In 1949, Taiwan, China. This is a barren land full of hard-working people. However, more than 20 years later, Taiwan's economy has developed rapidly and has become one of the "Four Asian Little Dragons" with a unique attitude. The farmland in the past has been transformed, the ci

1949, Taiwan, China.

This is a barren land, full of hard-working people. As far as you can see, there are large areas of farmland, without any trace of the industrialized society. If one word is used to describe the Taiwan economy in 1949, it would be a mess.

However, more than 20 years later, Taiwan's economy has developed rapidly and has become one of the " Asian Four Little Dragons " with a unique attitude. The farmland in the past has transformed, the city has risen from the ground, the traffic has surging, and it is completely renewed everywhere and full of vitality.

What exactly has Taiwan done to usher in such a huge transformation? What was the decisive factor in Taiwan’s economic development in the last century? What role has the mainland played in this process?

All of this has to start with the dilemma of Taiwan back then.

1. Shocking changes: From the dilemma to the takeoff

1949, the War of Liberation was won, the founding of New China, and the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan.

The moment they set foot on the land of Taiwan, everything they saw was desolate. The long-term war has put this originally beautiful treasure island in an unprecedented dilemma. At that time, Taiwan was devastated and its economy could be said to be a mess.

Since ancient times, Taiwan has been a region dominated by agricultural development. However, as we all know, the small peasant economy is highly fragile. On weekdays, it not only depends on the weather for its own income, but will also be severely damaged once the war breaks out.

During the Republic of China, war spread from the mainland to Taiwan. As a treasure island, Taiwan has a rough life. It has experienced many wars and has endured the plunder of colonists.

Therefore, even though the war disappeared, Taiwan's economy still suffered irreversible damage for decades, agriculture has significantly reduced production, and industry has disappeared.

Taiwan produces a lot of rice. The maximum annual output of rice before the war could reach 1.4 million tons, but the maximum output after the war was only 894,000 tons, which was not even 70% of the past. Food is the foundation of development, but Taiwanese people cannot even eat enough, which shows how serious the situation is.

After the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, it brought a new round of turmoil to Taiwan.

At that time, about 2 million people flocked to the island, causing new challenges to the already limited resources on the island. In 1945, there were only 6 million people in Taiwan. By 1952, the number of people in the island surged to 8.12 million.

The population has increased sharply, but economic development has not kept up, which has led to a shortage of supplies on the island. For many people, eating and clothing has become a luxury.

Not only that, political chaos has also indirectly promoted economic decline. When Chiang Kai-shek When he first arrived in Taiwan, he naturally had to be busy with internal struggles and consolidate his dominance, which made Taiwan's political situation turbulent.

political consequences were ultimately endorsed by the economy. At that time, Taiwan's currency was viciously inflated, and prices fluctuated frequently, which was extremely high. In 1949 alone, Taiwan's consumer price index rose by nearly fifty times! Behind the amazing number of

is the many difficulties faced by Taiwan. Where will the treasure island be in the future and where will it eventually go has become the biggest concern for local people.

However, beyond everyone's expectations, it was such a Taiwan that jumped up more than 20 years later and became one of the famous "Four Asian Little Dragons".

According to statistics, in the fifty years from 1953 to 2000, the annual average growth rate of the GDP of Taiwan was as high as 8.1%! Not only that, Taiwan's GDP has also made a qualitative leap, from US$1.2 billion in 1951 to US$295.6 billion in 2003.

Under such a general background, the per capita GDP has undoubtedly made a leap. In 1951, Taiwan's per capita GDP was only US$145, but by 2003, the number soared to an astonishing $13,139.

In addition, compared with the high prices that have been "ups and downs" in the past, Taiwan's overall price level has gradually stabilized. The speed of people making money is far greater than the speed of price increases, and life has generally improved.

In the past few decades, many families in Taiwan have owned their own houses and cars, and have also obtained more available resources in education and medical care.

Even Taiwan’s industrial structure has completed a gorgeous transformation in the past half century. From agriculture to industry, and then to service industry and high-tech manufacturing, the span is amazing.

