If reporters - or anyone for that matter - wish to see a positive vision of the future China, they should visit Taiwan today, one of Hong Kong’s leading media figures told the Center’s Bangkok media conference yesterday.
Jimmy Lai, founder of Next Media Ltd., which publishes the popular newspaper Apple along with a number of other publications, argued that Taiwan’s democratic institutions and rule of law are where China will eventually have to go if it hopes to survive.
“Taiwan will become the international hub of China because because in Taiwan, you have the protection of rule of law and freedom of information, which will make Taiwan a gem,” he said.
In short, he said, Taiwan has the “institutional conditions for greatness,
while the mainland lacks these conditions.
“China is expanding its economy, but not its institutions,” Lai said.
He gave an example of what this might mean:
If there is a global economic slump (which given recent news is a real possibility), then China is in danger.
“If the government and the markets collapse, what is there to hold the society together? he asked. “There is no intermediate institution there.”
You will see people “fighting brutally” for their share of a smaller pie, he said. “That’s what people forget when everything is expanding.”
By contrast, if Taiwan faces a similar crisis, he argued, “you have the churches, the NGO’s, the unions, the temples, all these institutions that can stretch out to help each other.”
Ironically, Lai said, the dire political and administrative troubles of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-Bian may actually help the cause of democracy in greater China.
“Chen has done a really bad job, yet democracy still stands and is working very well,” he said. That lesson will not be lost on those watching from the other side of the Straits, Lai said,.