The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [174]
Hong Kong was not the only place in Asia troubled by the renewed hard-line posture of the People’s Republic. During the 1990s, the Taiwanese felt new pressure to move themselves and their capital to the safety of the United States. The brutal crackdown at Tiananmen Square raised concerns that the gains achieved during the Deng years might be suddenly reversed. Then, in 1996, the island’s first direct presidential elections challenged the four-decade reign of the Kuomintang. Fearing that pro-Taiwan independence groups would declare the island a separate nation, not an integral part of China, the PRC resorted to a show of saber-rattling. Conducting a series of military exercises near the coast of Taiwan that included the firing of several missiles, it sent a message that it was prepared to act militarily if Taiwan tried to present it with a fait accompli on the issue of independence. The Taiwan stock market plunged, and many residents fled to the United States. But no formal steps to establish independence were taken, and eventually the crisis passed. Economic investment returned to Taiwan, and diplomatic relations between the island and mainland China reverted to their previous status. Nonetheless, many Taiwanese families were shaken, and some found it prudent to keep bank accounts, homes, and even relatives in the United States, in case a quick move became necessary.
Largely because of these fears, Taiwan, like Hong Kong, suffered its share of fractured families in the 1990s. In Taiwan, the most common split-family lifestyle was the “parachute children” phenomenon. Unlike youths who were plunked down in the suburbs with their mothers while their “astronaut” fathers lived in Hong Kong, the parachute children lived in the United States without supervision from either parent. The motivating force behind this choice was not solely concern over the island’s political future, but also the wish to spare children the cutthroat academic competition in Taiwan.
The pressure to be admitted to a good college in Taiwan started as early as grade school. To increase their chances of getting into the island’s most prestigious middle schools, students enrolled in special preparatory programs and private cram courses. At the secondary school level, the competition for college admission became even more fierce. “You may be the best in your class but many still flunk the entrance exams for college,” one parachute child told an interviewer. “In Taiwan, people almost have to kill themselves to survive annual comprehensive entrance examinations for high school and college.”
The rigidity of the system ensured that some capable students would fall through the cracks, never to climb out again. Many working-class families in Taiwan, unable to afford tutors and the extra coaching required, gave up hope of having all their children attain university degrees. And without those degrees, opportunities on the island were limited. Barred from applying to graduate school, they had few chances to travel abroad. Worse still was the prospect of leaving school without a high school diploma. Typically, dropouts entered low-skilled, labor-intensive industries, such as assembly work in home-based factories. Knowing the odds, some Taiwanese families threw all of their resources behind only one or two children, in hopes that they might achieve the success that was sure to elude their siblings.
Other Taiwanese families shrewdly decided to avoid the exam system entirely by sending their children to the United States. They viewed the American education system as a shortcut to success, offering a dual advantage: less-competitive high schools, and more prestigious universities. But unlike the émigrés who owned their own international businesses,