# No haste, be patient

The policy of "No haste, be patient" is an economic policy to discourage Taiwan's business community from investing in China, proposed by President Lee Teng-hui of the Republic of China (ROC) on September 14, 1996, at the National Operators' Conference (NOC) during his presidency.

## Under the Lee Teng-hui Administration

The policy's origins trace back to as early as 1987, when Sun Yun-Suan put forward a similar view to "No haste, be patient" in an interview with World Magazine.
In the 1990s, then President Lee Teng-hui and then Chief Executive Hau Pei-tsun issued three major injunctions in response to Formosa Plastics Group's large-scale investment in the Haicang Project in mainland China. If Formosa Plastics signed an agreement with China on the Haicang Plan, the government would stop the trading of Formosa Plastics' stocks, order the relevant banks to freeze the funds of Formosa Plastics Group, and restrict the departure of Formosa Plastics Group's top executives from the country, among three other major prohibitions. To survive, Formosa Plastics enterprises had no choice but to bear the pain of giving up investment.
Before 2000 A.D., in addition to the idea of "No haste, be patient" for investment in the mainland, there was also the "bold westward advancement" advocated by Hsu Hsin-Liang, who was once the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and the "strong westward advancement" of the DPP, which came out of debates; the bold westward advancement school believed that Taiwanese businessmen, by moving westward on a large scale, would be able to exert a considerable amount of influence on the mainland, and thus become a guarantee of security for Taiwan, while the no haste, be patient school believed that relying on the labor force and the market of the mainland would hinder the autonomy and the multiple security of Taiwan and that Taiwanese businessmen, on the contrary, would easily become the spokespersons for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Taiwan, and that over-expansion in the westward direction would make the spokespersons too strong in terms of politics and economics and would result in asymmetric influences.
At the end of 1994, the renminbi was devalued by 45%, mainland China attracted a large number of investments from various countries, and the funds of East Asian countries began to bleed out.
On August 14, 1996, Lee Teng-hui in the National Assembly (Republic of China) in response to the National People's Congress delegates to the State of the Nation's proposal, pointed out that "mainland China as the hinterland of the construction of Asia--Pacific Regional Operations Center of the argument must be reviewed." On September 14 of the same year, Lee Teng-hui put forward the idea of "no haste, be patient", and then clearly defined: "high-tech, more than 50 million U.S. dollars, infrastructure" three kinds of investment should be "no haste, be patient", so that Taiwan will not lose its R & D, and will not lose its R & D. "to avoid the loss of Taiwan's R&D advantage and excessive blood loss of capital. Upon publication of this policy, it was questioned by the industrial and commercial sectors and triggered a debate on "how to strike a balance between national and social security and corporate interests."
During his tenure as chief executive, Mr. Hsiao followed Lee Teng-hui's direction of "no haste, be patient" as the main axis of cross-strait policy. In 1998, he emphasized that the prerequisites for reviewing and adjusting the policy of "no haste, be patient" was that "the Chinese Communist Party eliminates its hostility towards us, ends the coexistence of hostilities, respects the reciprocal division of power across the Taiwan Strait, treats us on an equal footing and in a reciprocal manner, ceases to block our space for international activities, and that the rights and interests of Taiwanese businessmen's investments are safeguarded by the agreement definitively and that it does not affect Taiwan's economic stability and development".

## Under the Chen Shui Bian Administration

In 2000, after Chen Shui-bian was elected president, the world economic downturn coincided with the intensification of voices from the industrial sector calling for a relaxation of the "no haste, be patient" policy, and Chen Shui-bian changed the "no haste, be patient" policy to "active openness, effective management. On January 1, 2006, in his New Year's Day speech, Chen Shui-bian changed the propaganda from "active openness and effective management" to "active management and effective openness".
Opposition to the impatient former DPP non-district legislator Lin Cho-shui said: Bian as an "anti-western" savior is very strange, because until 2005 before Bian was the Western faction, he came to power, announced the opening of the small three links, amended the cross-strait relations between the people's regulations, narrowing the restrictions on the Chinese people to come to Taiwan, easing the restrictions on investment in mainland China, the end of 2004, formally passed the "positive opening up" program ......However, his plan was hampered by cross-strait tensions and the delay in opening up the Three Direct Links, which was criticized by the Kuomintang as "locking up the country", thus creating a stereotype of anti-Three Direct Links and anti-cross-strait exchanges among the public, and was finally taken by the losers of the M-shaped society as the savior of economic nationalism. However, he also said that the westward movement will make the income distribution in Taiwan more uneven, but the problem cannot be solved without haste and impatience.

## Estimation
### Positively

* In 2020, a Taiwan poll showed that 68.1% of the public affirmed that Lee Teng-hui had adopted a policy of caution and patience to avoid the rapid loss of Taiwan's industries.

### Negative

* Media personality Zhao Shaokang believes that the effect of using political power to intervene in the economy is limited; rather than banning it, it is better to cooperate with mainland Chinese companies or even go further to find ways to dominate.
* Li Ao satirized the "can not order, but also do not receive orders" policy, and argued that excessive patience is purely a kind of ostrich policy; he believes that businessmen are smarter than politicians, so Taiwan's businessmen will be in a hurry to enter the market in mainland China to get into the card position, to grasp the business opportunities; "(Taiwan) should take advantage of the opportunity to take advantage of the problem, there is nothing to endure or not to endure. There are benefits, only endure. No benefits, endure what?"

### Other

* On January 29, 2007, Lee Teng-hui said in an exclusive interview with Taiwan Next Magazine that he was not advocating that Taiwan could not have a relationship with mainland China and was very concerned that there was no communication platform across the Taiwan Strait at all. He criticized that the economy was originally a two-way street, but the DPP turned it into a one-way street, "the whole of Taiwan is like a bucket of water, the water has been flowing out, did not come back, how do the people live?" He also criticized the DPP: "Policies have changed and changed, active openness has changed to active management, simply outrageous!"
* On June 29, 2010, the government of the Republic of China signed the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in Chongqing, President Ma Ying-jeou and Executive Yuan Liu Shao-Hsuan regarded it as an important policy to strengthen Taiwan's economic development, and the "Caveat Emptor" policy can be said to be terminated for the time being, but only after the outbreak of the Sunflower Student Movement cross-strait exchanges came to an abrupt end.

## A lost or apocryphal story

"No haste, be patient" was originally a motto given by Emperor Kangxi to his fourth son, Yinzhen, who later ascended the throne as Emperor Yongzheng. In 1996, Lee Teng-hui in the "National Operators Conference" speech for the first time with the words "quit haste and use patience" to describe his view of the Republic of China mainland China should be the economic policy, because organizers of HD would like to invest in mainland China dissatisfied with Lee Teng-hui not going to go, so he changed his mind and attended the night before informing the secretary Su Zhicheng draft, Su Zhicheng rushed home overnight to catch up on the draft, according to the boss's conversation, he picked up the desk of the idiom reference book and copied "Do not be in a hurry, to have patience" into the article. Because it was done in a hurry, there was no verification of the source. Therefore, the use of " no haste, be patient " was an accidental work of Su Zhicheng.