between Taiwan and mainland China were severed. Activities of Japanese
capitalists in Taiwan were part of the strong state-business complex of the
Japanese empire, which placed Taiwan in the general framework of Japan’s
economic development in the first half of the twentieth century.^35
The primary focus of the Taiwan economy was the export of agricultural
commodities such as rice and sugar to the mother country. At the same time,
the improvement of Taiwan’s infrastructure, for example modernization of its
sewage and sanitation systems, laid the foundation of economic growth for the
next few decades.
When the Japanese empire launched the Sino–Japanese and Pacific war in
the 1930s, the policy of developing Taiwan’s agriculture changed. Taiwan was
first utilized as a logistics center to support Japanese warfare in mainland
China and Southeast Asia. The wartime effort emphasized these sectors:
- power supplies, including development of water resources and coal
mines; - new industrial centers and ports in Taipei, Hsinchu, Kaohsiung and
Keelung; - development of machinery, ship-building, cement and chemical industries
to achieve self-reliance and support Japanese military needs; and - mobilization and recruitment of Taiwan’s laborers to support activity in
major Japanese battlefields.^36
After 1944, Taiwan Island itself was under severe air attacks and became a
battlefield.
Taiwan’s economic development after the end of World War II is commonly
characterized as state-led growth coupled with a fairly equal distribution of
wealth. In the early years, the state supported infant industries and established
state-owned enterprises to reach its economic goal of import substitution. In
the take-off period of the 1960s and 1970s, the state promoted export-led
growth. The state led and controlled the market by providing tax breaks,
subsidizing strategic industries, and regulating business activities. The
ultimate goal of the state was to achieve high economic growth through
export-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) concentrated in
labor-intensive industries.
During Taiwan’s take-off era, the state and the general public perceived
economic development as the first priority and neglected the worsening of
environmental conditions. Taiwan’s SMEs exploited cheap land and labor in
the countryside and set up thousands of factories, hiring female laborers to
work in assembly lines. These factories directly contaminated water resources,
rice fields and the air.^37
Taiwan’s economic miracle based on SME development not only ignored
30 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan