Sam, Sonia, Dr. Beckman
VIEWPOINT
By Eldon Griffiths
Three titans made news last month and since their lives,and two of their deaths,touched me deeply, allow me to pass on some vignettes.
Samuel C. Schieh (pronounced Shay) was the former governor of the central bank of Taiwan.
When he first came to dinner at my home in Laguna Niguel, he was responsible for the world’s largest single pile of money, the government of Taiwan’s reser-ves worth (and Sam counted to the penny) just over $81 billion.
When he flew out of Los Angeles six days later, after currency turbulence had driven up the yen and deutsche marks in Taiwan’s portfolio, those reserves were worth nearer $85 billion.
“How on earth do you do it?” I asked Sam. “Masterly inactivity,” he replied.
Inactivity was not Dr Schieh’s routine. He was the most kinetic man I ever met.
Born the son of a landowner in the Chinese province of Kwangdung, he was a refugee from the mainland who spurred Taiwan’s economic miracle when output grew by 10 to 12 points a year, raising Taiwan’s per capita income from less than Cuba’s to more than Spain’s in two decades.
Sam Schieh got the sequence right.
First, land reform to encourage the peasants to grow all the food Taiwan could use.
Second, credits to beef up the export of low-tech products, in Taiwan’s case, plywood and toys, so as to earn the foreign exchange needed to purchase modern equipment to ramp up its industries.
Third, education,tax breaks to encourage private schools to supplement the public system and build up the most precious asset of any developing country: well-trained human beings.
Fourth, investment credits to boost technology companies making the silicon chip and laser-based products in which Taiwan now excels.
And last but not least, internationalize. Lower the tariffs, open the markets, make foreign investors welcome with freedom to repatriate profits.
Taiwan’s prospering democracy is a tribute to Sam Schieh’s policies, so much so that he was invited by the Chinese government to help reorganize the central bank of the communist people’s republic,which 10 years earlier denounced him as a capitalist lackey.
When he died, bankers from all over the Pacific basin flocked to Forest Lawn to honor Governor Schieh.
From one of those present, a golfer, I learned the secret of his success: He never used a driver, only a three iron.
Sam’s motto was short drives, always straight.
That’s not a bad epitaph for a banker. Or any other kind of businessman, politician or journalist in a world of big hitters who turn out to be wild swingers and crooks!
Sonia Gandhi was the second famous name.
I first met her 20 years ago at another funeral, when I was the only non-Indian to stand alongside the pyre of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, arguably the world’s most powerful woman of the last half century.
Mrs Gandhi, prime minister of India for 14 years, was cremated before a crowd of more than a million.
As her frail body was consumed by the flames, Hindu priests threw sour milk into the flames.
The grease and fumes impregnated my suit but I did not realize this until, flying back to London on the British prime minister’s plane, Denis Thatcher, husband of Margaret, said, “God, you stink.”
A grisly memory but what I most vividly recall from that burning pyre was Sonia Gandhi’s cool.
Not only Indira but Sonia’s husband, Rajiv Gandhi, who was also prime minister of India, was assassinated.
And that’s probably why Sonia last month turned down the offer that she, too, should head the Indian government.
She did not want to expose her two children, Rahul and Priyanka, to a similar fate at the hands of religious fanatics who hate the thought of an Italian-born woman or her offspring governing 1 billion Hindus.
Don’t count Sonia Gandhi out, however. Her refusal to become prime minister not only provided the best pun of the week (“Sonia and yet so far,” wrote the Economist), it was a class act in Indian politics.
For renunciation plays well in India.
Self-effacement is a virtue, self-promotion a vice.
So politically, Sonia remains fragrant. One day, she or her son, 35-year-old Rahul, will be back in the Gandhi family’s room at the top in India.
Finally, Arnold Beckman, an all-American prince.
To his brilliance as an inventor, world stature as a businessman, generosity as a philanthropist, the executive editor of this journal recently paid tribute.
My postscript concerns Dr. Beckman’s membership of the AAA, of whose Southern California branch he was a founder with a membership number so low that it consisted of three zeros and a single digit. (Current numbers have nine digits.)
Arnold in his 90s was involved in a minor accident.
His car needed a tow but when he called the AAA and quoted his number, the operator’s reply was, “You’ve got to be kidding. Anyone with that low a number is either dead or James Bond.”
“I’m neither dead nor 007,” said Dr Beckman. “My number is 0004.”
Griffiths, a resident of Laguna Niguel, is an author, journalist, former member of the House of Commons and under-secretary of state in the U.K. government.
