From its conception, the two-day Conference on Sustaining Taiwan's Economic Development held at the end of July appeared set to be an exercise in futility. Decision-making by committee consensus usually means settling for the lowest common denominator, and in this case the "committee" was a cumbersome collection of delegates with sharply varying perspectives - business executives, labor leaders, government bureaucrats, political partisans, academics, and environmental and other advocates. The emotionally charged atmosphere of present-day Taiwan politics further ensured that the Conference's mandate to carve out agreement on economic policy would be monumentally difficult to achieve.

But if the conferees inevitably failed to see eye to eye on any items smacking of controversy (particularly those related to cross-Strait contacts), they still performed a worthy service by focusing public attention on the serious economic challenges Taiwan is facing. To AmCham it was significant that many of the 516 points of consensus that the Conference reached were similar to proposals that AmCham has long espoused, revealing how much the interests of the multinational business community converge with those of society at large in this international-trade-oriented economy. In some specific areas - further relaxing restrictions on the entry of foreign and mainland Chinese professionals, reforming the pharmaceutical reimbursement system, improving the transparency and rationality of the government procurement process, promoting service-sector development through deregulation, and adopting English as a semi-official language, for example - the recommendations echoed positions advanced in the Chamber's Taiwan White Paper.