In the restaurants of Jin Shan Street not far from the heart of Taiwan’s technology industry just outside Taipei, the number of lunch customers halved as companies laid off workers during the global financial crisis.
Two years later, the volume of diners has returned to pre-crisis levels, just like Taiwan’s technology-dependent economy. But prices, slashed to the bone during the slowdown, have failed to recover, undermining the sustainability of the restaurants’ recovery.
The region’s economy could be on a similar path, in spite of a V-shaped recovery that has increased gross domestic product in Asia excluding Japan by 9 per cent between April 2009 and June this year.