Rome was not created in one day, but Taiwan has created an economic miracle in just over fifty years. So, how exactly does Taiwan do all this? We might as well explore the secrets of Taiwan’s success from both internal and external perspectives.

2. Dramatic and drastic: Internal factors in the rise of Taiwan

The first thing we should thank for is the hard-working people in the local area.

At that time, the island's economy was in a downturn and the unemployment rate was extremely high. There were many young and middle-aged workers who had nothing to do, and were idle at home all day, waiting for an opportunity.

When the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, it brought a large population to Taiwan. On the one hand, this ran the original island resources, and on the other hand, it also sent a batch of new labor to Taiwan.

The original unemployed young people on the island, plus the 2 million people brought by the Kuomintang, have given Taiwan an extremely rich labor resources.

The excess labor force further reduces the cost of employment. For a region that urgently needs to transform from agriculture to industry, this is tantamount to a happy event and is a rare favorable condition.

Therefore, with their efforts, Taiwan successfully completed industrial upgrading, changed the past agricultural-led production mode, and built a large number of infrastructure, such as railways, highways, airports, ports, etc.

Infrastructure is the cornerstone of economic development. It is precisely because of them that the economy on Taiwan’s island can flow, like living water, endlessly and continuously.

In addition to providing low-priced productivity, Taiwanese people have also made outstanding contributions to local economic development in terms of savings rates.

In the process of industrialization, Taiwanese farmers have provided a lot of accumulation in aggregation of capital with their good moral character of diligence, frugality, hard work and perseverance. One of the important reasons for Taiwan's economy to develop is the increase in the public's savings rate.

In the 1950s, Taiwan's overall savings rate was extremely low. If you want to invest, you could only rely on the aid of the United States. As a result, Taiwan easily fell into a vicious cycle of "making less money - saving less money - invest less money". If you want to break this cycle, you must start with savings.

Therefore, resisting consumerism and encouraging savings investment became the trend of Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s.

On the one hand, high-end luxury goods are heavily taxed to achieve the purpose of saving consumption. On the other hand, the rise in bank savings interest rates has prompted the people's willingness to save money.

All this guidance has not been in vain. The Taiwanese people united in a specific historical period and created a high savings rate of 34.9%, opening up a good soil for the recovery of the society and economy.

In addition to the people, the Taiwan authorities have also done their part in the development of the regional economy.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Taiwan's economic development ushered in a golden thirty years. During this period, it was particularly important to formulate appropriate strategies.

Based on the actual situation, the Taiwan authorities decided to take the lead in developing agricultural and labor-intensive industries, and after a certain accumulation, they would develop capital and technology-intensive industries.

Among many economic policies, promoting the development of private enterprises and recognizing private capital is one of the keys to Taiwan's takeoff.

At that time, most of Taiwan's private capital was small and medium-sized enterprises. They were more flexible and should become the new force in economic development. In order to give full play to the role of private enterprises, the Taiwan authorities have made drastic reforms and implemented a series of new measures.

When they formulate an investment plan, they will invite private enterprises to participate in the discussion in the official name to facilitate understanding of the real ecology of the local economy.Some companies are first founded by the Taiwanese authorities. After investing in factories and making profits, they will be converted into private enterprises to enhance the flexibility of enterprises.

In terms of enterprise operations, the authorities often directly provide raw materials to private enterprises, ask them to process them on their behalf, and then recycle them uniformly after making the finished products.

In this way, the burden and risks of private enterprises will be greatly reduced, and more and more people are willing to join the army of starting businesses.

In Taiwan's rapid development, the mainland plays an indispensable and important role. It is no exaggeration to say that Taiwan’s ability to achieve such great economic achievements cannot be separated from the help of the mainland.

When Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, he transported a full three million taels of gold from the mainland. In addition to gold, Chiang Kai-shek also took away a large amount of silver dollars and US dollar bills, and transferred about 2 billion US dollars to banks such as Citigroup in the United States.

It is precisely with this money that the Kuomintang has the strength to implement a series of measures to support economic development in Taiwan.

Not only that, the Kuomintang also took away a group of experts from the mainland.

There are many experts in this group of experts who specialize in the economic field, such as Li Guoding , Yi Zhongrong, Sun Yunqi and others. They made important contributions to Taiwan's economy.

