in the production sectors that require a large and low-cost workforce has led at the beginning of the new millennium to continue investments in research and training in the scientific and technological fields, which over the years have made it possible to maintain a high GDP growth. At the beginning of 2000, the Taiwanese government tried to give new impetus to the primary sector and trade, in particular with the introduction of ever greater customs and tax concessions in commercial relations with China. In view of the entrance into the WTO (2001) laws were passed to support the free market and the last tariff barriers were eliminated. In 2008, Taiwan’s GDP was US $ 392,552 million, while the GDP / resident ratio. is US $ 17,040, one of the highest in the continent (excluding Middle Eastern countries). The programs for the period 2007-2009 concern the reorganization of the socio-economic system with a view to more sustainable development.
