TAIWAN This research paper summarizes the history

This research paper summarizes the history, economic development, resources, political evolution, society and culture of Taiwan (the Republic of China or ROC) from the standpoint of a private foreign investor. Taiwan is an excellent country in which to conduct an international business. Only one grave uncertainty clouds the horizon for private foreign investors, the current impasse in cross-strait relations between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC), which constitutes a large imponderable hazard for the foreseeable future.

Taiwan is comprised of a large (13,895 square miles) mountainous and subtropical main island lying about 100 miles off the southeast coast of China and many smaller surrounding islands. Originally inhabited by Malayo-Polynesian aborigines, Taiwan's present day population of approximately 22 million people is almost entirely of Han Chinese descent. Over many centuries, Chinese farmers and settlers from Fukien (Fujian) and other coastal provinces settled along Taiwan's coasts. First the Portuguese and then the Dutch established outposts there in the 17th century. Ming Empire loyalists drove out the Dutch. From 1683 to 1895, Taiwan was part of the Manchu Empire which paid little heed to it. It was ceded to Japan after China lost the Sino-Japanese War and remained a Japanese colony until 1945 when, pursuant to the Cairo and Potsdam conferences of World War II, sovereignty over it reverted to Nationalist China.

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y 1990s but still compare favorably with the rest of Asia, 6.7 percent in 1997 and 5.4 percent in 1998 (Tanzer, Tight, 1998, January 12, p. 52; and China (Taiwan), 1999, p. 988). The currency, the New Taiwan dollar, declined about 15 percent and inflation has been kept under three percent per annum. The basic reason for Taiwan's relative success, compared with its East Asian neighbors in managing the Asian financial crisis, has been conservative government and private financial policies. As the Economist (A Survey, 1998, November 7) put it, "Taiwan knows that it cannot afford to go bust" (p. 1). Resources Taiwan's economic progress is all the more remarkable when one considers that it has very little in the way of natural resources, little crude oil or other minerals. Taiwan has small deposits of natural gas, coal and limestone. According to Copper (1999), Taiwan imports 95 percent of its energy needs (p. 7). He said thirty percent of its electricity is produced by nuclear power plants (p. 151). Its volcanic soil is rich with the result that Taiwan, which produces rice, fruits, vegetables, much of which it exports, is self-sufficient in food. Its transportation and communications system is comparable to that of Japan or most Wes

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