[環境的未來]

Thank you Taiwan!

by　Robin J. Winkler

Thank you, Taiwan, for letting our members like General Electric sell you nuclear power plants, without having to solve the problem of nuclear waste.

This has made Taiwan the country with the highest density of nuclear reactors in the world, with all its plants being situated very close to densely populated areas, and all this without us having ever offered any help in solving that pesky problem of nuclear waste.

Thank you, Taiwan, for allowing our members to sell you junk food, super processed foods, genetically modified foods…

The products made by MacDonald’s, Kraft and all those other food and tobacco companies will help make your children just like ours in the US, where they have the highest rate of obesity in the world. If you keep this up, someday you could be number one!

Thank you, Taiwan, for becoming America’s best buyer of weapons.

Our members, those poor, crumbling companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin Global and Raytheon, who have lost demand from the arms race with the Soviet Union, are fortunate to still have Taiwan keeping them in business. Keep up that war with China, Taiwan - American companies need you!

Thank you, Taiwan, for opening your markets and even subsidizing our Hyper marts and Supermarts, and wiping our traditional stores.

While these Hypermarts and Supermarts, just like our other products and services, are squeezing Taiwan’s local merchants out of business, they’re making room for good ole USA products and services. And if we don’t come and close down your shops, well we can get our local Taiwanese representative to do it for us, - we’ll just sit back and collect the license fees! Wow, aren’t you glad we taught you about intellectual property?

Thank you, Taiwan, for creating a need for American incinerators and landfills to deal with the mountains of trash that results from your people’s consumption.

The Taiwanese people have already mastered American consumerism – buy a heap of useless things, and the rubbish and waste you produce gives our members the opportunity to sell American landfill and incinerator technology. This never-ending moneymaking cycle is just too good to be true!

Thank you, Taiwan, for sacrificing the interests of your farmers by letting us import rice, pig parts and all kinds of other agri-products.

Thanks to the American government helping Taiwan enter the WTO, fulfilling your wish to become a member of the international community, your whole country rejoices, and your government bends over backwards to help ours strip away the livelihood of your farmers, in order to sell a load of our own cheap agricultural products. You’re really too good to us.

Thank you, Taiwan, for allowing us to teach Taiwanese companies how to really pollute and to lower the cost of labor.

Thank you Taiwan for letting us set up plants like GE, RCA and Phillips, and all those others that taught our companies how to really pollute your water, air and soil; thank you Taiwan for letting us become your role model, for allowing Taiwanese companies to learn how to go where the labor laws provide the lease possible protection for workers and where environmental laws are simply evaded. These are all just a part of becoming a mature economy. Keep it up Taiwan!

Thank you, Taiwan, for continuing to build highways and encouraging people to drive cars.

Thank you Taiwan for allowing our members such as Ford, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, utterly unhindered, to introduce you to the wonderful world of cars and highways. Why, with one major highway in Taiwan you got rid of nearly 10% of all your arable land – another solution for those pesky farmers. And boy, for a country with 1/10 the number of people but only 1/250 the space, you sure do have a lot of cars and highways, and all that goes along with them - carbon emissions, the chopping down of trees, congested cities. If you think that’s how to become a mature economy, just keep it up!

Thank you, Taiwan, for continuing to keep our pharmaceutical and chemical companies very, very profitable at the expense of your people’s health and that of your soil.

You’re still number 1 when it comes to per capita consumption of all those wonderful cure-alls. We love the way you let us pay for hospitals and clinics here to push our newest and most expensive drugs, and we thank you for letting us continue to use up most of your national health insurance budget on our drugs – our factories around the world thank you, too, for not paying too much attention to your traditional medicine doctors or even those local medicine companies. This is good business!

Thank you, Taiwan, for being a model student of our desperate striving for economic growth.

Thank you for continuing to sacrifice your fragile environment, and allowing America to teach you how to become the most voracious consumers and wasteful producers in the world, you’re a model student. And by the way, congratulations on your landing at the bottom of the heap when it comes to environmental sustainability (145th out of 146 – down with the likes of Haiti, Iraq and North Korea!)

Thank you, Taiwan, for swallowing our great American advertising, propaganda and packaging.

With your help, Taiwan, we have been able to persuade nearly all of your citizens that they want to be just like Americans, all without ever thinking that among all the countries in the world, the US has the highest, or nearly highest, rate of:

Suicide Murder Incarceration Obesity

Depression Consumption of resources Drug Abuse Unwanted pregnancies

But, hey, who cares about all that?

A Different Voice on the Occasion of AmCham's 2005 Sie Nian Fan (Thank You Dinner) for Taiwan Officials, Robin Winkler, Former Governor and Supervisor of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei.