A comparison of Taiwan and China
Taiwan looks very small on the world map but its total population is approximately 23,000,000, which is larger than 170 countries in the world. It may not have done as badly as some suggest.
- The size of population in china is 58 times of that in Taiwan but their total national income is only 10 times greater than Taiwan’s.
- Taiwan’s GDP per capita is 5 times more than that of China. Even though China’s economy has been growing rapidly, the gap between Taiwan and China has actually remained the same.
- In terms of PPP, Taiwan ranks 39th in the world whereas China ranks 133rd.
- China’s infant mortality (21.96/1000 live births) is 4 times of that in Taiwan (5.45).
- In China, 8% of the population live under the poverty line whereas there’s only 0.95% in Taiwan.
- The unemployment in Taiwan was 3.9% when the DPP handed it to the KMT and it’s now over 4% after Ma took over but the unemployment in China is estimated to be between 15-20%.
- On average, each individual in Taiwan have 1.06 mobile phones but those in China only have 0.41. In Taiwan, 57% of population have access and use the internet but there’s only 19% in China.
- Looking at Gini Index (the level of economic inequality, the greater the figure, the worse the inequality), Taiwan got 33 in 2000 and fell steadily between 2001 and 2006. China got 41 in 2001 and 47 in 2007. Well, inequality in a ‘communist’ regime is greater than a country generally considered ‘capitalist’?
- Taiwan’s corruption index is 5.7 but China is only 3.5 (worse). Corruption in China seems to be prevalent.
- Most importantly, Taiwan’s press freedom is 10, which ranks 32nd in the world but China is only 89, which is the 163rd place in the world and only better than 6 other countries. In other words, there’s literally NO press freedom in China!
- On average, 550,000 Taiwanese share an airport but in China, 2,840,000 people share an airport.
- The life expectancy in Taiwan is 4.6 years longer than that in China.
- Looking at the Global Competitiveness Index, Taiwan is the 14thworldwide (5.25) and China comes the 34th (4.57).
China has always been clear about their intention to take Taiwan and alarmingly, the current ruling party, KMT, is very willing to help China in this regard. However, Taiwan is still ahead of China on various measures and it’s still a long way to go to bring China to where Taiwan is. As of now, most Taiwanese identify ourselves as Taiwanese and would not accept the level of human rights abuse in China and let go of the freedom and democracy we have fought hard for. Unfortunately, the majority of press are pro-China or even owned by Chinese business and have been exaggerating China’s success, which is limited to certain areas and certain social circles, and putting Taiwan down whenever they can.
(Source: http://www.wretch.cc/blog/billypan101/11740452)
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tw.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
http://www.faqs.org/docs/factbook/fields/2172.html
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2007
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025
I’m Taiwanese and I was born in America. Often people at school ask where I’m from because I’ve gotten sick and tired of people not knowing the existence of Taiwan. People always say everything but Taiwan. One person said even said Taiwan, China. I was very offended by that person’s ignorance. From this blog entry Taiwan seems better than China so why doesn’t anyone know it at all? =] This is a very nice blog. ^-^
Really it helped foreign students like me to understand in what ways Taiwan is far better than China. Thank you for your valuable information.
china is much larger than taiwan, so wouldn’t it be harder for them to match taiwan in such regards on average? besides, there are pockets of areas in china that can rival the quality of life in taiwan.
also, i find it ironic that people care for the people of taiwan and wish that it does not lose its freedom and sovereignty, and yet they don’t say anything for the 1.3 billion people in china who are already under the “communist” regime that taiwanese so do not want to fall under themselves. the enemy here is not china, but rather its regime. the people of china should be seen as being on the same side of taiwan, who are both trying to fight the common enemy, which is china’s government/regime.
Bigger countries don’t necessarily achieve better quality of life. It all depends on the government and the system. China is a one party state where the government’s interests supersede their citizens.
China and Taiwan are two different countries. It is up to the Chinese people to fight that regime with friendly support from other countries, including Taiwan, rather than dragging Taiwan in. Taiwan doesn’t belong to China; therefore, Taiwanese should not fight the fight for the Chinese. BUT Taiwanese support democracy and human rights and that’s why they speak out for Tibet, East Turkestan, the Chinese (e.g. Tienanmen Square Massacre) and many other who are suppressed around the world.
Chinese people deserve sympathy but those who buy the government’s propaganda also seek to harm Taiwan and the Taiwanese if the Taiwanese don’t agree with them. It’s hard to see anyone as friends when they want to arbitrarily impose on you or harm you, isn’t it?
“Chinese people deserve sympathy but those who buy the government’s propaganda also seek to harm Taiwan and the Taiwanese if the Taiwanese don’t agree with them. It’s hard to see anyone as friends when they want to arbitrarily impose on you or harm you, isn’t it?”
Ditto!
