Taiwan is celebrated worldwide as a hub of technological innovation. Semiconductor giants, electronics manufacturers, and advanced supply chains make it a model of industrial efficiency and resilience. But behind the headlines of economic achievement lies a subtler story, one about how people experience life in a society built for speed, precision, and endurance.
In June 2025, I attended the 15th Fu Jen Academia Catholica International Conference at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, organised to celebrate the 800th birth anniversary of St. Thomas Aquinas with the theme “Quest for Truth: The Legacy of St. Thomas Aquinas.” Immersed in dialogues about ethics, reason, and human flourishing, I kept returning to Aristotle’s idea of eudaimonia, the flourishing life, and asked how this insight might help us understand the lived experience of people in a society driven by economic output.
A few months later, I watched the documentary Birthgap – Childless World, directed by data scientist and demographer Stephen J. Shaw, which examines global birthrate decline through personal interviews and demographic data across multiple countries. The film vividly conveys how falling fertility intersects with economic pressures, cultural norms, and people’s choices about family and future. This inspired me to think about the distribution of human energy, aspiration, and life patterns across the life course.
This blog article does not propose a single causal explanation for demographic change, but offers a philosophical and structural interpretation of how economic systems shape lived experience across the life course.
Beyond the Factory: Success With Challenges
Taiwan’s industrial giants, from semiconductor titans to electronics manufacturers, represent extraordinary achievements and form a core part of national identity: resilience, precision, and dedication. TSMC and the broader toll manufacturing ecosystem did exactly what they were meant to do: secure economic survival, global relevance, and technological leadership in a highly competitive world.
This success has been built on a model optimised for efficiency and output. Speed, long working hours, and meticulous performance are admired not only as professional expectations but as moral virtues. Sacrifice has long been praised, while rest, reflection, and emotional well-being have tended to receive less structural attention. Over time, this ethos has extended beyond the workplace, shaping education, family roles, and everyday interactions. Efficiency has permeated society, leaving little space for pause or renewal. When life becomes structured around endurance, life force — understood here as the capacity for energy, creativity, and meaning associated with eudaimonia — can gradually recede, even as the economy appears to thrive.
Taiwan now stands at a turning point. Recognising the social effects accompanying economic strength does not diminish achievement; rather, it opens the door to a more balanced vision, one that values not only material success but human flourishing.
Symptoms of a Changing Society: When Life Hesitates to Renew Itself
Taiwan’s economy is highly export-dependent, with around 70 % of GDP linked to exports. A large share of this output consists not of final consumer goods, but of intermediate products produced for global clients in 2024, information and communication products and electronic parts together accounted for around 65 % of total exports underscoring Taiwan’s central role in global supply chains as a producer of high-precision inputs that are often assembled and branded elsewhere.,
Every development model, however, carries its own internal logic. An economy optimised for precision, reliability, and endurance does not shape production alone; it also structures how time, energy, and attention are distributed across daily life. What once emerged as a strategy of national survival and competitiveness gradually becomes embedded in work rhythms, career expectations, and assumptions about what a “normal” life should look like.
Seen from this angle, demographic indicators do not condemn Taiwan’s development path; they illuminate its limits. Persistently low fertility and rapid population ageing suggest that while the system excels at producing world-class outputs, it places increasing strain on the conditions under which life can easily renew itself. This is not a failure of effort or character, but a structural signal: economic excellence alone no longer guarantees social sustainability.
Eudaimonia and the Life Force
From Aristotle’s perspective, human flourishing is measured by the quality of our actions, not the quantity of output we produce. Modern economies, however, often praise how much we make rather than what we do. Taiwan’s industrial achievements illustrate this tension: it is possible that a society can excel in global competitiveness while leaving its people less favorable conditions to flourish. The question facing Taiwan today is not whether it has achieved greatness, but whether that greatness can be translated into eudaimonia, a life that is meaningful and worth passing on.
Eudaimonia, in Aristotle’s terms, is not pleasure or comfort, but a life lived in accordance with virtue over a complete lifespan, and one that is worth living and worth continuing (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I.8). Modern philosophers and development theorists stress that flourishing requires both personal virtue and enabling social conditions. In this sense, demographic data can be read not merely as population statistics, but as a collective signal of how people experience their own lives. When life force weakens across the life course — when social pressures, work intensity, and limited support constrain the conditions for flourishing — society begins to hesitate about renewing itself.
