By 1940, Taiwan had truly become a part of Japan. The Taiwanese people were forced to wear Japanese clothes, eat Japanese food, observe Japanese religion and adopt Japanese names. They developed Taiwan as a centre for heavy industry and foreign trade, developing their foothold in the southern pacific during the war years, hoping to expand southwards.
Over their time, the Japanese also vastly improved the Taiwanese infrastructure. They expanded the 17 largest ports and dredged shallow harbours to allow large boats to enter them. They also developed steam ship lines to improve trade and built roads and railways to allow goods to be easily transported around the country and make it much easier for the industries to obtain heavy materials.
The Japanese railways were some of the best in the world, allowing travel over the large mountainous peaks in the centre of Taiwan as illustrated by this diagram. One railway in particular allowed Taiwan’s abundant timber reserves to be reached as it stretched high up into the mountains where the tree’s existed. This became quite a big trade for Taiwan and allowed it’s industries to flourish. By 1945, Japans had 2,857 miles of railway lines and over 2,500 miles of large roads.
One of Taiwan’s major industries was sugar cane farming and the Japanese improved this vastly, making it the seventh largest producer of sugar cane in the world and bringing in a lot of money for the country to spend on expanding into other areas. They introduced aqueducts and dams, ideas stolen from China to improve farming. The Japanese also planted other crops in crops in Taiwan, such as Pineapples and Bananas which, as they were a fairly rare export, also made the country a lot of money.
Taiwan had become fairly industrialised by the 1930s but it was not until the war years when Japan required a large amount of aluminium, chemicals, oil and metal and shipbuilding facilities that Taiwan really began to become a centre of industrial wealth. Many factories were built in the Japanese rule that are still used today.
For full political control, the Japanese exercised many tariffs, thus stopping trade with most other countries and ensuring that 95% of its trade is with Japan. The Japanese monopolised on this by selling opium, tobacco and alcohol to Taiwan with large import taxes on them.
By 1945, the Japanese had been removed from Japan at the end of the Second World War when all land was renounced from their rule. This did not mark the end of the development, Taiwan kept on developing into the modern country it is now.
Much the same as a lot of other Asia Pacific countries, Taiwan has developed through manufacturing. It has many of the advantages of all the other Asian countries such as cheap labourers who are prepared to put up with bad conditions, favourable trading agreements and a good education system. It also has many of the disadvantages such as very mountainous land with little useable land and bad weather conditions.
Taiwan now sells electronical goods, much the same as Japan and South Korea and is still developing at a fast rate. It has a large disposable income that it is spending on many things to improve the quality of life of life such as power plants and better infrastructure. It also has all the consequences of developing so quickly, such as pollution, overcrowding, some of the infrastructure is still behind the countries development although they are spending a large amount of money on it.
