The Development of Taiwan's European Trade and Outward Investment in a Global Perspective

Analysis of Taiwan's economic experience since the 1950s highlights the critical importance of the external orientation of Taiwan's development strategy. In particular, foreign trade has played a pre-eminent role in generating economic growth and associated structural changes. From the late 1950s until the 1980s, in common with the other East Asian “dragon” economies (South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore), Taiwan exhibited some of the classic hallmarks of trade dependence. Few would deny that the performance of its foreign trade sector – especially the linkages that were forged between the expansion and diversification of trade links overseas, and domestic industrial transformation and modernization – have been a key ingredient in the emergence of a “Taiwan development model.”