Taiwan's Miracle Development: Its Economy over a Century

It is well known that, since World War II, Taiwan has achieved two miracles, an “economic miracle” and a “political miracle.” Economically, after Taiwan recovered from the destruction of its industrial agricultural bases, built by the Japanese before the war, and because of the impact of the influx of Chinese refugees from the mainland after 1947, Taiwan went through a government reorganization and economic reconstruction, the phases of sugar and rice primary export promotion, import substitution, and low-tech to high-tech exports promotion periods. It maintained a high growth rate with a low unemployment rate and low income inequality. Politically, Taiwan has transformed itself from one of the worst authoritarian regimes in the world, going through thirty-eight years of martial law and the era of “White Terror” from 1948 to 1987, to one of the most democratic and free countries in the world. Since 1987, the Taiwanese economy has continued growing, and democracy and freedom have been evolving. Unlike dire predictions in some quarters, the democratic turn from 1987 by no means put an end to Taiwan’s economic growth. While Taiwan has faced many economic problems over the years, domestically and internationally (e.g., the two oil crises and expulsion from the UN in the 1970s, and the Asian financial crisis in 1997), Taiwanese economy and society have been able to overcome the obstructions and the threat of recession and continued to survive and thrive. In 1997 the World Bank and the IMF listed Taiwan as an advanced economy, and in the 2010s Taiwan became one of the world’s high-income countries. According to IMF data, in terms of real per capital GDP in PPP, Taiwan surpassed Japan in 2007, the United Kingdom in 2009, France in 2010, and Germany in 2014, and it is poised to catch up with the United States. In 2018, Taiwan produced 72 percent of the world’s IC foundries, 49 percent of the world’s IC packaging and testing (both in value), and, if offshore production is included, 85 percent of the world’s computer motherboards (in value) and 79 percent of the world’s notebook computers (in volume). They were No. 1 to No. 3 in the World. Taiwan is a powerhouse in the world’s high-tech industry today. In this bibliography, Taiwan’s economic development miracle is reviewed. The literature on the political miracle has been ably covered elsewhere by Jonathan Sullivan in the Oxford Biographies article “Taiwan Democracy” Since economy and politics are often closely interwoven, readers are advised to refer to that article. Due to Taiwan’s unique historical background, the references include those in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and many are in edited books. For simplicity, we call the Japanese period (1895–1945) the “prewar period,” and the years after 1945 the “postwar period.”