台灣戰後紡織業的發展

Abstract

本文旨在探討台灣戰後紡織業急遽發展的成因。紡織業，特別是棉紡織業，是帶動台灣1950-60年代經濟成長的重要產業，不過學界對於其為何能成功崛起仍眾說紛紜。本文前半段主要整理政策面上的影響，包括1950-57年對紡織業實施的產銷、進口及設廠等管制措施，以及同時期美援和匯率政策的影響。後半段則探討糖業與紡織業間可能的產業轉移現象，我們認為台灣糖業在1950年代的生產條件轉變，包括國際糖價變動與邊際生產力下滑，使得生產資源從糖業移轉至紡織業，是紡織業興起的可能原因之一。

This article investigates the cause of the rapid development of Taiwan’s textile industry during the postwar era. The textile industry, especially the cotton textile industry, is often described as the leading sector which contributed a lot to the economic development of Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. However, academia still can not fully clarify the rise of the textile industry in Taiwan. The first half of this article examines the impacts of concurrent policies, including the industrial policy applied to the whole textile industry in 1950-57, which regulated production, transaction, import, and factory establishment of the industry. Besides that, we also discuss the effect of the US aid policy and the exchange rate policy. The second half of this article explores the possibility of the shift from the sugar industry to the textile industry. We believe that the change of production conditions of Taiwan’s sugar industry in the 1950s, namely the fluctuations of the world sugar prices and the decline of the marginal productivity of labor, induced the allocation of production resources to shift from the sugar industry to the textile industry. This might give rise to the fast development of the textile industry.