In addition to experts, there are a group of private capitalists in the textile industry and chemical industry in the mainland, and they have also resolutely devoted themselves to the great cause of building Taiwan.

The two sides of the Taiwan Strait have the same roots. In order to promote Taiwan's development, the mainland has always done its best to promulgate a series of policies to benefit Taiwan, encourage investment and attach importance to trade, which is a great contribution.

It can be said that Taiwan’s economy was able to take off in the last century and become one of the “Four Asian Little Dragons” because of its strong internal strength.

Multi-party collaboration to promote economic development from the inside out. In addition to internal factors, Taiwan's economic success also has special external conditions. It is precisely because of seizing these opportunities that Taiwan has been completely renewed.

3. Seize the opportunity: External conditions for Taiwan’s take-off

Speaking of the external conditions for Taiwan’s take-off, it will inevitably be impossible to avoid Western countries.

In the 1960s, when Taiwan's economy was booming, it happened to meet the third technological revolution of in Western countries . This technological revolution takes electronic computers and atomic energy as the core. In order to develop its own country's cutting-edge high-tech industries, Western countries urgently need to transfer labor-intensive industries outward.

It happened that Taiwan has a rich working population on the island, so Taiwan made a concerted effort to seize this opportunity.

Taiwan has actively undertaken industries transferred from developed countries, and has taken advantage of population and other advantages to continuously lower product costs, which has significantly improved the competitiveness of products and greatly expanded the external market.

Taiwan even cleverly took advantage of the subtle contradictions between these developed countries and developed its own industrial system in the gaps.

The rapid development of electronic technology in the United States and Japan is almost simultaneously in progress, and both countries need to find investment and assembly sites with cheap labor.

However, although Japan's electronic products are updated very quickly and are emerging one after another, they are still subject to various restrictions from the United States. Taiwan seized the opportunity and helped Japan set up processing and export areas locally, thus making a big profit.

In addition to industrial transfer, the economic prosperity of the West also provides opportunities for Taiwan's light industry.

Twenty years after the war were the golden age of Western economic prosperity. People's desire to consume is increasing, and the demand for consumer goods is also increasing.

Western countries are busy upgrading their industrial structure and have no time to take into account traditional light industry, which naturally frees up a huge market for Taiwan. Therefore, Taiwan has established a brand and sold its light industrial products to the West, accumulating original capital for itself to a certain extent.

And among these countries, the United States is another special one.

1950, Korean War broke out, and the United States decided to use Taiwan with its own calculations. Although the starting point is sinister, the economic aid provided by the United States has indeed promoted Taiwan's development at a certain period.

However, these external opportunities have also laid many hidden dangers for the Taiwan economy.

Aid from the Western world makes Taiwan's economy highly dependent. What's even worse is that this dependence is almost every aspect.

As a result, about 80% of the production technology owned by Taiwan is introduced from foreign countries, with the United States and Japan the most. Once these two countries impose technological blockade on Taiwan, the consequences will be unimaginable.

Not only that, Taiwan’s industrial foundation is weak and it also has a great dependence on raw materials and equipment. During the decades of rapid economic development, most of Taiwan's industrial equipment has been imported, and Japan and the United States account for the majority.

In just a decade from 1974 to 1986, Taiwan spent as much as 7.3 billion yuan on imported equipment.

The convenience of the market is also a certain limitation. Taiwan's development of the export economy tasted the sweetness, but the subsequent results were out of control.

If imports are added, the numbers will be unimaginable. All the data prove that Taiwan has too high dependence on foreign countries and has weak ability to resist risks.

No wonder some people joked that as long as the United States and Japan sneeze, Taiwan will catch a cold.

In the process of Taiwan's rapid development, the Kuomintang is even more eager for quick success and disregarding long-term interests, causing a lot of ecological damage. It often takes decades or even hundreds of years to make up for these losses.

But no matter what, Taiwan’s development can leave us many inspirations today. The economy is a complex issue that requires both internal and external efforts. We must seize the opportunity and formulate appropriate strategies.

can be said to be ten thousand ways. You must be strong in your own way. Only by being confident can you find your own development path.

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