SIR PHILIP GOODHART, M.P.
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SWIA OAA
TALKING TO TAIWAN
I am depressed by the present state of Anglo-Taiwanese relations. Of course
there are many important obstacles to normal relations; but we ought to be rather closer than we are.
"This is Maggie's sort of country", a colleague of mine remarked as we were driving through the bustling heart of Taipei a few days ago. It was easy enough to see what he meant. Thanks to hard work and private enterprise, Taiwan now has an unemployment rate which is even lower than that of Japan. The inflation rate is negligible. Taiwan is firmly on course for the accumulation of a balance of pay- ments surplus in 1986/87 which will exceed anything that the United Kingdom achieved at the height of the North Sea Oil boom.
Meanwhile, the revaluation of the Japanese yen will soon produce still more profit
and still more investment in Taiwan's factories. Bureaucratic control of commerce and industry is being relaxed; and the government's grip of other aspects of life in Taiwan is also diminishing. Martial law has been lifted. A real Opposition Party seems to be forming; and the Police in Taipei are more immediately concerned
with traffic control than political control. The proportion of young Taiwanese who receive a university education is higher than in Great Britain, and the gap in living standards between rich and poor is narrowing.
In the light of Taiwan's spectacular economic successes in the past decade, and the free enterprise methods which they have used to achieve that success, it is perhaps
surprising that our government should have continued to treat Taiwan as a pariah.
As far as I could ascertain from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei, our
principal channel of communication with the authorities in Taiwan is a certain Mr.
Heathfield, the present Director of the Anglo-Taiwan Trade Committee. I am sure
that Mr. Heathfield has many qualities. He has a Chinese wife, and can play Mah-jong, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seems to find it offensive that those relations
which do exist between their government and ours should be in the hands of someone
of Mr. Heathfield's calibre.
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