A Small Country's Destiny?

While in Taiwan and since coming back, I have been asked multiple
times what are the most striking differences between the mainland and
the island...and so far I have not been able to put the fundamental
things in anything beyond a few superficial traits. Like I said in
the previous post, Taiwanese people are respectful, polite, attentive
to detail, allowing for a society filled with order. Traditions are
protected and there is an overwhelming sense of peace and mutual trust
within a service-oriented society despite a physical look resembling
some old Chinatowns at certain parts.

However, descriptions like this are definitely satisfying. People of
both sides should expect something of this sort without the need for a
visit to the other side. After all, reading the political and
economic histories as well as the societal and ideological
developments is enough to predict all such differences. Everyone on
the mainland knows that Taiwan is ahead economically, especially when
considering the much more egalitarian distribution of wealth that
allows for higher standard of living even in the most remote rural
parts. And the Taiwanese knows that the mainland has serious social
problems that make a place of deception, confusion, and occasionally,
violence.

Then today I read some works by Japanese authors reacting to China
surpassing Japan as the world's 2nd largest economy. Their attitude
is collectively that of nonchalant yet sorrowful dismay at an event
that knew will occur sooner or later. They called for Japan to know
its place as a small country and no longer fight for ranks and
positions, instead focusing on sustainable developments and improving
the lives of her citizens. British magazine "the Economist" gingerly
criticized the pessimism displayed by the Japanese, who, as they
noted, enthusiastically awaited the day of becoming the world's #1
economic power just two decades ago.

But one point in this pessimist self-evaluation by the Japanese have
really struck me as a defining point for at least the near future: the
concept of a small country understanding its appropriate destined
place in the world. It can be summarized to say that a small country
simply cannot sustainably compete with a large one for an extended
period of time and should simply accept the reality that the large
countries will shape the destiny of the world and the small countries
in the long flow of human history.

While this point may sound rather plain and obvious to people today
living under American superpower and the emergence of the BRICs, the
statement, I assure you, is nothing less than revolutionary in human
understanding of power. Looking back at the past century and half of
human history, too many small nations with limited land, resources,
and population, such as Japan, UK, and Germany, have used superior
technology, work ethics, and institutions to defeat behemoths like
Russia, China, and India, creating the myth that
geographic/demographic size can be overcome through superior
organization and efforts.

But as the British, Japanese, and German Empires expand to become
behemoths themselves, they realized the institutions that made them so
successful in projecting power have become unsuitable for gripping
onto their newly extensive holdings. They felt incapable of utilizing
the extra resource and populations precisely because their successful
institutions are not designed for governing such large geographic
areas.

Instead, their successes have simply awakened the behemoths.
Russians, Chinese, and Indians have easily molded the successful
development policies of the British, the Germans, and the Japanese
with their centuries-long experience on governing multi-ethnic empires
and neutralizing internal divisive forces. As these behemoths
gradually take on the superior principles of the small countries, the
small countries themselves will feel more and more constrained by the
limits on resources in their competitions with their huge neighbors.

In history, those with the greatest technological and institutional
advantages of course lead the world, but in today's globalized world,
where technologies can be transferred and institutions can be
emulated, the advantages in such cannot possibly last for a long time.
And in the case where advantages of any nation are negligible, then
it is safe to say that large states, with more people, more land, and
more resources, will dominate global order and put small states to
irrelevance no matter how economically advanced and wealthy the small
states are.

In the end, the difference between a behemoth like mainland China and
a small island like Taiwan is fundamentally a difference in attitude.
The island understands that it is rich but limited in prospects of
future developments, so it desperately hangs on to any sense of
superiority, even if it is just perceived, in technology and standard
of living as the people understands that Taiwan will never wield as
much influence as the mainland does on a global field.

The same sort of attitude is prevalent elsewhere. In the
English-speaking world, the likes of UK and New Zealand holds the same
attitude toward the US. The Brits and Kiwis say that the States have
unequal distribution of wealth, high crime rate, and a population that
is all in all ignorant and quick to jump to stereotypes and bias.
Most of it is true, and no one can doubt that at least New Zealand has
a much more peaceful and harmonious living conditions that the States
perhaps ever will.

But at the end, it all comes down to who is the driver of human
history: the PRC and the USA are shaping the world in ways that Taiwan
and New Zealand will never be able to. That underlying envy is
definitely something the small countries have to live with yet cannot
be satisfied with...haha, at least when the Taiwanese talk about
global affairs, they can say they are Chinese and talk about what we
Chinese do in the world...the PRC may be poor but it still does
represent all of the Chinese-speaking world in global affairs, and
everyone I talked with in Taiwan know this principle, they just don't
want to admit it...