Talking about my... generational issues

Towering.

Why don't you all fade away
And don't try to dig what we all say
I'm not trying to cause a big sensation
I'm just talkin' 'bout my generation

Popped over to Thinking Taiwan.com, where you should really be going, and read a lot today. One point that is made in various forms by many commentators there, and everywhere else, is that this generation of kids is different: it's the first to grow up under democracy.

Well, that's true, yet this generation is different in another way too: it is the first to face economic prospects worse than those of its parents. This generation is suffering under years of worsening income inequality (Gini coefficient), stagnant incomes, and slowing growth:

Year	Growth Rate	Gini
1990	6.87	0.308
1991	7.88	0.312
1992	7.56	0.315
1993	6.73	0.318
1994	7.59	0.317
1995	6.38	0.317
1996	5.54	0.320
1997	5.48	0.324
1998	3.47	0.325
1999	5.97	0.326
2000	5.80	0.350
2001	-1.65	0.345
2002	5.26	0.343
2003	3.67	0.338
2004	6.19	0.340
2005	4.70	0.339
2006	5.44	0.340
2007	5.98	0.341
2008	0.73	0.345
2009	-1.81	0.342
2010	10.76	0.342
2011	4.19	0.308
2012	1.48	0.312
2013	2.1

Source: DGBAS

Cruelly, this generation's growing environmental awareness confronts an environment increasingly traumatized by the construction-industrial state, while many of its best management and engineering prospects must look for work in China.

To put this in historical perspective, between 1895 and 1938, Taiwanese knew solid economic growth driven by Japanese subsidies for rice and sugar production which paid above-world-market prices for those items. For a brief period around 1936-37, per capita incomes in Taiwan may have exceeded per capita incomes in Japan proper. Thus the great-grandparents of this generation knew a land whose wealth and stability steadily grew.

The war intervened and trade with Japan collapsed after 1943 with the US sub blockade. When the war ended, Japanese were largely repatriated, and the island was catastrophically looted by the KMT. Incomes plummeted and with the advent of a million or so extra mouths to feed in 1949, per capita incomes probably did not recover until the mid-1960s (Mendel discusses this in the classic The Politics of Formosan Nationalism). The KMT, probably deliberately, marks the beginning of its records in 1950, which shows steady growth (experienced by the locals, until about 1965, as recovery) throughout the 50s to the 80s, with a few blips. Hence, until 1990, two generations came and went under steady GDP growth and constantly increasing economic prospects.

But the second of those two generations is still around, and it views things rather differently than the young. In its late 40s to early 60s, it is the true Strawberry generation, consolidating its gains, keeping its head down, not taking risks, deploring the action-oriented youth, and not taking to the streets to protect the future of its children. When their children took to the streets, they faced resistance from above: their parents cajoled, threatened, and forbade them from taking such action, according to many students I spoke to. When Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou denigrated democracy the other day, saying that it didn't put food on the table, he was speaking as one in that older generation and many must have quietly agreed. Their experience is that democracy has brought slumping economic prospects and rising prices. What good can it be?

But there's another generational change quietly taking place: when Ma Ying-jeou finally steps down from the Presidency, he will likely be the last mainlander president born in China. The current generation of mainlander candidates for presidency were all born in Taiwan, the place where their faux mainlander identity was created, a true-born Taiwan identity even though it regards the island as an inferior place of exile. Their children, now in their 20s and 30s, are either emigrating, mostly to the US (like Ma Ying-jeou's daughters), or quietly adopting the rapidly evolving Taiwanese identity, which has both democracy and the island itself at its core. This generational change is happening within the KMT even as the DPP is finally handing off the torch to the generation that came of age after the democracy activism of the 70s and 80s.

While people note that the young are quite different than the old, in fact all the actors are in a place where no generation has ever been. What new Taiwan will they create? Stick around and see... because things are going to get real interesting...
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Daily Links:

• ROC on Taiwan expresses concern about Vietnam/China clash in South China Sea, and then claims the sea. The goal of this foreign policy is to reduce the support of Taiwan's neighbors by creating irritants with them. Meanwhile commentator argues ROC should leverage pivot to keep its holdings in the S China Sea. Recall that China will likely lose in the international court, and that will also invalidate the ROC claim.
• KMT plans to make it more difficult to recall legislators: sooner or later, all KMT rules turn into Calvinball from The Foreigner *sigh of pleasure*
• Pingtung County to jump on public bike bandwagon.
• Long post at Litanies (who?) on the energy market in Taiwan. With numbers!
• J Michael comments on launching Thinking Taiwan and responds to comments on my blog about nailing his flag to the DPP mast.
• Taiwan wants Chinese tour groups to stay longer since duration is too limited and prices have fallen, driving quality down. 
• Taiwan LED packaging firms in China facing competition from China firms. Yet another industry. The China moment is over. We need more distance, not more integration. 
• Another cult of integration fail: the massive China copying and faking of Taiwan goods, in this case tea.
• Ketagalen Media: the past and future of Taiwan Food (audio)
• Nominations for the Control Yuan look a lot like political rewards
• KMT legislators break ranks over nuke plant
• NOT TAIWAN: Oceans without fish. Devastating El Nino possible this year.

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