island became
self-supporting, in spite of a steadily growing population (thirteen
million in 1968).

At the same time, the government succeeded in stabilizing the currency
and in eliminating corruption, thus re-establishing public confidence
and security. Good incomes from farming as well as from industries were
invested on the island instead of flowing into foreign banks. In
addition, the population had enough surplus money to buy the products of
the new domestic industries as these appeared. Thus, the
industrialization of Taiwan may be called "industrialization without
tears," without the suffering, that is, of proletarian masses who
produce objects which they cannot afford for themselves. Today, even
lower middle-class families have television consoles which cost the
equivalent of US $200; they own electric fans and radios; they are
buying Taiwan-produced refrigerators and air conditioners; and more and
more think of buying Taiwan-assembled cars. They encourage their
children to finish high school and to attend college if at all possible;
competition for admission is very strong in spite of the continuous
building of new schools and universities. Education to the level of the
B.A. is of good quality, but for most graduate study students are still
sent abroad. Taiwan complains about the "brain drain," as about 93 per
cent of its students who go overseas do not return, but in many fields
it has sufficient trained manpower to continue its development, and in
any case there would not be enough jobs available if all the students
returned. Most of these expatriates would be available to develop
mainland China, if conditions there were to change in a way that would
make them compatible with the values with which these expatriates grew
up on Taiwan, or with the Western democratic values which they absorbed
abroad.

Chiang Kai-shek's government still hopes that one day its people will
return to the mainland. This hope has changed from hope of victory in a
civil war to hope of revolutionary developments within Communist China
which might lead to the creation of a more liberal government in which
men with KMT loyalties could find a place. Because they are Chinese, the
present government and, it is believed, the majority of the people,
consider themselves a part of China from which they are temporarily
separated. Therefore they reject the idea, proposed by some American
politicians, that Taiwan should become an independent st