Transcending the election thinking framework and seeking the general pattern of Industrial Development

        Recently, I read the American business magazine Forbes (Forbes) announced the list of rich people with more than one billion dollars in personal wealth in 2021. This year, 2755 richest people came on the list, the largest number ever. The number of Chinese mainland and Hongkong is 698, while Taiwan has 47.

        With the rapid rise of the mainland, in contrast to Taiwan society, the attack and defense of the four major referendums have become the focus of attention at present. Next year, we will face the third nine in one local election. The referendum and election have occupied most of the attention of government officials and politicians. For Taiwan's economic policy, industrial layout in the next three, five or even ten years, There is no discussion. This is my worry. I am very anxious. Taiwan should think more about the future of the industry, because the policy is the direction to start the allocation of enterprise resources.

        In recent years, Taiwan's phenomenon of "opposing everything in China" seems to be expanding, which is also worrying. Looking at the world, multinational enterprises pay more attention to the mainland market. According to the "2021 China business environment survey report" released by Washington think tank and the National Commission on us China trade, 87% of the American enterprises surveyed said that they had not moved any part of the supply chain out of the mainland in the past year, and 43% of the enterprises surveyed planned to accelerate their investment in the mainland in the next year. Although the Sino US trade war continues, American enterprises are still actively investing in the mainland.

        Recently, cross-strait politics has entered zero interaction and relations have been frozen, but cross-strait economic and trade exchanges have become more and more hot. The Ministry of Finance announced that Taiwan's exports to the mainland and Hong Kong not only increased to US $154.6 billion in the first October of this year, and the proportion of exports was close to an all-time high (42.5%), but also continued to deepen. By October this year, Taiwan's trade surplus with the mainland had expanded to US $86.25 billion, significantly larger than US $70.5 billion in the same period last year. Looking at these data, it is undeniable that the mainland market is of great importance to Taiwan's economic development and trade growth.

        However, in the current political atmosphere in Taiwan, some public opinion seems to have a sense of guilt for Taiwan enterprises to invest in the mainland. In fact, it is not necessary. Taiwan industries do not have to stay out of the world trend and have a reasonable understanding and judgment of the mainland market. They should not let ideology take the lead and override everything.

        Over the past few years, many organizations in Taiwan have conducted many public opinion polls of the Taiwan people on cross-strait relations. Among them, the option of "maintaining the status quo" has always been the mainstream public opinion of the largest number of Taiwanese. Like most Taiwanese, I also hope that cross-strait relations will "maintain the status quo". I have always opposed Taiwan independence and supported the 1992 consensus and one country, two systems advocated by Koo Wang at the Hong Kong talks.

        Nowadays, Taiwan's political atmosphere attaches importance to elections, and politicians mainly calculate votes in their hearts, but their industrial strategy focusing on the overall pattern is not careful enough; In the face of the mainland market opportunity with a population of 1.4 billion, they deliberately suppress it. Is this in Taiwan's long-term interests?

        Taiwan must look to the future. As a senior industrialist, I deeply understand that Taiwan's industry has great advantages, but I also need to plan for the layout of the next generation. From a simple point of view, although it is unable to solve the cross-strait dilemma, it always hopes for cross-strait peace and maintain normal exchanges and interaction. How to create an atmosphere of peace between the two sides of the Strait and create the best interests of the people in the future depends on the wisdom of the leaders. (the author of this article is a senior industrialist) (this article is published in Lianhe Bao on November 30, 2021)

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