Although the gap between shares of light and heavy industries had been narrowing down by the end of the Japanese colonial period, it was closing up by the late 1960s. After a lingering period due to the oil crisis in 1974-1976, the two industry groups finally switched their positions after 1978. This demonstrates that the industrial structure changed more substantially after 1978.

     Both before and after WWII, government industrial policies played an important role to influence the trail of Taiwan\\'s industrial development. However, there were also negative impacts of these policies. Under the Japanese colonial rule, the predominance of sugar manufacturing encouraged by the colonial government prevented other light industries, which could have beneficially utilized local raw materials, from being developed. Since the 1950s, negative impacts of industrial policies taken by the government could be reviewed with two points. First, too much governmental interference caused distortions in resource allocation; and secondly, not enough attention had been paid to some areas and thus could not satisfy the need of industrial development. The first point was well-argued in aspects related to high tariffs, regulation and protection in trade as well as net benefits of the regulation in promoting investments. As for the second point, critics focused mostly on insufficient government investments in construction of infrastructure, technological innovation research, pollution prevention and environmental protection.

2. Regional Variations of Industrial Development

     In addition to an overview with aggregate data as shown above, I will try to discuss the regional variation of Taiwan's industrial development with census data. Taiwan's first census on industry and commerce was taken for the year 1954 and the second one for the year 1961. Since then, an industrial and commercial census was taken every five years and thus there are already nine census of this genre. The census data have an advantage in providing details that can be reorganized according to the need of a specific study. Statistics available in these census reports are arranged mostly by detailed items of industries and some have breakdowns by counties and cities. For a study of regional variation, it is necessary to reorganize these data by region. Before doing that, let us first get a general view of the composition of Taiwan's industrial sector.