Demographic Unraveling
Taiwan’s total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have, has collapsed with extraordinary speed and persistence over the past seven decades. In 2023, Taiwan’s fertility rate reached 0.87, among the lowest in the world. As a result, Taiwan’s population is ageing at unprecedented speed. In 2025, the proportion of people aged 65 and over exceeded 20 percent, officially classifying Taiwan as a “super-aged society.” What took many European countries several decades occurred in Taiwan in just seven years — the fastest such transition recorded globally.
From a philosophical perspective, this raises a deeper question than demographics alone can answer: what kind of life are people anticipating ahead of them? In Aristotelian terms, eudaimonia, the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life, defines what it means to live well. Aristotle is explicit that flourishing is not purely internal; external goods, including relationships, family, and the conditions that make life sustainable, are integral to a good life. When social pressures, personal stress, or structural constraints undermine flourishing, the ethical and emotional impulse to create and nurture the next generation may weaken.
This hesitation to give life is therefore not only philosophical, but visible in everyday reality. In November 2025, Taiwan recorded just 7,946 births, a decline of roughly 36 percent compared to the same month a year earlier, extending a year-to-year decline that has persisted for more than nine years. In Birthgap – Childless World, data scientist Stephen J. Shaw argues that collapsing fertility is rarely driven by a single factor such as income, housing costs, or childcare alone. Rather, people delay or forgo children when life itself feels fragile, exhausting, or insufficiently meaningful.
Work Intensity and Mental Strain
Work culture shapes this hesitation. In 2022, Taiwanese employees worked an average of 2,008 hours per year, among the highest in the world. Long working hours are often celebrated as signs of diligence, resilience, and national competitiveness. Political and business leaders frequently highlight the Taiwanese “KU-Kan”— a willingness to endure hardship and persevere without complaint, as a key factor behind Taiwan’s rapid economic development and societal resilience.
Yet from the perspective of life force, prolonged endurance without periods of renewal carries a cumulative cost. When energy, attention, and time are consumed by work, the capacity for reflection, creativity, and meaningful engagement in family and social life can diminish, subtly influencing decisions about forming and sustaining the next generation.
Mental health impacts are increasingly visible. In 2022, around one in five young people aged 15 to 29 reported experiencing severe emotional distress, including anxiety and depression Taiwan’s health insurance records show that psychiatric-related diagnoses among young people aged 15–30 increased by about 47 % between 2016 and 2021 . Middle-aged adults (40–59) face persistent anxiety and depression driven by workplace stress, family responsibilities, and aging. Only 27 % of those with clinically relevant depression sought initial mental health contact, and just 11 % received effective treatment due to stigma.
Global Lessons on Industrial Diversity
Taiwan’s reliance on contract manufacturing has delivered extraordinary achievements, but it also has structural limits. Economies that achieve long-term resilience combine technical excellence with environments that allow for creativity, autonomy, and work-life balance.
Research shows that long working hours reduce fertility intentions. When work systems are intense and inflexible, life-force, the energy, creativity, and purpose described by eudaimonia, is harder to sustain, and this could influence demographic behavior. Countries that provide childcare, flexible work, and family-friendly policies see higher fertility intentions, showing that industrial achievement and social flourishing can coexist. Participation in arts and cultural activities improves social cohesion, community bonds, and individual well‑being. Policies that support design, creative industries expand meaningful life opportunities beyond repetitive production.
Conclusion: Flourishing as a National Project
Taiwan’s achievements in manufacturing and global trade are remarkable. Yet economic success alone does not guarantee that people flourish across the lifespan. By attending to Aristotle’s idea of eudaimonia, and reflecting on demographic and life-force insights from Birthgap – Childless World, Taiwan can pursue a development path where life force is sustained over time.
These steps do not oppose growth; rather, they help ensure that industrial and technological achievement translates into lives that are meaningful, creative, and worth passing on. Taiwan can become more than a leader in economic metrics, but a society where people thrive in connected, reflective, and purposeful lives, a society where flourishing is truly a national project.
About the Author:
Luc Yao is a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. Luc is based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and is active in the electronics industry, related start-ups, and the Open Innovation networks. His research at the Institute focuses on the adjacent domains of population ageing, innovations and strategic investments.
Opinions of the blogger is their own and not endorsed by the Institute
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