Taking the brown sugar industry, one of the lasting Taiwanese private capital dating back to the 16th century, as one example, this paper sets to explore how this capital survive the state's discrimination. Although the Taiwan Sugar Company, one of the government's enterprises, joined the Ryukyu brown sugar industry in squeezing it out of sugar business, its activities have not been disappearing but embedded themselves into the international division of manufacturing system and the Nationalist Party regime. Therefore, counter to one prevailing argument that this capital has always been since dominated or wiped away by the Nationalist regime, the author points to its 'relative autonomy' form or co-operation with the state power.