Posted on: Sunday, January 30, 2005
THE RISING EAST
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By Richard Halloran
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Fifty years ago, this was a drab, dusty provincial town just liberated from Japanese colonial rule only to fall under the oppressive Nationalist Chinese regime that had been run off the mainland by the Communist Chinese.
Today, this thriving city of 2.3 million people has the look and feel of a national capital that reflects Taiwan's emerging ethnic and political identity, its rising standard of living and its promising if sometimes rowdy democracy. Even as Taipei modernizes, however, a block off the tree-lined boulevards and behind the world-class hotels and office buildings is an old Taipei of small shops and eateries, cramped and dingy flats, and life spilling into narrow alleys before dawn and well into the night.
The evolution of this city should be of more than passing interest in Washington and in every capital in Asia, for it is visible evidence that the people of Taiwan mean to determine their own future.
Richard Halloran • Special to The Advertiser Emblematic of Taipei's mounting status is the world's tallest building, Taipei 101, which opened this month to loom over the eastern quarter to which the city has expanded. Designed by a Taiwanese architect, C.Y. Lee, it stands at 1670 feet compared with 1,483 feet of the two Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the 1,381-foot Jin Mao Building in Shanghai, the Sears Tower, at 1,450 feet, in Chicago and the Empire State Building of 1,250 feet in New York City. The $2 billion Taipei 101 derives its name from its number of stories. A Taiwanese defends the name as trendy and modern. Somehow, it lacks the touch of Chinese poetry and, given its symbolism, might better have been called something like the Tower of Heavenly Aspirations. Although Beijing misses few chances to isolate the government here, Taipei is the site of 70 embassies, and trade or cultural offices that are embassies in all but name. Among them, the United States, Australia, Britain, the European Commission, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam use such organizations to bypass the fiction of "one China."
The U.S. quasi-embassy, the American Institute in Taiwan or AIT, last month underscored U.S. expectations of Taiwan by signing a 99-year lease for property on which it plans to build an office. The goal, said AIT director Douglas Paal, "is to make this new facility a source of pride — not only for the people of the USA, and those of us here at AIT, but also for all of Taipei."
Not long ago, few foreign dignitaries came to Taipei; today a steady stream arrives. Among those this month was U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and senior minority member of the International Relations Committee. A visiting delegation was led by former Secretary of Defense William Perry and another came from the U.S. National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
Public discussion of politics under the old regime carried the risk of prison if one departed from the party line. Today, the debate is unrestrained. "Indeed," said a foreign resident, "politics is all they talk about." Similarly, the press is unrestrained but given to partisan politics in its news columns and to speculation that can only be called wild. Political leaders lament the trivia and inaccuracy that they say dominates the press.
Evidence of economic progress: Showrooms for luxury automobiles such as Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Says a wag: "People who are not so well off here drive Buicks." Taiwan's per-capita income last year was $23,400, compared with $28,200 in Japan, $17,800 in South Korea and $5,000 in China. The cultural life of art, music and theater is led by the city's dozen or so museums, the finest of which is the incomparable National Palace Museum. Founded in Beijing's Forbidden City, or imperial palace, in 1925, the museum's collection was crated up and carted around China to evade Japanese invaders in the 1930s and the Communists in the 1940s. It arrived in Taiwan in 1947. Today the collection of 655,000 artifacts, believed to be the finest of its kind, is housed in the museum built in 1964. The collection is so vast that only about 15 percent of it can be displayed at a time. The museum has twice been expanded and today is undergoing a third renovation to be completed in 2006. Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. He wrote this article for The Advertiser.
Certainly, no one is more attentive to the advance of Taipei than leaders in Beijing who claim sovereignty over this island. They have become increasingly restive, perhaps sensing that Taipei knows that time is not on Beijing's side in deciding the fate of Taiwan.
Taipei 101, the world's tallest building, soars above the grounds of the memorial to Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China.
