Friedman is by no means a starry-eyed apologist for China. He is the author of the prize-winning bestseller, “The World Is Flat,” and the New York Times foreign affairs columnist. He was obviously shaken by the Beijing Olympics, and couldn’t help musing on the future of his own country in light of that dazzling evening in Beijing.

It was rather strange to note that most of Taiwan’s journalists covering the Games did not feel the same impact as Friedman did. The exclamation, “we were so cooked” (meaning we are finished in Chinese), should have been the reaction from Taiwanese journalists. Instead, we have read a lot of stories from Beijing complaining about the host country’s “bullying” (daya) of Taiwan’s athletes in a number of indirect ways.

In the absence of ruminations from our own journalists, Friedman’s reflections perhaps were helpful for us to take a look at ourselves. His thoughts could be summarized in a few simple words: If the Americans want to rebuild their country, they have to go to China to see the future.

If Friedman truly felt this way, what should we in Taiwan do? Few people here see it that way, unfortunately. Most of us believed the opposite is true. The mainlanders should come here to see the famous “Taiwan Miracle” instead.

That might have been true a decade or two ago, when the people here worked hard with a single purpose: To build a strong economy and a prosperous and just society. But no longer. For most of the past two decades, Taiwan’s people have shifted their focus from the economy to politics — divisive identity politics that have torn the island apart.

It’s interesting to compare Friedman’s observation of China and the United States with what has transpired in Taiwan over the past seven years. In 2001, China was awarded the right to host the 2008 Olympics. In the same year, al-Qaida attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. A year before that, Taiwan’s newly-elected president, Chen Shui-bian, suspended the construction of a fourth nuclear plant for ideological reasons, signaling the decline of the economy.

What a difference could seven years make? In China, since 2001, it invested US$43 billion to prepare for the Olympics, building new subways, airports, railways, venues and parks so modern and advanced that they made the United States look like a Third World country, at least in the “rich parts of China.”

The United States spent the seven years building “better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.” Infrastructural projects were either suspended or delayed by Bush’s misguided war on terror, which has already cost one trillion U.S. dollars, more than 20 times what Beijing spent on the summer games.

Not surprisingly, Friedman has been roundly criticized by jingoistic Americans and bigots as being soft on China, which they said used “Potemkin” projects to pull the wool over the foreigners’ eyes. But these “Potemkin” things were not made of cardboard if you looked at the Bird’s Nest or the Water Cube, or the 51 gold medals — more than any country has ever won at any Olympics since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

It’s painful to mention Taiwan’s medal count: four bronzes. Medals are not everything, of course. Our taekwondo athlete Su Li-wen, for example, won a lot of respect and applause for her tenacity in not giving in or giving up. But there was a paradox. Medals are still symbolic and much sought after. Otherwise Michael Phelps wouldn’t have become a legend for winning an unprecedented eight gold medals. There is no substitute for victory.

We should reflect, as Friedman did, on what has happened in the past seven years, and what might happen in the next seven years. In America, its next president, Barack Obama or John McCain, must devote the next seven years to nation-building, just as China did, according to Friedman. “It’s our time to get back to work on the only home we have,” he wrote.

The same sense of awakening should be found on this island, which has squandered the past seven years squabbling over ideology at home and making trouble internationally to gain publicity for domestic consumption. The economy was virtually put on hold. In 2001, Taiwan’s GDP per capita was US$13,000. It was US$16,000 in 2007. In contrast, China’s GDP per capita tripled during the same period to US$2,500 in 2007.

The stark contrast goes far beyond the economy. Taiwan has been increasingly marginalized during the period when China was taking center stage on the international arena. More than 80 heads of state converged on Beijing for the Olympics, the largest congregation of its kind outside the United Nations. The contrast was disheartening when we saw smiling volunteers in Beijing, more than one million strong, welcoming foreign friends with undisguised pride, while in Taiwan, the erstwhile industrious people and just society have lost their traditional values. This moral crisis is even more dangerous for the country’s future.

The majority of the people in Taiwan have placed their hopes on President Ma Ying-jeou for national revival, just as many American voters are pinning their hopes on Obama, the young, Lincoln-esque presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, for American renewal. “Yes, we can,” was Obama’s rallying cry. If the mainland Chinese can, why can’t the Americans? Why can’t we in Taiwan?

The 2008 Olympics were an inspiration, a stimulus, a bludgeoning (what the Buddhist called “banghe”) that would spark an epiphany on what people should do from now on. History will record 08-08-08 as a milestone, a signpost, a turning point in the 21st century for the changes it has set off in China and elsewhere in the world.