Last Friday, Taiwan, China announced the foreign exchange reserve figures, with the latest data reaching US$547.8 billion. Compared with the 3.000 billion US dollars in mainland China, such a small province as Taiwan is equivalent to a level of slightly more than 1/6, which is very difficult.
However, measuring the total economic output of a country or region, it mainly uses GDP. Let’s take a look at what level of GDP of Taiwan, China, can we see?
01, GDP ranking
In the first half of this year, Taiwan GDP ranked between Sichuan and Fujian provinces, ranking seventh in the country.
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0 The above picture is an incomplete statistics on GDP based on the economic operation situation announced by each province and city in the first half of the year.
Sichuan Province's GDP in the first half of this year was 2617.6 billion yuan, an increase of 2.8%. Compared with the increase in the same period last year in the first half of this year, both of Taiwan and Sichuan provinces were US$94 billion. The gap between the two sides remains unchanged, and it is unlikely that Taiwan will surpass Sichuan in the short term.
ranked behind Taiwan, Fujian, with a gap of not much. Compared with the same period last year, Fujian Province achieved a substantial increase of 4.6% in the first half of this year, with an increase of 169.114 billion yuan. At this speed, it will overtake in the next 1-2 years.
02, Taiwan's trade dependence
In 2021, Taiwan's GDP was 5 trillion, of which the trade with the mainland reached 1 trillion, and Taiwan's dependence on the mainland's foreign trade dependence exceeds 40%.
Everyone knows that China is now the world's largest trading country, accounting for 14% of the total global trade volume. We maintain a surplus in trade with most countries, but there are also some of them that have trade deficits , such as Australia, we need to buy minerals from their countries.
The trade between mainland China and Taiwan is also a "deficiency". However, many of the trade deficits are of "sponsorship".
Every year, we input a large amount of tropical fruits from Taiwan, China, but these are not necessities of daily life. We can also buy them from Southeast Asia and other countries. On the other hand, if we don’t buy it, Taiwan will find it difficult to find alternative consumers.
Once due to pest problems, we banned the import of some fruits in Taiwan, which led to the reduction of export of pineapple in Taiwan by 90%, and the reduction of mango and wax by nearly 50%.
Taiwan also has a lot of things that need to be purchased from the mainland, such as natural sand . It does not seem to have any technical content, but it has a great impact on Taiwan.
10 years ago, because the mainland was going to carry out environmental protection rectification, the export of natural sand to Taiwan was prohibited. Unexpectedly, such a simple ban caused serious out-of-stock natural sand in Taiwan, and the price rose to three times, and all infrastructure projects could only be suspended.
But the total demand in Taiwan, China is about 100 million tons, and 1/3 of them depend on purchases from the mainland. Now that so many years have passed, demand will only increase.
Someone may ask if Taiwan cannot buy natural sand from elsewhere?
is also OK, but since the Southeast Asian Games, the distance has been increased several times, the cost is high, and their natural sand is not good.
Therefore, Taiwan is still relatively dependent on the mainland.
03, chip
In fact, mainland China also relies on Taiwan, that is, integrated circuits, chip semiconductors.
Among the 1614.5 billion imported by mainland China from Taiwan in 2021, 1 trillion yuan bought semiconductor chip . Data shows that nearly 40% of the chips that mainland needs to import come from Taiwan, and the majority of them is TSMC.
Over the years, although the mainland has been working hard to develop semiconductor , and its R&D level has long reached the world's leading ranking, there is still a long gap in manufacturing technology. This aspect is something that the mainland needs to strive to achieve transcendence in the future.
