"Neo-Liberalism" VS."Nationalism"

At the beginning of 1980s,the shock brought by the exclusion from the UN and termination of diplomatic relations with the U.S had not yet rested.Besides these,the non-KMT party members’ challenges to the Martial Law System was also weakening the validity of the KMT’s authority.The Second Oil crisis took Taiwan into the shadow of stagflation.At the same time,the other tricky problems included the decline of export competitiveness caused by the rise of labor cost,a depressed market by financial dualism,and an industrial structure needing to upgrade.At this time,with double pressure of politics and economics,the outbreak of the debate between Jiang Shuojie and Wang Zuorong was exactly a debate of the future economic path for Taiwan.The debate between Jiang Shuojie and Wang Zuorong focused on four issues:firstly,which was preferred,stability or growth?Secondly,how to implement the liberalization of Taiwan’s financial system?Thirdly,what role should the authority play,leading the economy or reducing intervention?Fourthly,what the future economic development path would be?"Jiang-Wang Debate" is the first true sense of modern economic debate since KMT moved to Taiwan.Its meaning goes beyond a debate.It is the first open debate on Taiwan’s future economic development path.As an open debate,it covered all the groups which had impacts on economic policy-making.In the debate,the "local"economists with financial and practical experience were in diametric opposition to the overseas economists and their followers,most of whom got a doctor degree in the U.S and had academic reputation.Media had a dramatic impact during the process of socializing the "Jiang-Wang Debate".Several main newspapers in Taiwan attended this debate,including official mouthpiece Central Daily News,two biggest private newspapers China Times and United Daily News and their respectively affiliated financial newspapers,and Independence Evening Post,a media with strong local background.The editorials and reports of these newspapers became the best carriers of the scholars’viewpoints.Besides taking a role of idea communication,the media also tried to influence the policy making of the authority.United Daily News and Common Wealth Magazine even hold mini forums,inviting the related officials and scholars to talk with each other.The ordinary people also wrote letters to the newspapers to express their views.This debate also triggered some non-economic scholars’ concerns about political issues,since they thought that the territories of Taiwan’s politics and economics were highly coincided."Jiang-Wang Debate" is actually an example of how neo-liberalism got the discourse right in Taiwan.Even Wang Zuorong and his supporters never denied the legitimacy of economic liberalization.Neo-liberalism has become the mainstream economic theory paradigm,with a fade-out of “nationalism”,"the Three Principles of the People",Keynesianism and the theories tending to government regulation or intervention.The transfer of the discourse right also made the localization of Taiwan’s economic policy-thinking,which meant the authority began to change its economic policy-making foothold,from the whole China to the Taiwan region itself.Since then,the original imagination of "bond" between Taiwan and the Mainland’s economics was gradually fragmented.