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The more Taiwan's Pres. Chen talks about independence, the more Taiwan's own people and foreign investors get spooked and shift money out of Taiwan and into mainland China. Ever since Chen became President just 2 years ago, more money has left Taiwan than in the previous 8 years combined. Taiwan's population is too small to support much of a domestic economy; its lifeblood is exports which make up around 50% of Taiwan's GDP. But the more Chen talks about independence and screws up Taiwan's economy with high taxes, environmental regulations, and more red tape, the more businesses will continue to flee Taiwan.

The new head of America's unofficial embassy in Taiwan spoke a few weeks and said basically, "The Fortune 500 aren't going to sacrifice their own economic interests in the mainland with its 1.2 bil. people for the sake of Taiwan's democracy. Democracy is nice, but there's only so many Cokes and Boeing airplanes and Citibank loans an island of 22 mil. can consume vs. a continent-sized country of 1.2 bil."

In the end, it's all about economics and capitalism. America's markets are saturated and American firms need new markets to expand into.

George Orwell once criticized Rudyard Kipling for not realizing that the British Empire (like all empires) was primarily a money-making enterprise. Similarly, the purpose of modern democracy is to allow capitalists to run free and make as much money as possible. Remember, America's colonialists had a beef about taxes and the "bourgeoisie" in France led the French Revolution. China's authoritarian rulers are more effective in creating an environment in their country conducive to capitalism than the gridlocked democratic legislatures of today's Third World republics (Russia, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, S. Africa), which if anything seem to require one IMF bailout after another. After each of these countries adopted full-fledged multi-party democracy, capitalism did not flower and these countries didn't become mirror images of bourgeois Western society but rather all these countries experienced massive capital flight (including Taiwan in the past 2 years). Russia's per-capita GDP fell 50%, and Taiwan's per-capita GDP fell 12% in just the last year in addition to a 50% drop in foreign investment. Taiwan thought its economic strength would last forever and it fancied itself as a US-like modern democracy, but it forgot that it gets 50% of its GDP from exports but its exporters are now leaving. As Taiwan's exporters leave, Taiwan's middle-class (the basis of Taiwan's democracy) deteriorates.