I love your Taiwan posts! I think I first signed up for Noahpinion because of your "Taiwan is a Civilization" post. Thanks for writing about Taiwan and keep coming back for New Year's =)
Idea, Noah: Offer Substack subscribers an opportunity to travel with your group (to some limited number), organized through a travel agency, some kind of group rate etc. See how it goes.
Recently, I did a long bike ride across the US (southern tier). In my group were two diplomats from the US state department. They had biked literally everywhere in the world (Africa, Europe, etc). I asked them which country was their favorite for biking.... the surprising answer Taiwan.
I love these posts and would like to save them into a Travel folder I have for a next trip. However, I can't seem to save it or copy and paste into a Word document. Is there any way to do so?
A great post. I agree w you on all the positive points, but there are dark current in Taiwan that really should be understood:
1. Despite being a democracy, the rich calls the shot. Therefore wages are kept low and local businesses are protected.
2. In the past they want to be an International business center, so opened up financial services to outside players (this from our friend who worked at Chase Taiwan). After a few years the locals realized that they can not compete, so lobbied the government to add rules limiting what the foreigners can offer. Then they all left.
3. A shortage of water and electricity. There are two main causes, a) TSMC use a lot of resources, b) Taiwan killed their nuclear program as that is a pet peeve of the current party’s politics. So now there are frequent rotating brown outs. This will get worse as TSMC continues to expand.
All solvable problems, except the China one which is beyond their control.
Can't understand why anyone in Taiwan (a country which AFAIK has no fossil fuel resources of its own) would want to phase out nuclear power, unless of course they were traitors on Beijing's payroll!
Taiwan as the preserver of Chinese culture should be noted.
In mainland China, people go to temples and such but it's like visiting elderly relatives in the States. They only go on holidays and they don't really want to be there.
In Taiwan, the temples actually have retail demand and people go to them as part of their day to day routine.
"How did Taiwan do it? If it was just a matter of being a small island, Ireland wouldn’t have been hit hard. The painful experience of the SARS scare in 2002-3, combined with a highly competent bureaucracy, allowed Taiwan to respond quickly and effectively."
The European Union was the main reason why no European country (even island ones like the UK and Ireland) was able to follow the Zero Covid strategies followed by Pacific countries like Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.
The EU evolved a logistical system that assumed that trucks would be able to travel directly between any two points in Europe, in the case of the British Isles with the help of the Chunnel and/or roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) ferries. But a country following Zero Covid policy needs to quarantine 100% of people entering the country, which means that it can't do more than a trickle of truck-borne trade with other countries. Vietnam was able to Covid-proof its overland trade with China (by changing drivers at the border along with disinfecting the trucks themselves), but at a cost of reducing truck flows to roughly 150 trucks per day, which would be nowhere near enough for Ireland let alone the UK.
The Pacific island countries weren't doing such trade in the first place, instead trading solely by container ships (whose crews could be confined on their vessels) or aircraft (whose crews could be isolated in the airport until they flew out again). In the case of Australia and New Zealand it was because they were so geographically remote that the wasted labor costs from having a truck driver babysit their cargo across the sea would outweigh whatever time saving RoRo might achieve, while in Taiwan it was because the only close enough country for RoRo to be economic was its archenemy China, which meant that RoRo would have been an unacceptable security threat.
Of course, Taiwan was also assisted (and likely did best of all) because it was a Chinese-speaking country that had spies in mainland China, that could inform them very early on that Covid was far more contagious than the CCP was then letting on. But even that foreknowledge would be worthless in a country without the ability to seal its borders: the UK (for example) would have suffered a famine if it tried to cut itself off from the world as the Zero Covid countries did.
I call BS on this. It’s clear to me that the death toll everywhere was larger than the official government numbers. My father died in July 2021 of a heart attack but we didn’t Covid test him or do an autopsy to see if Covid was a contributing factor. He had been stress tested previously for heart problems and was cleared. This isn’t airtight proof but worth being sceptical about. And from another angle, did the Taiwanese do well because of their strict govt policies or because they’re generally more healthy than in countries like
the US? I have become very suspicious of those who support draconian govt measures for my “safety.” California is still seeing the fallout for children restricted to home by our covid policies. We screwed them, and our death rates were no lower than Florida whose policies were much less restricted.
My brother in law was a doctor in Taiwan during the SARs epidemic, which is in a way more traumatic to the Taiwanese as many died. So when COVID happened everyone followed the best practice devices without much coercion. People even reinforcement it among themselves (one is shunned of not donning a mask etc).
Taiwan did so well because they had spies in China that alerted them very early on that Covid was far more contagious than the CCP was letting on, and because they are an island nation with no truck-borne international trade that could easily seal its borders.
I love your Taiwan posts! I think I first signed up for Noahpinion because of your "Taiwan is a Civilization" post. Thanks for writing about Taiwan and keep coming back for New Year's =)
Idea, Noah: Offer Substack subscribers an opportunity to travel with your group (to some limited number), organized through a travel agency, some kind of group rate etc. See how it goes.
Very nice article.
