Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The nation’s economic development has come at the expense of the government’s prolonged pandering to capitalists. It has given them preferential tax benefits and exemptions as well as inexpensive water and electricity, together with relaxed land-use restrictions. It has handed capitalists the whole country on a platter, which has allowed them to exploit cheap labor, grab land and national parks, destroy the ecology and the environment, pollute crops, endanger health and pass the costs on to the vulnerable and the disadvantaged elements of society and to the public as a whole.

The government has done this to lower production costs and maximize competition through mass production and low unit prices so that Taiwan could become a global manufacturing powerhouse.

After repeatedly downplaying the possibility of a direct meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while insisting that such a meeting could only take place with the support of the Taiwanese public, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) finally revealed his true intentions in an interview with the Hong Kong-based weekly Yazhou Zhoukan.

Ma was quoted in the interview, released on Wednesday, as saying that although China has ruled out the possibility of a Ma-Xi meeting at next year’s APEC summit, he remains willing to attend the economic summit and meet Xi, adding that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait “need to create the conditions necessary for such a meeting, and we are still in the process of creating these conditions.”