Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
with its growth poles had seen some population growth, from 9.56 million to 12.
08 million, but its proportion of national population fell to 29.8 per cent.
Urbanization of the population went on at a rapid pace, with the urban share
increasing from 41 per cent to 65 per cent of the total population over 1970-85.
This had a great effect on regional product disparities, because the urban
population was much better paid. There was a support system for farm prices,
particularly for rice, but a central structural problem of small farms (average size
1 ha., and legal maximum 3 ha.) meant that farm income could never be raised
much for the poor. A basic message must be that South Korean success owes
much to concentration on urban industrial development, and to the fact that its
rural sector has not posed too much of a drain on the wealth produced by the
main strategy.
Taiwan
A second example of an NIC is Taiwan, called the Ilha Formosa or beautiful
island by Portuguese explorers. This thinly populated backwater of China was
suddenly projected into importance in 1949 when the Communists took over the
mainland and forced a massive migration of their opponents, the Nationalists or
Kuomintang, to the island. It too followed a Japanese model of rapid
development with a state presence behind private firms, in a context of poor
natural resources. But it also illustrates some important differences from the
other east Asian Tiger economies.
Some of the elements in its geography and history are comparable to those of
South Korea. Like all the NICS of the first phase following Japan, it has a
relatively small area of concentrated settlement and activity. About two-thirds of
the island is rugged mountains, in four sub-parallel ranges, lying mostly in the east
of the island (
Fig. 8.2
). These mountains are of easily eroded shales and
sandstones, uncultivable for the most part because of their slopes, and necessarily
kept forest-covered. Forest covers 65 per cent of the island, mostly broadleaved
evergreen trees of mixed species, overused in wartime and now kept more for
conservation. There are few minerals worth exploiting, and no oil. In the west
there is a low coastal plain with fertile soil, and most of the agriculture and
population (66 per cent), although with only 22 per cent of the area.
Like Korea, Taiwan was a Japanese colony, in this case from 1895 to 1945.
Before that, from 1683, it had effectively been an internal colony of China,
supplying rice to Fukien province when that province experienced shortages.
Under the Chinese there had been agricultural exploitation, and the growth of
social division between landowners and labourers. Japan, in contrast, did make
some investments, including those in infrastructure, roads, schools and hospitals,
but did not encourage strong industrial development as Japan itself was the
supplier of industrial goods to Taiwan (Hsieh 1964, Myers 1990). The
beginnings of entrepreneurship were found in the many small industries
processing sugarcane, hulling rice, and the like. There was a first modest essay
