Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> because China would not have become the technical behemoth it is now if those protests had succeeded

Taiwan's GDP/capita is 2.6x China's [1]. It grew faster, for longer, in large part through high technology.

Counterfactuals are always hard in history. But we literally have the nationalist government's democratic, capitalist successor kicking in way above its weight class economically and technologically. It's fair to say that if the '89 protest hadn't been massacred, the 21st century would currently be undoubtedly China's to rule. (I'd also put even odds on Taiwan having peacefully reunified by now.)

[1] https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/taiwan/china?sc...

View on HN

It’s much easier to increase the GDP per capita for 20 million people compared to 1.4 billion especially when Taiwan started with a 10x higher GDP per capita. If anything they have lost a significant percentage of their lead. I don’t think what worked in Taiwan would work in China because the scale is astounding.

Is that true? The whole point of per capita is to cancel out the linear benefit of 100 million workers being able to outproduce 10 million workers. There are ways for small countries to have a per capita GDP higher than would be feasible for a larger country, but Taiwan doesn’t really do any of those. They don’t have oil or any other particularly valuable natural resources, and they aren’t a tax shelter like Ireland or a microstate with workers commuting across the border like Luxembourg. They have to create wealth the hard way, through labor productivity, just like the mainland. And between the two, the mainland has the potential to realize greater economies of scale.

> Taiwan's GDP/capita is 2.6x China's [1]. It grew faster, for longer, in large part through high technology.

Also worth mentioning, all the while being under a military dictatorship (see White Terror) until the late 80's.

First, note that Taiwan was initially not democracy, the liberalization started by lifting of martial law in 1987, first parliamentary elections in 1992, first presidential elections in 1996 (this is widely considered the point at which Taiwan became a consolidated democracy)

From your link: 1987: Taiwan 5325, China 300 1996: Taiwan 13588, China 710 --- 2024 Taiwan 34060, China 13314

Whatever starting point you choose, China has risen faster than Taiwan.

In fact, there is non-zero chance that if China had a regime change and heeded west's economic 'advice', it would have gone through equivalent of what Russia went in the 90's.

They are doing fine, thank you, doing it their commie way, despite Zeihan and others preaching China's immminent collapse for decades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com