24 Asia The EconomistNovember 9th 2019
1E
arly this year China’s leader, Xi Jin-
ping, grandly repeated his country’s
longstanding vow to bring the democratic
island of Taiwan back into the Chinese
fold, if necessary by force. But force has
never been China’s preferred option: it has
long sought to integrate the Taiwanese
economy with its own, in part in the hope
that independence might come to seem an
impossible or even undesirable goal. At
times China also tries to harm the Taiwan-
ese economy, usually to discredit govern-
ments led by the Democratic Progressive
Party (dpp), which would like to abandon
the official pretence that Taiwan is part of
China. But all the while, the effort to bind
the island to the mainland continues.
When Tsai Ing-wen of the dppbecame
president in 2016, the Chinese government
abruptly cut the flow of tourists from the
mainland and called off all high-level con-
tacts with Taiwanese authorities—a boy-
cott it has maintained ever since. But on
November 4th China announced 26 mea-
sures intended to strengthen economic
ties, permitting Taiwanese businesses to
invest in 5gmobile networks and airlines,
for instance, and to issue bonds in China.
There were also fillips for ordinary Taiwan-
ese, such as allowing them to seek help
from Chinese consulates when travelling—
something that has happened on occasion
in the past but has now been formalised.
Last year the Chinese government unveiled
a list of 31 measures in the same vein, in-
tended to make life easier for the 400,000-
odd Taiwanese living in China.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council,
which handles policy to do with China, ac-
cused the mainland of trying to influenceTAIPEI
China’s bid to deepen economic ties
further seems unlikely to succeedTaiwan and ChinaHoney trap
Ties that could bind
Taiwan,investmentflowstomainlandChina*January-SeptemberSources:TaiwanMinistryof
EconomicAffairs;HaverAnalytics2001 05 10 15 19*15
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nuggled amidlush fields and forests,
Namie was doomed by its proximity to
the local power plant. In 2011 the town’s
21,000 residents were ordered to evacuate
after a tsunami overwhelmed the Fuku-
shima nuclear facility 4km away. Soon
after, all 54 reactors in Japan were shut
down amid safety fears, winking out nearly
50 gigawatts of generating capacity. A new
paper* argues that that decision may have
cost far more lives than the initial disaster.
The Fukushima accident led to a surge
in imports of coal, gas and oil. In the four
years after the meltdown, the share of gen-
eration from fossil fuels leapt from 62% to
88%. Nuclear power, which once produced
over 30% of Japan’s electricity, fell to zero.
The result, say three academics, was a
sharp spike in electricity prices.
Many people responded to higher
prices, in turn, by switching off their elec-
tric heaters. Average electricity consump-
tion per household fell by 8% in some areas
in 2012, according to government surveys.
The biggest drops were in regions such as
Tokyo, where electricity prices rose by over
a third. The increased exposure to the cold
in winter caused an additional 1,280 deaths
from 2011 to 2014, the authors claim. Given
that fossil fuels are far dirtier than nuclear
power, the shift almost certainly added to
air pollution and thus to respiratory ail-
ments, the authors add, although they did
not try to quantify this effect.
The paper is part of a reassessment of Ja-
pan’s response to the world’s worst nuclear
disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. At least
2,000 people died because of the Fuku-shima evacuation, some in the chaos im-
mediately after the accident, and more
from secondary health problems such as
stress, suicide and interrupted medical
care. Deaths from exposure to radiation, in
contrast, are in the single digits. Most esti-
mates assume even the long-term impact
will be small. The precautionary princi-
ple—taking dramatic action to prevent a
worst-case scenario—resulted in poor
policymaking in this instance, concludes
Matthew Neidell of Columbia University,
one of the paper’s authors. “Our estimated
increase in mortality from higher electric-
ity prices significantly outweighs the mor-
tality from the accident itself.”
It would have been bizarre if such a dra-
matic failure had not been followed by a
thorough safety review. A second melt-
down would have been vastly more damag-
ing than the reactor shutdown, given that
the first is estimated to have cost more than
$700bn. But whatever the merits of the de-
cision to mothball all reactors, nuclear
power remains unpopular in Japan. Most
people are opposed to restarting any reac-
tors. Just nine have come back online—and
various lawsuits and pressure groups aim
to turn them off again. Evacuation orders
for towns like Namie have been lifted, yet
35,000 people refuse to return. Even if
there is not that much radiation, Japan
continuestosufferfromthefallout. 7TOKYO
Did safety measures kill more people than the disaster that prompted them?The Fukushima nuclear accidentThe wrong reaction
................................................................
* Matthew Neidell, Shinsuke Uchida and Marcella
Veronesi, “Be Cautious with the Precautionary
Principle: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Accident” http://ftp.iza.org/dp12687.pdf