From Starving China to High-Speed Taiwan
Growing up as a child, I can still remember hearing the familiar words at the dinner table whenever I failed to clean my plate.
“Eat your dinner. There are starving children in China.”
For many Americans of my generation, China seemed like a distant and mysterious land marked by poverty, revolution and hardship. News stories spoke of famine, political upheaval and the rise of communism in a country most Americans would never expect to visit.
Then came the Chinese Revolution.
Mao Zedong and the Communists seized control of mainland China in 1949, while nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters fled to Taiwan, where they established the Republic of China on the island across the Taiwan Strait.
For decades afterward, Taiwan and mainland China stood as symbols of two competing political systems born out of civil war and the Cold War.
Years later, I had the opportunity to visit Taiwan and witness part of that history firsthand.
One of the most memorable experiences was staying at the old hotel associated with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the elegant and influential wife of Chiang Kai-shek who became well known in the United States during World War II. Her presence and history still seem to linger there.
I also rode Taiwan’s remarkable high-speed rail system, traveling across much of the island in only a few hours. The trains were smooth, modern and efficient. Crowded cities, busy ports and prosperous communities flashed by the windows at remarkable speed.
It was difficult not to reflect on how much the world had changed within a single lifetime.
The China that Americans once associated with starvation and poverty had transformed itself into a modern industrial nation and major world power. Taiwan itself evolved into a prosperous democracy and global center for technology and commerce.
History often creates strange parallels.
China continues to insist that Taiwan belongs to China and remains determined someday to bring the island back under Beijing’s control. In some ways, the situation reminds me of how the United States long viewed Cuba — a nearby island sitting strategically close to the American mainland and deeply tied to national security concerns.
Great powers have always been sensitive about nearby islands and neighboring spheres of influence.
As I watched Taiwan’s sleek trains race across the countryside, I thought back to those childhood dinner table lectures about starving children in China.
None of us sitting around those tables could have imagined how dramatically the world would change.
Yet America still remains the world’s leading example of freedom, innovation and opportunity, while nations around the globe continue competing for economic power and political influence.
History moves quickly. One generation remembers hunger and revolution. The next witnesses high-speed trains, crowded skylines and an entirely different China than the one Americans once imagined from afar.