2 Chapter 1 The World's Tallest Building 3 object obstructs the views from its eighty-ninth and ninety-first floor ob- ties that made Taipei 101 possible-ambition,invention,perseverance, servation decks.On a clear day,one can see the point where Taiwan disap- and a strong tolerance for risk-are the same qualities that allow Taiwan to pears into the Taiwan Strait to the west and the East China Sea to the north. survive and prosper as a major global player. When he accepted the commission,architect Lee knew he was designing The purpose of this book is to explain what it is about Taiwan-an island a building that would embody Taiwan's grandest aspirations.Originally slightly larger than Belgium with a population a little less than Ghanas- envisioned as a typical office complex-a sixty-six-story tower flanked by that has won it such a prominent role in global economics and politics. two smaller buildings-investors and politicians talked themselves into To understand why Taiwan matters we will explore how the people living something far more ambitious.Given the mandate to design the world's there built a society capable of economic and political feats so astonish- tallest building in a city in which fifty stories had seemed massive just a ing that scholars call them "miracles."We will also consider the unique decade before,Lee predicted,"The location and height will reshape the international predicament that compels Taiwan to seek the global limelight Taipei skyline.The impact will be enormous;it will be [an]icon not only and that powers its domestic politics.We will see that Taiwan matters for for Taiwan but to the world as well." practical reasons (its companies make most of our notebook computers C.Y.Lee accomplished his mission:Taipei 101 is a magnificent building, and flat-screen devices)and moral ones:Taiwan proves that a determined an icon,unquestionably.But does Taipei need an iconic building?Did it nation can attain democracy,freedom,and prosperity peacefully.And I will make sense to spend almost two billion dollars constructing this behemoth try to persuade you that Taiwan matters for a more fundamental reason:it in a city with plenty of office space?Why expend vast resources engineer- matters because its people,like all people,are ends in themselves,not mere ing solutions to typhoon winds and frequent earthquakes when there was instruments of someone else's destiny. ample vacant land nearby?What does it say about Taiwan that the island would become the home of a project so expensive,so hubristic,so gratu- Taipei 101 is at the eastern terminus of Hsinyi Road.At the western end itous and disproportionate? stands a tall building from another era,Taiwan's presidential office.In its It is easy to dismiss Taipei 101 as the product of an overeager society of day,it too was a skyscraper,with a two-hundred-foot tower rising above a strivers with a serious inferiority complex-and that possibility is not lost magnificent marble entrance flanked by massive,elaborately decorated six- on the building's neighbors.Taiwanese are proud of the achievement,but story wings.The building was completed in 1919 as a headquarters for the not too proud to make fun of the building and criticize everything about governors-general who ruled Taiwan for fifty years on behalf of the empire it-from its architecture to its feng shui.As a symbol of contemporary Tai- of Japan.In 1895 the Qing Dynasty ceded the island to Japan in the Treaty wan,Taipei 101 cuts two ways.It captures Taiwan's vitality and optimism; of Shimonoseki-a treaty whose legitimacy Chinese nationalists deny.Japan the fact that Taiwanese could finance such an undertaking reflects the is- viewed the island as an opportunity to prove its bona fides as a rival to im- land's extraordinary economic dynamism.At the same time,the building's perialist powers in Europe.Within a decade,Tokyo was ready to declare its solitary profile parallels Taiwan's isolation.From a distance,it can look Taiwanese colony a success,and in 1906 it invited its best architects to submit fragile,lonely,and exposed. designs for a government building capable of crowning its achievements. Taipei 101 may be a vanity project,but if ever there were a country The winning design took years to build,but the result was the impos- that could be forgiven such a folly,it is Taiwan.For centuries,even as its ing ornate building that still stands today.It was badly damaged by U.S. economy and culture flourished,the island was regarded as a political bombing during World War Il,when Taiwan served the Japanese empire as sideshow,the object of other nations'attention,never as the subject of its a source of food and soldiers.After their surrender in 1945,the Japanese own history.Taiwan and its people have been traded back and forth among cleared out and,following renovations,new occupants moved in.The flag great powers,their fate decided in distant capitals,their voices absent from they hoisted atop the tower belonged to the Republic of China. the negotiations. The ROC had been established in 1912 after Chinese revolutionaries Since World War II,however,the island has developed an identity and striving for democracy and development overthrew the Qing Dynasty. aspirations of its own.Its people have resisted outsiders'efforts to absorb, From the beginning,the Republic faced profound challenges.Warlords- subjugate,and marginalize their homeland.Keeping Taiwan alive as an au- independent military leaders loyal only to themselves-controlled much of tonomous actor in international politics and economics requires determi- China.Differences in political ideology and personal loyalties drove vicious nation and energy.It also requires creativity,as Taiwan has been forced to infighting within and between the two main political camps,the National- work outside the world's conventional structures and practices.The quali- ist Party,or Kuomintang(KMT),and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)