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Regional Variation of Industrial Development in Taiwan
As for capital productivity,
the East region ranked at the top in 1966 and 1971
and was about the same with the Central region in
1976, then the East fell to become the lowest until
1996. The central region took the lead in capital
productivity from 1981 to 1996. The North region ranked
at the bottom from 1966 to 1976 and afterwards, and
ranked only above the East except for 1981. On the
average, capital productivity decreased 74 percent
with the East decreasing more drastically by 93 percent.
The increasing labor
productivity may imply an improvement in the living
standard of manufacturing employees. However, the
declining capital productivity may not be so desirable
for investors. A summary quotes at current price reveals
that comparing 1996 with 1991, only four among the
22 categories of manufacturing had an increase in
capital productivity. These four categories were wood
and bamboo products (4.48%), wearing apparel (2.88%),
machinery (2.41%), and printing processing (1.64%).
The decreases in capital productivity were mostly
more than 10 percent, and the most serious cases were
found in petroleum and coal (-30.12%), food and beverages
(-29.49%), transport equipment (-16.50%), non-metallic
mineral (-15.87%), plastic (-15.38%), chemical matter
(-15.15%), precision instruments (-14.78%) and electric
and electronic machinery (-12.77%). Nevertheless,
the profit remained around 7 percent for manufacturing
as a whole. (The 1996 Census, Vol.3: 1-22)
2.3
Regrouping of Manufacturing Industries
To further analyze manufacturing
industries, it is necessary to regroup the data details
into broader categories. There are different ways
to regroup manufacturing industries. For instance,
one study regrouped the 22 manufacturing industries
classified by the 1996 census into four types: the
urban technical-intensive type, the urban labor-intensive
type, the local resources-relying type, and the basic
materials-providing type. (Lin Chien-yuan, 1999: 24-25)
This regrouping's advantage highlights features of
urban vs. rural as well as labor vs. technical intensive.
However, the industries grouped under the local resources-relying
type are not all so appropriate. For example, raw
materials for textile mills, such as cotton and wool,
are not at all locally produced.
To make it easy, this
paper simply adopts classification according to the
nature of manufacturing into four types in the following
way: (The 1986 Census, Vol. 3: 16)
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