Vice President Lien Chan this morning delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the International Conference on "The Republic of China on the Threshold of the 21st Century: A Paradigm Reexamined" held at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
The full text of the Vice President's speech, entitled "Visions and Promises--Quality Democracy, Mature Economy and Care for the Society", is as follows:
First of all, I would like to say Happy New Year to you all. The scholars present here today have come a long way from the United States, Russia and Hong Kong. On behalf of the ROC government, I would like to express my warmest welcome to you. The subject of the conference is "The ROC on the Threshold of the 21st Century : A Paradigm Reexamined", which is a common concern for all of you.
During the development process over the past four decades, the ROC's developments in economic and political fields are regarded as role models in the international community. Since I have myself witnessed and experienced tremendous changes in this development process. I have special thoughts about them. When we look back to what we have experienced at the crossroads of the 20th and 21st centuries, we may find there were difficulties as well as achievements.
On the economic development front: our economy continues to grow speedily without expanding the gap between the rich and the poor; the industry continues to grow with small and medium-size enterprises(SMEs) as the pillar of development; and market mechanism continues to improve and the government is doing its best to fulfill its duty.
In the path of democratization, there is passion but no disorder; resistance but no disruption; conflict but also compromise. That is why we call this process as "Quiet Revolution". Of course, many things remain to be done. Looking toward the future, we have visions and also promises. Without attaining the goal, we will never stop.
The academia has had many discussions about the ROC's economic development and democratization, I will not repeat them today. But I want to emphasize on two points: first, although the ROC's economic development and democratization are regarded as role models in the academia, their connotations are still changing. We have only reached some phased goals in both economic development and democratization. We still have a long way to go before we attain our ideal. Second, when we talk about the political and economic trends, we cannot ignore the importance of social development. This is a new role model yet to be established. I think only with the completion of the three role models can they represent the true Taiwan Experience, which is also China's future path. The completion of the three role models is the realization of our visions. I think these visions include three concepts with rich connotations, including quality democracy, mature economy and care for the society.
Democracy has been the dream for Chinese since the 19th century. It is the truth learned from and accumulated by painful lessons. Over the past decade, we have fulfilled this dream with a surprising stride. Waves of reform and liberalization, such as the lift of the ban on newspaper and political parties, the reshuffle of the entire Parliament, the deregulation of the press and media and the revision of the Constitution have been successfully unfurled. However, Rome was not built in a day. The critical political transition cannot be completed overnight. We accumulate experiences from the autonomy of the local governments over the past five decades and move forward step by step.
Although the reshuffle of the entire Parliament and the direct election of the President are the symbols of democratization, we will not just stop there. We will not be self-contented. In recent years, the efficiency of the Parliament is low. There are many physical fights during the sessions. Most political figures try to flatter the public instead of pursuing their ideals. Populism is on the rise. Respect toward system is ignored. The positive interactions among parties are not yet established, which affect the operation of the Congress. The bad habits of local elections still exist. The efficiency of the government has not met the aspiration of the public.
To keep up with the advanced countries in America and Europe, we need to commit ourselves to building a quality democracy. We believe that the quality democracy must be a democratic system that reflects the public opinions, a democratic culture that stresses political morality, a democratic government that has high efficiency, and a democratic structure that promotes human rights.
Democratic politics is the politics of public will instead of that of populism. Populism is to supercede the system with passionate public opinions. Democracy is to reflect the public opinions in accordance with the system. After our democratization, the willingness for people to participate in politics has been greatly increased. How to reflect a variety of public opinions to the system and then form the policy is our future direction. In the future, we need to review the current election system, particularly the election of legislators. Whether the current multiple-member election district should be changed to single-member election district, and one vote for each voter should be changed to two votes for each voter should be taken into consideration.
If there is no political morality in democratic politics, there will be many political figures opposing one another because of the issue of provincialism conflict. Many politicians who smear one another will also appear. The mob will legalize their illegal business transactions through election. The culture of bribery will be on the rise. These occurances need to be eradicated, otherwise they will erode the foundation of our democracy. In order to establish a democratic body with morality, we need to strengthen the Sunshine Act to have transparent and open policy. We also need to improve the current election system to prevent the mob from using election to legalize their illegal businesses.
