ate. There are,
mainly in the United States and Japan, groups of Taiwan-Chinese who
favour an independent Taiwan, which naturally would be close to Japan
politically and economically. One may agree with their belief that
Taiwan, now larger than many European countries, could exist and
flourish as an independent country; yet few Chinese will wish to divorce
themselves from the world's largest society.

3 _Communist China_

Both Taiwan and mainland China have developed extremely quickly. The
reasons do not seem to lie solely in the form of government, for the
pre-conditions for a "takeoff" existed in China as early as the 1920's,
if not earlier. That is, the quick development of China could have
started forty years ago but was prevented, primarily for political
reasons. One of the main pre-conditions for quick development is that a
large part of the population is inured to hard and repetitive work. The
Chinese farmer was accustomed to such work; he put more time and energy
into his land than any other farmer. He and his fellows were the
industrial workers of the future: reliable, hard-working, tractable,
intelligent. To train them was easy, and absenteeism was never a serious
problem, as it is in other developing nations. Another pre-condition is
the existence of sufficient trained people to manage industry. Forty
years ago China had enough such men to start modernization; foreign
assistance would have been necessary in some fields, but only briefly.

Another requirement (at least in the period before radio and television)
is general literacy. Meaningful statistical data on literacy in China
before 1937 are lacking. Some authors remark that before 1800 probably
all upper-class sons and most daughters were educated, and that men in
the middle and even in the lower classes often had some degree of
literacy. In this context "educated" means that these persons could read
classical poetry and essays written in literary Chinese, which was not
the language of daily conversation. "Literacy," however, might mean only
that a person could read and write some 600 characters, enough to
conduct a business and to read simple stories. Although newspapers today
have a stock of about 6,000 characters, only some 600 characters are
commonly used, and a farmer or worker can manage well with a knowledge
of about 100 characters. Statements to the effect that in 1935 some 70
per cent of all men and 95 per cent of all women were illiterate must