Recently, I did a long bike ride across the US (southern tier). In my group were two diplomats from the US state department. They had biked literally everywhere in the world (Africa, Europe, etc). I asked them which country was their favorite for biking.... the surprising answer Taiwan.
I love these posts and would like to save them into a Travel folder I have for a next trip. However, I can't seem to save it or copy and paste into a Word document. Is there any way to do so?
But is there a way to copy and paste so I can save your posts to read before I visit?!
A great post. I agree w you on all the positive points, but there are dark current in Taiwan that really should be understood:
1. Despite being a democracy, the rich calls the shot. Therefore wages are kept low and local businesses are protected.
2. In the past they want to be an International business center, so opened up financial services to outside players (this from our friend who worked at Chase Taiwan). After a few years the locals realized that they can not compete, so lobbied the government to add rules limiting what the foreigners can offer. Then they all left.
3. A shortage of water and electricity. There are two main causes, a) TSMC use a lot of resources, b) Taiwan killed their nuclear program as that is a pet peeve of the current party’s politics. So now there are frequent rotating brown outs. This will get worse as TSMC continues to expand.
All solvable problems, except the China one which is beyond their control.
Can't understand why anyone in Taiwan (a country which AFAIK has no fossil fuel resources of its own) would want to phase out nuclear power, unless of course they were traitors on Beijing's payroll!
Actually it is the ruling DDP party who is anti nuke. They are the purported Taiwan Independence party…
Taiwan as the preserver of Chinese culture should be noted.
In mainland China, people go to temples and such but it's like visiting elderly relatives in the States. They only go on holidays and they don't really want to be there.
In Taiwan, the temples actually have retail demand and people go to them as part of their day to day routine.
I was in Taiwan at the start of October and it was a neat place. My highlight was biking up the riverside in Taipei.
Thank you, I learned many things about Taiwan
"How did Taiwan do it? If it was just a matter of being a small island, Ireland wouldn’t have been hit hard. The painful experience of the SARS scare in 2002-3, combined with a highly competent bureaucracy, allowed Taiwan to respond quickly and effectively."
The European Union was the main reason why no European country (even island ones like the UK and Ireland) was able to follow the Zero Covid strategies followed by Pacific countries like Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.
The EU evolved a logistical system that assumed that trucks would be able to travel directly between any two points in Europe, in the case of the British Isles with the help of the Chunnel and/or roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) ferries. But a country following Zero Covid policy needs to quarantine 100% of people entering the country, which means that it can't do more than a trickle of truck-borne trade with other countries. Vietnam was able to Covid-proof its overland trade with China (by changing drivers at the border along with disinfecting the trucks themselves), but at a cost of reducing truck flows to roughly 150 trucks per day, which would be nowhere near enough for Ireland let alone the UK.
The Pacific island countries weren't doing such trade in the first place, instead trading solely by container ships (whose crews could be confined on their vessels) or aircraft (whose crews could be isolated in the airport until they flew out again). In the case of Australia and New Zealand it was because they were so geographically remote that the wasted labor costs from having a truck driver babysit their cargo across the sea would outweigh whatever time saving RoRo might achieve, while in Taiwan it was because the only close enough country for RoRo to be economic was its archenemy China, which meant that RoRo would have been an unacceptable security threat.
Of course, Taiwan was also assisted (and likely did best of all) because it was a Chinese-speaking country that had spies in mainland China, that could inform them very early on that Covid was far more contagious than the CCP was then letting on. But even that foreknowledge would be worthless in a country without the ability to seal its borders: the UK (for example) would have suffered a famine if it tried to cut itself off from the world as the Zero Covid countries did.
FYI: https://open.substack.com/pub/politicalitems/p/all-things-china?r=10a3v&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
“Taiwan has suffered a total 7.”
I call BS on this. It’s clear to me that the death toll everywhere was larger than the official government numbers. My father died in July 2021 of a heart attack but we didn’t Covid test him or do an autopsy to see if Covid was a contributing factor. He had been stress tested previously for heart problems and was cleared. This isn’t airtight proof but worth being sceptical about. And from another angle, did the Taiwanese do well because of their strict govt policies or because they’re generally more healthy than in countries like
the US? I have become very suspicious of those who support draconian govt measures for my “safety.” California is still seeing the fallout for children restricted to home by our covid policies. We screwed them, and our death rates were no lower than Florida whose policies were much less restricted.
It was written in January 2021.
My brother in law was a doctor in Taiwan during the SARs epidemic, which is in a way more traumatic to the Taiwanese as many died. So when COVID happened everyone followed the best practice devices without much coercion. People even reinforcement it among themselves (one is shunned of not donning a mask etc).
Taiwan did so well because they had spies in China that alerted them very early on that Covid was far more contagious than the CCP was letting on, and because they are an island nation with no truck-borne international trade that could easily seal its borders.
> The U.S. has suffered more deaths from COVID-19 than it did in all of World War 2. Taiwan has suffered a total 7.
Taiwan has suffered more than 7 deaths from covid.
At this point, yes of course, but that post was written in 2021!
And you got a nice nod from Nobel Paul Krugman today on your Canada perspective! Smart guy giving props to smart guy.
I'm glad Krugman is doing more frequent SubStack stuff - you and he offer us so much.