Democracy carries out the ideal of popular sovereignty by letting the public to participate in politics influence the political structure and government policies. However, with the active participation of the public, the government cannot have effective and suitable solution easily when it faces the pressure from a variety of groups. In other words, after democratization, the government should focus on improving its efficiency and capability. Government restructure is implemented by increasing the flexibility in adjusting organizations and personnel and to learn the flexibility from enterprises. In the future, the government should clarify the division of power between the central and the local governments. On the one hand, the dialogue system between them will be strengthened. On the other hand, the government should establish a mechanism to solve the disputes about their duties and improve the function of the Council of Grand Justices to review the disputes concerning local self-governments. Of course, whether or not the zoning of the administrative district is reasonable will be regarded as an important task of the government restructure.
Human rights are the basic values of democracy. I think the achievements of protecting basic human rights can be used as an index to judge a country's law and order and politics. However, the connotations of human rights change with the evolution of technology and society. With the advent of the 21st century, our people have enjoyed the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly and association, and the protection of the freedom of movement. In the future, we will implement our environmental rights, protection personal safety, stress equal rights between men and women, and the rights of children, attach great importance to the rights of foreigners, the care for marginal groups and the advancement of working rights for people. These are the tasks for the government to promote human rights.
On the economic development front, our per capita income has reached US$ 13,000. The value of our information industry ranks the third in the world. In the 1998 IMD International Competitiveness Evaluation, our domestic economic strength ranks the 8th, compared with 17th last year. From 1992 to 1998, our competitiveness has been ups and downs, but our economic strength always ranks around 10th. (The drop of our economic strength to the 17th is only exception.)
We understand that the current strength does not guarantee the future success. After comprehensive trade liberalization, the competition in the international society is getting more and more fierce. The tests of various crises are severe, too. In this financial crisis, many countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the ROC have suffered to different extents. The economic structure of the countries is also tested. In this crisis, the damage we endured is relatively lighter. But we can not escape from it. We have to be alert and cautious to handle it. At the same time, we must understand that crisis will be over someday, but the competition will go on. Facing the new round of competition, we must set forth a few principles in order to become a mature economy:
1. Simultaneous implementation of liberalization and regulation
Judging from global trends for development, we can see clearly the growth of global trade volume is much higher than the average economic growths of various countries. This indicates that the world is moving toward a finer system of division of labor. However, to maintain efficient division of labor, we must maintain a liberal and open market of competition at the same time. Therefore, the basic direction of liberalization should remain unchanged. At present, our government is actively promoting liberalization and planning to further loosen the restrictions on trade and investment, financial market, transportation market, telecommunications market as well as the regulations on entry and exit of professionals. This is the right direction, and we can not hesitate because of the Asian financial crisis.
Of course, we need to learn from the financial crisis as well. We can not ignore regulation while promoting liberalization. Regulation in this context means new concepts and measures. Regulation does not entail that the government gets involved in everything and examine each case to restrict the private sector with every means. Rather, the government should ask the private sector to establish a system of risk management itself. Take the financial industry for example, the government can not possibly take care of everything. The most important thing is to ask the financial institutions to establish procedures of internal control and inspection of new products, to make the procedures transparent, and then to make sure that the procedures are followed. If we can develop and popularize such a concept, it will be easier to achieve regulation and speed up the process of liberalization.
2. Stimulating economic growth through technological innovation
Technological development is the driving force behind modern civilization and economic growth. In recent years, exponential development of information revolution and rapid integration of computer and communications have shortened the geographic distance on the internet. The world has entered an information age. It is foreseeable that high-tech industries such as information, electronics and aviation will become the mainstream of industrial development in this new age. Technological innovation capability will become the key factor in national development. As the green revolution of environmental protection spreads rapidly worldwide, we need urgently the support of technological research and development, thus making it even more obvious the importance of technical innovation.
Our industries has transformed and upgraded speedily in recent years. In 1997 technology-intensive products accounted for 39% in our total manufacturing output. Such increase indicated that high-tech industries have become the engine for our industrial development. Nevertheless, several of these high-tech industries still rely on foreign supply of key technology and parts. In terms of communications, environmental protection and bio-tech industries, we still need to upgrade our technological R&D capability. The present direction is to actively promote technological innovation to make high-tech industries the main driving force behind our economic development.
