Word: formosae
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...name means "beautiful," but its history has been hard and ugly. The mountainous island of Formosa was devastated by 50 years of Japanese occupation, and it fared little better under the Chinese after they regained control in 1945. Its nadir came in 1950 when Chiang Kai-shek landed on the island with 500,000 beaten soldiers and 2,000,000 refugees from the Communist mainland, straining the unhappy country to the breaking point...
...since funneled $2.7 billion in military aid to Chiang's government in Taipei, plus some $1.5 billion in economic assistance. A land-reform program has more than doubled farm productivity, while more and more of the nation's resources have been harnessed to industry. Formosa today boasts the Orient's second highest standard of living (after Japan), though three-fourths of its national budget goes for defense. Since 1960, more than $42 million in foreign investment has been pumped into the island, whose skilled, low-wage labor force has attracted several dozen U.S. companies from Westinghouse...
...government of Formosa recently passed a law aimed at curbing a practice that has long been deplored as a phenomenon of the West: too much sex in ads. Praising the ban on low decolletage and high eroticism, the widely circulated China Post two weeks ago deplored "the gimmick of using sex as a selling point for everything from cough drops to synthetic fabrics. Advertising in Taiwan is often an offense to good taste and an insult to the intelligence." The advertisers have been somewhat more cautious since the law's passage, but, Asia being what it is, the prohibition...
...just doubled its tax on cigarettes-and another $2 billion for the Federal Government. The stakes are proportionately much higher for governments that monopolize the growing, marketing and trading of tobacco. Flourishing tobacco monopolies provide up to 5% of the national budget in France, 10% in Italy, 15% in Formosa. Countries as diverse as Egypt and Japan earn valuable foreign exchange from tobacco exports, which are also handled by state monopolies. Japan's tobacco trust has almost 400,000 persons on its payroll, distributes tobacco seeds to farmers and buys their crop...
...Common Market waiting room, but it is busily spreading a net of trade agreements all over the world. Commerce Minister Alberto Ullastres picked up a fistful of orders by stumping Africa last month, while two of his fellow cabinet members were ringing doorbells in Japan, the Philippines, Cambodia and Formosa...