Does Taiwan have the weirdest politics in the world?

That is the topic of my Bloomberg column earlier in the week, here is one excerpt:

Chiang Kai-shek, the first leader of the island, was part of a generation of Asian visionary leaders which is perhaps without parallel. It includes Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Park Chung-Hee in South Korea, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in China, and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Whether you admire these figures or not, theirs  was an unparalleled time for nation building and at a much swifter pace than in European history.

And there is no successful polity that has so many apparently insoluble problems:

Taiwan is also inextricably linked to the economy of the mainland. By one estimate, over 10% of the Taiwanese population lives or works in mainland China, including many of the most ambitious Taiwanese, and China is by far the number one counterparty for trade and investment. Taiwanese real wages stagnated from 2000-2016, in large part because it was more profitable for Taiwanese investors to send their capital to the mainland. The Taiwanese birth rate has plummeted to 1.2 per woman, possibly the lowest in the world.

The Chinese also wish to take them over, by the way.  Finally, I close with some remarks on the forthcoming election.

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