Force In Taiwan Research Articles

Impact of Migraine on the Employed Labor Force in Taiwan

To estimate the economic impact of migraine on the employed labor force in Taiwan. The age- and sex-specific migraine prevalence rates, self-reported missed workdays due to migraine, and monthly income were obtained from 3,377 subjects of a community-based headache questionnaire survey in the greater Taipei area. The migraine-related loss was projected to the whole Taiwanese population based on statistics from the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan. People suffering from migraines had a median of 2 missed workdays due to migraine in the year prior to the survey. It is estimated that there are about 1.7 million people who have migraines over the course of 1 year in Taiwan. Migraine resulted in 3.7 million estimated missed workdays and an estimated cost of NT$4.6 billion due to loss of workdays in 2005. Employed migrainous women aged 35-54 years accounted for 56% of the cost. Migraine is related to high work absence rates and causes significant economic loss to the society in Taiwan.

New Perspectives on the Chinese Mainland's Policy Toward Taiwan

Abstract As affirmed in this article, the basis of the mainland's policy toward Taiwan is the one-China policy spelled out in President Jiang Zemin's “Eight-Point Program” of 1995 and President Hu Jintao's program of 2005 entitled “The Four Nevers”: (1) Never swing from the one-China principle. (2) Never give up efforts for a peaceful solution of the issue. (3) Never change the policy of pinning hope on Taiwanese compatriots. (4) Never compromise in the struggle against secessionist forces in Taiwan. This article is an interpretation of “The Four Nevers.”

Don't Dance to Beijing's Tune

Andrew Nathan's article provides an exaggerated view of the Chinese Communists' perception of threat across the Taiwan Strait. It takes a rather one-sided perspective in interpreting China's security interests as if the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a hegemonic power which has a right to impose its will on Taiwan and the world. That Andrew Nathan would blame Taiwan's democratic aspirations rather than PRC expansionism and hegemonism for the crisis in the Taiwan Strait and the troubles in Sino-US relations is hard to believe. Likewise, Nathan fails to acknowledge the reality of Taiwan ? a sovereign nation with a political and economic system separate and distinct from the PRC's. By taking a China-centred perspective, Nathan's article fails to take account of the position and vital interests of other actors in the Asia-Pacific region, notably Taiwan itself and the United States. Nathan asserts that China is merely acting to defend its security interests when it seeks to isolate Taiwan and to force it into an accommodation on China's terms. In the context of what China sees as an emerging American containment policy and the long-term possibility of Japanese rearmament ? and hence that China may be surrounded by hostile nations ? it is rational, according to Nathan, for China to seek to gain control over Taiwan so as to prevent it from becoming a base for a potential enemy. But what evidence is there to indicate that PRC leaders like Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Qiao Shi really hold the unrealistic and paranoid view of China's international environment that Nathan's article implies? Is it really possible for Taiwan to align itself with China's potential enemies, as the PRC fears, and to serve as an 'unsinkable aircraft carrier' from which such enemies could launch attacks on China? That seems highly unlikely in the absence of any organized political force in Taiwan that favours such a course of action. Even now, the ruling Kuomingtang (KMT) and its splinter group, the New Party, are calling for Taiwan's eventual reunification with China, while the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is looking for Taiwan to become the 'Switzerland of East Asia' ? a neutral and peace-loving nation, not a Japanese or US colony, and certainly not a nation unfriendly or hostile to its neighbour across the Taiwan Strait. It is critical to keep in mind Taiwan's history. From 1895 to 1945, Taiwan was a Japanese colony and its people suffered under Japanese occupation. When the KMT took over Taiwan in 1945, however, it imposed a highly

State Entrepreneurship, Foreign Investment, Export Expansion, and Economic Growth

We employ vector autoregression to test for direct Granger causality among state entrepreneurship, foreign investment, export expansion, and economic growth in Taiwan. We infer hypotheses about the relationships among these variables from the developmentalist, dependency, and statist perspectives, which suggest varied and often contradictory expectations about the presence or absence, and about the sign and direction of causality among these variables. We found that Taiwan is a unique case and differs from the findings reported in previous research on Brazil and Ireland. The island's state entrepreneurship has been “Granger caused” by its own recent history as well as the recent history of GNP performance. In turn, state entrepreneurship has had a causal impact on export expansion. But state entrepreneurship has not been influenced by and has not influenced either economic growth or foreign investment. In addition to state entrepreneurship, foreign investment and economic growth have affected Taiwan's export expansion. The inflow of foreign investment has been caused by both endogenous (that is, this variable's own recent history) and exogenous (Taiwan's past export successes) sources. All other suspected causal linkages fail to be substantiated by our analysis. Accordingly, state entrepreneurship has evidently acted as a key nexus in the operation of the internal, but not external, market forces in Taiwan, thus supporting and contradicting central arguments of all three perspectives on political economy.

Contending Forces in Taiwan's Economic Policymaking: The Case of Hua Tung Heavy Trucks

On July 30th, 1982, a dispatch from Detroit occupying two column inches on page six of the Wall Street Journal reported that General Motors (GM) was selling its 45% investment in the Hua Tung Automotive Corporation. A joint venture set up in Taiwan to build trucks, buses, and diesel engines, the enterprise was to be sold to the major local partner, the state-owned Taiwan Machinery Manufacturing Corporation, for US$13.8 million. The news aroused little interest in the United States, but it raised a storm of controversy in Taiwan. There it was revealed that the original contract allowed the American company to pull out its entire investment, with interest, should the government in Taiwan fail to protect adequately the highly noncompetitive venture from imports. Not only was the contract exceedingly generous to GM, it also failed to specify what degree of protection would be considered inadequate and it set no time limit on withdrawal. If, for example, the Taiwan government had reduced the level of protection years after the commencement of operations, GM presumably could still have pulled out with interest. In addition to repaying GM, the government had to compensate the various stateowned enterprises which had invested in the venture, and enter negotiations with the foreign banks, recently welcomed into the Taiwan market, which had extended some US$20-30 million in loans to Hua Tung.I

Contending Forces in Taiwan's Economic Policymaking: The Case of Hua Tung Heavy Trucks

Contending Forces in Taiwan's Economic Policymaking: The Case of Hua Tung Heavy Trucks