8 - Taiwan’s political economy

Summary

In the decades following the Second World War Taiwan transitioned to a newly industrialized country (NIC) and became one of four “Asian Tigers” with Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. The rapid and sustained growth experienced by these economies has been the subject of decades of political economy research. The puzzle has been to explain how they successfully transitioned from low-performing economies to integral parts of the global economic order, unlike many developing economies. One of the development strategies used to achieve this result was export-oriented industrialization. Prior to the Asian Tigers’ success, economists were sceptical of export-oriented industrialization. Yet, Taiwan made it work.

The conditions for rapid development were not immediately favourable. Taiwan in the early 1950s was in a chaotic state. The KMT was engaged in a brutal crackdown on local Taiwanese through the White Terror and martial law. Chiang Kai-shek was preoccupied with the prospect of war with the PRC, leading to disproportionate spending on the military and defence. Hyperinflation and instability were rampant, and the KMT desperately needed to stabilize the economy and find an economic plan that would lead to growth. Economic reform was needed, but priorities were unfocused. The KMT leadership was made up of officials with backgrounds in the military or engineering, most of whom had minimal economic policy experience. The authoritarian KMT was amenable to a strong interventionist state with the government operating state-owned enterprises (SOEs), but was largely uninterested in developing the private sector. The ROC was also heavily reliant on US aid, which was largely keeping Taiwan's economy afloat.

From 1957, when the US began cutting back its aid to Taiwan, the KMT realized that reform was urgently needed. It pushed the KMT to prioritize economic and party reform in order to reduce its dependency on the US. Economists and bureaucratic planners would have a bigger say in how to grow Taiwan's economy. A combination of Taiwanese bureaucrats from the KMT and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) began collaborating on ideas to overcome Taiwan's economic problems. They agreed that Taiwan's reliance on the American foreign exchange was its biggest problem, and that it was not taking full advantage of its potential to export.