臺灣工業發展的另類思考架構

Another Type of Consideration of the Industrial Development of Taiwan

林崇熙

《科技博物》 1卷1期 (1997/01) Pp. 68-105

https://doi.org/10.6432/TMR.199701.0068

摘要

本文將試圖提出不同於傳統論述台灣「經濟奇蹟」的談法，以對台灣五十年來工業發展提出另類的思考架構。科學工藝博物館在進行蒐藏及展演任務時，必須先從歷史脈絡的角度來瞭解一項科技文物的意義。在爬梳這項科技文物於其產業的歷史地位之前，需先瞭解整個工業發展的大環境變遷。為什麼先以時間而非直接以產業作為分類準則呢？如果我們直接以產業作為區分來研究某項科技的發展，則將有見樹不見林之憾。換句話說，若不先瞭解大環境的變動，將無法認知某一項科技發展的真正意義。例如，若我們直接研究運輸科技發展，選定汽車工業為個案，描述了汽車工業歷年的進展、產值、車型變化等，但若沒對照整個工業發展的大架構，則無法認知當眾多中小企業在海外市場大放異彩時，台灣汽車工業作為大資本企業，長年需高關稅保護的意義何在？另一方面，產業類別如此繁多，究竟應選定何者值得優先探討呢？這就得先確知台灣工業發展的歷程，標定各個年代各有哪些重要產業，再據以進行研究其興衰起伏。
長久以來，台灣的經濟發展被冠上「經濟奇蹟」的稱號。有關台灣經濟發展的歷程及樣態，不出幾種相關的論述，如強調政府英明的領導、高經濟成長率低失業率、國民所得快速成長、貿易順差持續累積、農工商業結構的變遷、貧富差距不大等等。然而，在這些「產值」、「外銷金額」等光明亮麗的數字背後，卻隱藏著許多應嚴肅對待的重要課題，例如環境污染、資源消耗、勞工人權、技術依賴等卻常常在「經濟奇蹟」的光環中悄然無踪。本文希望透過對傳統工業發展論述的反省，提出另類的思考架構，以重新看待台灣工業發展的歷程，進而思考台灣工業發展的結構性困境。

並列摘要

This article takes a different tack from the usual approach to the subject of Taiwan's ”economic miracle”. In order to pursue its work of collecting and display, the Science and Technology Museum must first understand the meaning of a technological item from the perspective of history. Before assigning this piece of science to its place in the history of industry, it is imperative to first understand how the overall environment of industrial development has changed.
Why must one always start with the time frame rather than using the industry itself as a benchmark? If we directly apply the industry as a starting line to study the development of a certain aspect of science and technology, this is a little like ”not seeing the forest for the trees.”
In other words, if we do not take time to first understand the overall environment and its changes, there is no way we can understand the real significance of a given scientific development. For example, we can make a direct study of developments in transportation technology and choose to focus on the automobile, outlining the growth of the automobile industry, its output and development of new models. But if we ignore the overall line of development, we will not be aware that many medium and small companies in overseas markets have also gone through some remarkable times.
Taiwan's automobile industry has attracted considerable investment and needs the protection of many years of tariff barriers, but to what end? From another angle, with so many types of production what topic should be picked for first priority for discussion? We must first understand the process of Taiwan's industrial development, and identify the important industries in each decade in order to carry research in the ups and downs of each one.
For a long time Taiwan's economic development has been called an ”economic miracle”. The processes and patterns related to Taiwan's economic development bring up several areas of related discussion, such as an emphasis on enlightened leadership by the government; high rates of economic growth and low levels of unemployment; quick growth of the GMP; a constant trade surplus; changes in the relative mix of the agricultural, manufacturing and business sectors; and a fairly small differential in income between the rich and poor.
But behind all these glossy figures like ”production” and ”export income” are hidden many important problems awaiting serious consideration. Among them are environmental pollution, excessive consumption of natural resources, labor rights, and over-dependence on technology. These are all too often obscured in the glare of publicity given to the island's ”economic miracle”.
This article aims to take a look at discussions of traditional economic development, extracting some more unconventional ways of thinking in order to examine Taiwan's economic development in a new light, and to gain a better understanding of the dilemma arising from the island's industrial growth.
By using non-conventional standards of observation this article hopes to devise unconventional concepts of the structure of industrial development. From the angle of ”productivity”, the industries with the highest levels of productivity in Taiwan during the past three decades have been the tobacco industry, precision machinery, the printing industry, furniture and furnishing, and fur and leather goods. On the other hand, heavy and technology-intensive industries like transportation, electrical and electronics, machinery, metals, plastics, petrochemicals and gas, and chemicals, which have been touted for their contributions to ”development” and ”improvement”, have brought up the rear as far as productivity is concerned over the past thirty years.
Looking at traditional production figures makes it easy to overlook the fact that these heavy industries are mired in strategies which call for constant increases in production and greater market share even as their products remain low in profit margins. We add the ”environmental pollution index” and ”electrical consumption index” into the equation, and find something even more disturbing: these officials are proud that their heavy industries are such heavy polluters and heavy users of natural resources. How are we to interpret this? Admittedly they do offer high salaries to their employees, but when weighed against the overall cost to society, do we have a better choice?
From a conventional viewpoint, some early ”traditional industries” perhaps might best be moved overseas or simply eliminated. Moreover, when looked at from the standpoint of ”foreign exchange productivity”, in 1994 many traditional heavy industries could easily be termed ”sunset industries”. Textiles, shoes, leather and wood and bamboo industries accounted for about half of Taiwan's foreign exchange earnings for the year.
On the other hand, the electrical and electronics industry with its burgeoning production value had foreign exchange earnings almost as high as the shoe industry, which is currently walking its way out of Taiwan. If we take ”productivity” and ”degree of labor intensity” into account we discover that under international division of labor rules, the nature of the electrical and electronics industry's assembly work is overshadowed by its brilliant production value.
As far as the Science and Technology Museum's collection is concerned, the above considerations should be used not just to determine what scientific and technical items are indispensible to the museum's collection. Hopefully they will provide a new framework for thought which can be used in reflective discussions of Taiwan’s industrial development.
At the same time, when we view the interesting phenomena that are taking place in new historical contexts, we find that there are scientific and technological items worth collecting. More importantly, a new way of looking at scientific and technological matters often gives them a completely new significance and is still the best thing that comes from investigating science and technology from a historical perspective.