3. Sustainable development as the core for economic growth
Over the past half century, our rapid economic growth has brought excessive burden on Taiwan's environment and sabotage of the ecology. Recently both the government and the private sector have recognized the importance of environmental protection. Facing the international promotion of environmental regulations and that environmental issues have become the bargaining chips for industrial countries during trade negotiations, we have made a clean production technology a must. As a member in the global village, we must take initiative to go along with this trend for development.
To stress economic growth and environmental protection at the same time, we will use pre-planning and prevention measures to avoid remedies afterwards. When the government implements national development plans, we must conduct national land planning, environmental impact assessment, health risk assessment, resource recycling plans, etc. to protect the environment, reduce environmental impacts and the occurrence of environmental disputes. Moreover, the government should expand adoption of the mechanism of market economy incentives to improve the quality of our environment.
More importantly, the government should evaluate the real progress of our society and economy by "green GNP". Since conventional calculation did not include environmental pollution and resource consumption, more pollution resulted in a contradictorily higher GNP figure (costs for pollution prevention and after-damage reconstruction are included). Our constitution outlines the ROC's basic national policy that economic and technological development should be treated as important as environmental and ecological protection. To implement this policy, our government will first make the green GNP to evaluate the real progress of our society and economy and then officially make out green GNP with advanced countries when the various countries achieve a common understanding of the calculation method.
In addition to quality democracy and a mature economy, our emphasis for the 21st century should be placed on establishing a caring society. I have mentioned several times that there are two aspects to the caring society. One is care for nature, and the other is care for humanity. Care for nature covers conservation of the ecology as well as planning of our living environment.
For the moment, I am stressing care for humanity. Misfortune and miserable people exist in every society. I believe, other than the government's responsibility, care from each individual is the best way to make up for misfortune and the warmest way to achieve social justice.
There are three important points in care for humanity: (1) to ensure safety for living; (2) to promote the rights and benefits of the weak minority; (3) to upgrade the culture of our education. The purposes are to break the indifference among people, to reduce violence in society, and more importantly, to establish new mainstream values for society - care for life, respect for others, self-discipline and mutual assistance.
Safety for living is the most basic right of the people. As society gets more complicated, there are more and more factors threatening our life safety. Safety for living is not restricted to a safe society and public safety. It also includes traffic safety, safety for children when going to and fro from home to school, safety of public health, safety from the threat of contagious diseases and safety and guarantee from injuries at work. A safe living is the only way to ensure a happy life and peaceful society.
In terms of promoting the rights and benefits of the weak minority, there are people whose rights are comparatively less guaranteed because of unequal allocation of capabilities, opportunities and resources. The elderly, the disabled, women and children, and the aborigines are examples of those who deserve our special care. These people are members of our society. We should not ignore them. Instead, we should take concrete actions to give good care to those in need, to grant opportunities to those who need opportunities, and to give subsidies to those who need them.
In terms of upgrading the culture of our education, we need to develop citizens with modern citizenship. We need to promote further innovation and development of our culture under the impact of traditional heritage and the influence of international culture. At the same time, we need to allow the fine culture to take root in our lives.
It is true that the government should shoulder the responsibilities. However, the government has only limited manpower and resources. If the various sectors of our society can understand this concept and view social development with a broader perspective, many of the problems we face at present will be resolved with better results. Our society will not only enjoy an affluent life but also become a safe, clean and warm family. Therefore, the whole society will progress, surpass past standards and enter a new horizon.
A recent poll shows that nearly 70% of the respondents have made donation to charity groups, and 50% are willing to do volunteer services. The figures indicate that our people no longer care about merely their personal livelihood but begin to care about the interactive relationship between individuals and society. We may also say that the seeds of caring for society have been disseminated in every corner of our society. This is a very exciting fact.
If our society can go through a successful transformation to look beyond oneself and the concept of material life so as to achieve guarantee of life safety, improvement of environmental quality, and establishment of a warm society, this will be a society where people live a happy life, and where their generations are willing to take root. In addition to continuing our pursuit of becoming an economically advanced country, our country will become an advanced country in terms of living quality. It is from here that we understand our three concepts--quality democracy, mature economy and care for society--complement one another.
Ladies and gentlemen, China's dream for the past century is coming true here in Taiwan with much richer contents and a more solid foundation. To say these are three paradigms is no better than saying that this is one paradigm for modernization. We are fortunate to build today's achievement on the hard work of our predecessors. By the same token, we will make the promise of a better future for our future generations and will work hand in hand to realize that dream.