Taiwan solves demand problem using simple logic

The world's economy has been limping along for almost 4 years now, with no obvious end in site. Every time we, as consumers, do something clever like ‘reduce fuel consumption' – the suppliers increase prices to maintain their profits. We're all locked in a strange, economic quicksand with the same question: How can we make progress?

Nowhere is this issue more apparent than Taiwan, where the majority of the world's technology-production companies sit and ponder “Where will growth come from?”

Now it seems that Christina Liu, minister for Economic Planning and Development, has a solution.

Her team believes that the 23 million people living IN Taiwan itself, need to do more. Specifically, that they need to buy more of the technology being made at home.

Specifically, she has announced that, “Although Taiwan is an export-oriented country, the main driver of the island's economic growth needs to be switched from exports only to domestic consumption”.

Hard to argue with that kind of logic, but is Taiwan big enough to help itself? The technique has certainly worked in much bigger countries. For example, a few years back, the price of Basmati rice shot up as India was finally able to use as much of this premium quality rice as it was able to produce. The increase in home demand, meant that rice producers could increase prices everywhere else and that had a knock-on effect on the country's incomes – increase the amount of disposable income, which in turn drove other areas of the economy.

That said, there is a big difference from 23 million to 1 billion, and more people eat rice than use Asus Transformers.

Taking no chances, Christina is also heading up major delegations to Hong Kong, Singapore and India, in an attempt to stimulate growth across the whole of Asia for Taiwanese goods.

KitGuru says: We in the UK and USA might all end up looking like residents of Goglafrincham if we carry on exporting all of our product production to developing nations and leaving nothing for ourselves but insurance, hair dressing and cooking. It might sound like a joke now, but will it be so funny in 100 years time? Why is the Taiwanese government so intense when it comes to developing this kind of aggressive strategy, while our ‘leaders' seem content to rely on market forces? Bizarre.

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