The Art of Survival

I came to Taiwan expecting to find the people and their leaders tense and depressed, as diplomatic isolation closes in on them. Instead, I found confidence, determination, and indeed defiance. The favorite comparisons are with Britain after Dunkirk, and with beleaguered Israel today. Churchill is a revered name. There are many reasons for the prevailing selfconfidence, but the easiest to grasp is that Taiwan is, in the fullest sense, a going concern.

I first came to the island more than 17 years ago, and was possibly the first Western correspondent to interview Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek since the Chinese Nationalists lost the Mainland in 1949; and almost certainly the first to report on the extraordinarily successful land reform program accomplished some years earlier. In the economic field, land reform was the springboard for takeoff: not only did it enable the peasants and farmers to own the land they tilled, but by indemnifying the landlords in industrial bonds, it turned them into capitalists.

BC

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Brian Crozier

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I came to Taiwan expecting to find the people and their leaders tense and depressed, as diplomatic isolation closes in on them. Instead, I found confidence, determination, and indeed defiance. The favorite comparisons are with Britain after Dunkirk, and with beleaguered Israel today. Churchill is a revered name. There are many reasons for the prevailing selfconfidence, but the easiest to grasp is that Taiwan is, in the fullest sense, a going concern.

I first came to the island more than 17 years ago, and was possibly the first Western correspondent to interview Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek since the Chinese Nationalists lost the Mainland in 1949; and almost certainly the first to report on the extraordinarily successful land reform program accomplished some years earlier. In the economic field, land reform was the springboard for takeoff: not only did it enable the peasants and farmers to own the land they tilled, but by indemnifying the landlords in industrial bonds, it turned them into capitalists.