Besides Wu's promise to readjust the consumer price index basket of consumer goods, Vice Premier Chu Li-lun has cited progressive Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to show that the KMT government knows the limitations of gross domestic product growth rates and is now "more concerned with whether the people can enjoy the fruits of economic growth."

If genuine, this conceptual turn should be welcomed, but it is important to recall that such thinking is actually "new" only for the KMT camp, which has long manifested an technocratic obsession with GDP growth or other quantified targets and, in pursuit of market fundamentalism, has typically ignored substantive social, environmental, cultural and political "externalities."

Indeed, the two major economic development programs launched under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, namely the "Challenge 2008" six-year plan for 2000-2008" formulated under former premier Yu Shyi-kun and the "'2015 Economic Development Vision" drafted under ex-premier Su Tseng-chang and ex-vice premier Tsai Ing-wen, aimed at the attainment of a range of substantive goals, such as the expansion of broadband internet access, R&D spending and employment, and deliberately underplayed expectations for annual GDP expansion.

Moreover, the former DPP government, especially in the second four-year term, devoted considerable efforts to help Taiwan enterprises consolidate irreplaceable niches in global supply chains and build industrial and technological "clusters" to bolster and Taiwan's autonomous industrial "competencies" across sectors from high-tech panels to industrial screws and transcend "price competition" with lower quality PRC manufacturers.

Unfortunately, the incessant boycotts of new bills and programs, such as the long-stalled draft law for the encouragement of renewable energies, and delays in passage of central government and state enterprise budgets by the KMT-controlled Legislative Yuan placed unnecessary and narrowly partisan barriers in the path of Taiwan's entrance into a new economic era.

Typically, President Ma Ying-jeou touted a "633" slogan during his successful campaign for the March 22, 2008 presidential election and enticed millions of voters to let the KMT "win back Taiwan" based on a chimera of "over six percent average annual growth, three percent unemployment by 2012 and US$30,000 per capita income by 2016."

Whose 'new' thinking?

During this time, the campaign of the DPP presidential standard-bearer, former premier Frank Hsieh, offered a broader vision beyond short-term growth rates and offered a Taiwan-centric objective of building a country with the "highest quality of life" and advocated a value-oriented economic strategy that would pay equal attention to economic development, social equity and environmental sustainability.

Upon taking office in May 2008, the first KMT Cabinet under ex-premier Liu Chao-shiuan promptly rushed to implement Ma's plan to accelerate growth rates through aggressive public works and deficit spending and tear down the Taiwan's administrative firewalls that aimed to safeguard our autonomous economic competencies, only to encounter reality in the form of the global financial tsunami and the apparent lack of benefits to "ordinary people" from the deeper locking of our economy firmly in the unstable Chinese market.

Being led by former elected mayors instead of arrogant technocrats, the Wu Cabinet has an opportunity to take a more open and people-oriented approach and reflected by the adoption of a mix of economic and social indicators.

However, the most important test of whether the "new" approach is genuine will be shown by what the Wu Cabinet actually does instead of what indicators it uses.

For example, if the new Cabinet aims to take Stiglitz's concept of "sustainable, equitable and democratic development" or "well-being economics" seriously, Wu should order a full review of the proposed "economic cooperation framework agreement" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China (PRC) from the standpoint of its risks on the livelihood and well-being of Taiwan's ordinary people.

Moreover, Wu should order a moratorium on further "deregulations" that could spur the migration of even more of Taiwan's hard-won "core competences" into PRC hands, such as plans to lift restrictions on high-level investments by Taiwan semiconductor wafer fabricators or TFT-LCD panel makers to China and allowing PRC state companies to invest in Taiwan high-technology firms and gain access to their advanced design and production technology and managerial and marketing knowhow.