I am Peruvian, and In my opinion is true most of the comments that they said above,on the other hand, if Taiwan want to be known and not being confused with China, the Taiwan goverment should invest more in difund the Taiwanese culture.
In addition China goverment try to shut up every person who show the bad side of the goverment, two typical cases are in the case of TV, Chinese Tv just transmit national channels, and other case is that China banned different websites (cnn, mbc, google,youtube,etc etc). I hope that it won`t happen in Taiwan, however I can highlight that China education is good, statistically in the year 2009, universities such as HongKong and Tsingua are on top places on the ranking of best universities in Asia.
Thanks for your comments. I agree with you about Taiwanese culture and democracy.
As to universities, it’s true that China has some universities at top but bear in mind that all the HK universities were founded and operated under the British system. It wasn’t the Chinese government’s doing. Even though Tsingua is good, but if you take an AVERAGE, the average standard of Taiwanese universities may not be worse than the overall standard in China.
The most important aspect I see is the lack of academic freedom in China. I do believe that the government restrictions on freedom of speech would have an impact on the academic freedom and creativity. It may not be so obvious in hard science or engineering but certainly so in social science and humanities.
Hello,
I’m scared with some rumors that came from internet. I have 17 years old and from 2 years from now on I think I will choose Taiwan instead of Beijing since traditional characters are much more beautiful and I love literatura, and having censorship is a real problem to me.
But I’m still scared, a lot of rumors are on internet like:
“Reunification of China with Taiwan”
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/zhuanti/Zhuanti_14.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100928025004AAxC1Hi
Haha, when I looked at the best answer in yahoo, I cannot help burst into laughter.
This Q&A was brought up by the same guy which was called the notorious “5-cent party” from China. By “5-cent party” it means that many Chinese people are hired by the Chinese authority and post pro-government articles and get paid 5 cents (RMB) for each article. (This one is more elaborate and influential so I guess it may be worth 1 RMB. Don’t worry, just come to Taiwan and explore the beautiful scenery as well as the very best part of traditional Chinese culture. Taiwan will never unite with China in the next 50 years, I promise.
(A Taiwanese local from Taipei)
I was born in Canada, and I’m Taiwanese and all I wanna to said that TAIWAN IS NOT PART OF CHINA, in fact I think TAIWAN IS MUCH BETTER THAN CHINA, because we got more freedom than them and we are much cleaner. p.s. No offence to the Chinese, I’m telling the true. And all I want to say is, with all those thinks Taiwan is part of China, will its not, too bad so sad. I had a friend from Hong Kong, he said he rather be Taiwanese instate of Chinese.
I’m a Taiwanese born in Spain. I used to travel almost every summer to Taiwan to study Chinese. Now I’m working in China, been here for almost a year and not leaving anytime soon yet. Even though I’ve encountered many nice and likeable folks at both countries. I must say the differences are inmensely vast, what’s more, all the nationalistic propaganda gets really tiring (even at some business meetings) and at the worst, Chinese people would get mad at me for claiming I’m Taiwanese or even just Spanish.
But not absolutely everybody thinks this way around here, my girlfriend is Chinese, and some other YOUNG Chinese people I’ve happened to meet are actually quite opposed to the Communist mentality and are pretty wary of all the damage the bi-products of Communism has caused, Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, Tiannanmen Massacre, so on and so forth…
Still a minority I must say, though.
I’ve travelled in both Taiwan and China, and have studied the history of both countries for some time. My observation is that Taiwan, while predominantly Han Chinese in culture, language, and even ethnicity, is no more Chinese than Austria is German or Australia is British. It is not necessarily language, ethnicity, or even culture that is decisive — it is shared (national) experience. Taiwan was only under Chinese rule from the mainland for four years. This rule was of dubious legality and was never officially or legally sanctioned. Rather, it was simply done as a fait accompli with the support of the USA in order to reward Chiang Kai-shek. While it has in the past been argued that Taiwan was part of China under the Ch’ing Dynasty, the Ch’ing were not themselves Chinese and never considered themselves such, nor were they especially kind to the Chinese. Even after they gained control, they would do the best they could to avoid any sort of Sinfication. It becomes even trickier when it is acknowledged that the vast majority of Han Taiwanese are descendants of those Chinese who fled China, illegally, in order to get away from Chinese rule. It becomes even more difficult to justify mainland China’s claim on Taiwan considering the fact that Japan was the country that finally was able to bring some measure of peace and modernity to the island. I don’t want to go on for too long, so I will stop with my own personal observation. There are some really, really nice, fun, and thoroughly decent Chinese people. Some, I am lucky to say, are my friends. The experience in Taiwan, however, is infinitely superior. There is an energy in the air, a feeling that things are getting better all the time. The light is beautiful, the people nice. I never felt pushed there, I left almost in tears because I was so sad to leave it behind. China was different, I was happy to leave, it just didn’t have a good aura. It just felt fake.