President Ma Ying-jeou promised to create a 'golden decade' for Taiwan when he assumed office in May 2008, but a 'lost decade' nightmare is instead in the works under his administration's China-leaning policy and fiscal irresponsibility. Official statistics show that, as of the end of the first half of this year, Taiwan's capital remittances to China had hit NT$1.05 trillion (US$343 billion), up NT$114 billion from the end of 2009. Although Taiwan received record export orders in September, the ratio of overseas production also rose to a historic high of 50.93 percent. This means that more than half of local manufacturers' export orders were not actually produced in Taiwan but rather in China or elsewhere. Consequently, Taiwan's unemployment rate remained above 5 percent, and the wage level retreated to that of 13 years ago because of weak demand in the job market. More troubling is the Ma administration's profligate spending and tax cuts, which have led to rapidly mounting public debts. These will reach NT$4.96 trillion by the end of next year, marking an increase of NT$1.3 trillion from NT$3.66 trillion since Ma took office. This increase in public debt during the three and a half years of the Ma administration are equivalent to the total amount borrowed during the eight years of the two-term Democratic Progressive Party administration. If the NT$13.3 trillion of hidden debt -- as estimated by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics -- and the NT$600 billion of local government debt are also included, the total public debts already top NT$19 trillion. This translates to a debt of over NT$800,000 burdened on each of Taiwan's 23 million people. The government should not disregard this huge imbalance and continue staging large firework shows for vanity fairs. Responsible fiscal policy is the foremost tenet of political accountability. ( Editorial abstract -- Nov. 1, 2010). 