download all... (pdf) ¡@back to NCTU Europe
Sweden, currently with merely 9 million inhabitants but 450,000 km2 lands, has been regarded as a modern and advanced social welfare country in modern history. It is famous for that the government would take care of you from cradle to grave. In economy, Sweden is one of the biggest IT service and telecommunication export countries, and also has some international business giants at forefront in many fields, such as Ericsson, Ikea, Volvo and Saab. One might wonder how such a not so big country in population, only almost one third of population of Taiwan, can become what they are today.
However, during early and middle nineteenth century, Sweden was actually a very poor country, where agriculture dominated almost all of its economy. The gap between small part of rich people and poor majority was tremendous. Peasants were never prevented from starvation all the time. Almost 1 million Swedes migrated to American searching for new living place during 1850 and 1890. Nevertheless, in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sweden gradually became an industrialized country and had a lot of reforms in politics and regulations. During the two world wars, Sweden stuck to its politics to be neutral. At the same time, armed with industrialized techniques, they began to exploit and export their rich natural resource, such as forest and steel, in a highly organized way. The prosperity brought by the demand of resource from other countries laid the foundations for Sweden to become the most welfare country in the world.
Facing the problem of insufficient
labor force after industrialization, Swedes made regulations, such as daycare,
to attract more women into market. On the other hand, they also import workers
from abroad; many foreigners become new Swedes at that time. In the 1970s,
there was another big immigration from outside Europe. However, most people
came to Sweden not only for work but also as refugees for new life. Today,
around fifth of population in Sweden is first or second generation immigrants.
Sweden has always been having a kind attitude toward people from the third
world. It is until late 1990s that Swedish immigration policy, which was generous
before, becomes somewhat restrictive.
When walking through living area in Sweden, it is not rare to see people hang
blue and yellow Sweden flag in front of balconies or windows. You may also
easily find a lot of things made in blue and yellow. It seems they like their
flags and their colors very much, or say, they are proud of them. When we
arrived here, we met many kind and zealous Swedes who patiently answered our
questions and gave us much more than we expected, as if they were afraid that
we miss any part of this country. It has been more than two people who we
asked information on the street leaving their telephone number to us and told
us not hesitate to contact them if we have any problem. Even people who are
emigrated from other countries catches this magic. They are polite and confident
as other Swedes and eager to show us their new country. One might think there
must be a lot of conflicts for so many people of different cultures living
together, but, actually, we can hardly observe that case. Respecting people
of different racial, gender, and culture seems to be a basic idea known and
practiced by everybody here. I still remember the first day I went to Chalmers.
At the opening ceremony, the officers spent large amount of time explaining
how we should do if we felt unfairly treated in racial, gender, or religion
etc. It is really impressive for me that they take this so seriously.
Living pace in Sweden is pretty slow comparing to many countries in the world, but it doesn¡¦t mean they are inefficient. In the Global Competitiveness Report 2004-2005, released a couple months ago by IMD, Geneva, Sweden ranked third among all countries in the world, only behind Finland and USA. One might ask how much they work so that they can keep such a high competitiveness. One interesting observation is that they tend to work more qualitatively than quantitatively. In fact, most people work standard 40 hours a week, and even engineers and university professors work the same amount of time. What¡¦s more, hey regularly have five weeks of vacation in one year.
The philosophy of working is a little
bit different here. Although not working long hours, people are very serious
when they are working. Not willing to work extra hours, they try to get job
done within regular working hours by maintaining high efficiency. It seems
to me, on the other hand, that they have pretty good organization in doing
things, which means that only minimum work is needed to be done to achieve
certain goal. These may be the reasons that Sweden can retain such high competitiveness
without overwhelming the life of people.
During the last few years, the economy of Sweden has improved steadily and
significantly. One main reason is due to surprisingly effective and efficient
exports. The structure of exports shifts from traditional industries, such
as steel and paper, to services like IT and telecommunication, which now dominates
almost 70% of GDP. There are many innovative companies come from Sweden. Skype,
for example, is the most famous one. Mr. Niklas Zennstrom, who has a dual
degree in business and MSc Engineering Physics, computer science from Uppsala
University in Sweden, is not only the founder of Skype but also of several
other innovative companies with brilliant ideas, such as KaZaA. Their success
in global business may be strongly related to the creative working atmosphere
and highly organized way of doing things in Sweden.
As a developed country, there are also some problems facing this country.
During the trip to a nearby island, Masstrand, I met an old lady on the steaming
boat. She told us a lot about what she thought about her country. According
to her, nowadays some young people have less ambitions and not willing to
strive for their own life. In Sweden, even if you don¡¦t work, you can still
get money from the government and it is almost impossible to starve. Then,
why work? This, in fact, is a consequence of complex combination of factors,
not only due to the high welfare policy. High unemployment rate and high tax
also contribute to this result. It is not uncommon to hear somebody complain
about couldn¡¦t find a job here. The unemployment rate of Sweden in September
2005 is 5.4%, which is low comparing to 6.2% in September 2004. This is mainly
because the domestic labor is very expensive, and more job opportunities are
outsourced to other developing countries for lower price. Hiring a person
here, a company not only has to pay huge amount of salary, but also need to
pay extra tax to the government for social welfare and others. This makes
companies only hire as few employees as possible. High tax, on the other hand,
is also a problem. Although salary is high, from the viewpoint of employee,
they don¡¦t earn much actually because almost half of the salary goes to government
as tax in the end. Then this comes to a situation where it doesn¡¦t make a
great difference between working and not working. Those would be the problems
that Swedish government has to solve in a few years.
Being here for almost four months, almost all the Swedish people I met are
very friendly. Swedish people are kind, zealous, and a little shy in general.
But when talking to you, they are definitely confident and polite. I¡¦ve made
some Swedish friends here, and sometimes I really enjoy talking to them, especially
for the culture part. It¡¦s interesting to talk to people with different background,
because you can always find new perspective from it.
Reference
1. WikiPedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sweden
2. Background Note : Sweden, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2880.htm
3. A HISTORY OF SWEDEN by Lars O. Lagerqvist