Li Kwoh-ting

[3] In total, Li was a government official for 40 years, 10 of which he spent in mainland China before the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war.

Tony Fu-Lai Yu speculates that the time Li spent in China, as well as his science-based university education, greatly influenced his policy-making in Taiwan.

Fei believes that political beliefs and ideology are the strongest factors in shaping economic policy-making, and thus is an ongoing process.

[3] Li himself claims that the liberalization of the Taiwanese economy was a gradual process rather than an abrupt one following the international popularity of free market thought in the 1960s and 1970s.

What can almost be called a rejection of ideology lies at the heart of a healthy pragmatism that has guided policymakers in Taiwan and has supported a social consensus for growth and economic liberalization.

Hyperinflation was one of the major reasons that Chiang Kai-shek lost mainland China to the Communist Party, and thus Li abhorred all inflationary finance during his management of Taiwan's economy.

What underlies both reforms is a rejection of the insanity of relying on the printing press to create purchasing power for the government to use in an effort to solve socioeconomic problems.

[8]Li indicates that this was the main difference between Taiwan's policy and those in Latin American countries, and that this method of managing the economy led to an overall more responsible government and transparent taxation system.

[8] Li claims that during the 1950s–70s, the liberalization of Taiwan's economy was an unintended effect of their new policy, and it wasn't until 1983 that such "externally-oriented growth" was seen as beneficial and the merging of international competition in the domestic market was encouraged.

[8] Li writes:Other promotional measures taken by the government included improving the investment climate, simplifying administrative procedures .

[8]This was the framework for Li's Principle of People's Livelihood[12] where the importance of protecting private property for the improvement of socioeconomic activities and establishing a free economy was only superseded by the need to expand state capital.

[8]Li argues that without the same willingness in developing countries to support a free market, Taiwan's economic miracles and history are useless to them.

Li explains that Taiwan's economic development was initially set back by the "scarcity of natural resources, shortages of capital and foreign exchange, technological backwardness, and lack of entrepreneurial skills," however, through the government's direct involvement and encouragement, the infrastructure and incentives needed for private enterprises to flourish, including mitigation of risk, was created:[8]Among the major initiatives have been: the formulation of investment program and the provision of low-interest loans; the establishment of industrial zones, export-processing zones, and the science-based industrial park; Ten Major Development Projects, the Twelve New Development Projects and the Fourteen Key Projects in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hence, whether or not Taiwan's policy experience can be transferred to other developing economies depends very much on whether their cultures can allow pragmatism to overcome ideology as well as on how strongly they are dedicated to political and economic freedom.

[8]Although Taiwan experienced relative economic success over the course of its history along with the other Four Asian Tigers which employed similar economic policies as Taiwan, the lack of the same "miraculous" development in Latin American countries that employed the same principles brings into question whether Li's policies can be fully transferred and result in unequivocal success.

The package also released 30,000 hectares of government owned land to the private sector, offered a five-year tax holiday to high-tech industries, allowed more foreign workers in to supplement the labor shortage in construction and manufacturing, and allowed more semi-finished industrial goods to be imported from mainland China to be processed in Taiwan.

One such vice-president said that because large private-sector companies planned several years in advance, government policies that are vague and unpredictable can easily go awry.

He adds that the amount of funding offered by the government "can't make a dent in what the private sector really needs.

"[14] Other critics included businessmen who claimed the plan would only benefit big corporations and not the 97% of manufacturing companies that were small and medium-sized.

They argued that the Cabinet was not counteracting the larger obstacle to private sector growth: the Central Bank's anti-inflation policy with high interest rates and tight liquidity.

Taipei's former mayor, Hau Lung-bin, recalls fondly, "I was so impressed by its furnishings [...] They showed how prudent he was, and he read plenty of books and periodicals.

[18] Four professorships at Stanford University are also named for Dr. Li in the fields of economic development, engineering, medicine and Chinese culture.

[19] As of 2014, the holders in each field are: economic development (Xueguang Zhou[20]), engineering (Yinyu Ye[21]), medicine (Stanley N. Cohen[22]) and Chinese culture (Mark Edward Lewis[23]).