Taiwan beat the virus with efficient government and advanced technology—the same ingredients that power the economy.

Foreign Policy
Date: June 1, 2020
By: Evan A. Feigenbaum and Jeremy Smithe

Taiwan has earned the world’s admiration for its fast and highly effective response to the coronavirus pandemic. As of June 1, Taiwan had only 443 confirmed infections and 7 deaths among a population of 24 million—and even has a functioning professional baseball league. This comes despite early modeling that projected Taiwan to have one of the highest risks of importing cases from China.

Taiwan’s coronavirus success was based on efficient coordination across the public and private sectors coupled with innovative deployment of advanced technology.The central ingredients of Taiwan’s success have been efficient coordination across the public and private sectors coupled with innovative deployment of advanced technology—the very same recipe that has delivered decades of steady economic growth. Taiwan has also stood out for its ability to learn and apply the lessons from its bitter 2003 experience with the SARS outbreak in order to coordinate an effective governmental response. But the most notable component of Taiwan’s success has been its successful use of artificial intelligence and big-data applications, helping it to integrate its national health insurance database with its immigration and customs database, classify infection risks among inbound travelers, and monitor cell phones to undertake contact tracing and enforce quarantines.

This unique ability to integrate data and creatively apply technology helped Taiwan to withstand the first wave of the pandemic. The next question, however, is what Taiwan will do to use these advantages to assure a prosperous and competitive future on the other side of the crisis. And this challenge will grow more serious in coming years as Beijing further undermines Taiwan’s international support and ratchets up the pressure on its economy.

Taiwan’s immediate opportunity is to capitalize on its momentum and double down on investments in technology to ensure future health security. The pandemic has yielded a radical shift in the way governments and businesses view public health and define essential goods and services. With smart investments and new economic policies, Taiwan could use the crisis to become a regional leader in areas of biomedicine and pharmaceuticals.
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