Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-tsvsl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T21:51:44.170Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Taiwan: Rural Society Stuart

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Stuart E. Thompson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Owen Rutter's somewhat idyllized picture of an essentially agricultural Taiwan could have portrayed the 1950s, or, equally, Taiwan at any time in the more than 300 years of Chinese settlement there. Most of the Chinese who crossed the Taiwan Straits to settle in Taiwan were peasant farmers, and, as they had done on continental China, they made their living by agriculture. In 1945, when the island reverted to China after 50 years as a Japanese colony, agriculture was still very much the predominant sector, and the majority of the population continued to rely on farming. But, from the late 1950s onwards, in the space of less than three decades, the pattern of more than three centuries has been radically altered. Industry has burgeoned to replace agriculture as the key sector, and, concomitantly, Taiwan's population is no longer characteristically rural. A massive outflow of rural people into the cities has left only one person in four living in the countryside

Type
Taiwan Briefing
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 99 , September 1984 , pp. 553 - 568
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Crissman, Lawrence, “The structure of local and regional systems,” in Ahern, E. M. and Gates, H. (eds.), The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society (Stanford: Stanford University, 1981), p. 117Google Scholar;

2. One estimate is that about 77% of the population were living in cities in 1980. See Pannell, Clifton W. and Ma, Lawrence J. C., China. The Geography of Development and Modernization (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), p. 293Google Scholar;

3. See Knapp, Ronald G. (ed.), China's Island Frontier. Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1980)Google Scholar;

4. I-shou, Wang, “Cultural contact and the migration of Taiwan's aborigines: a historical perspective,” in Knapp, (ed.), China's Island Frontier, p. 43Google Scholar;

5. Lamley, Harry J., “Subethnic rivalry in the Ch'ing period,” in Ahern, . and Gates, (eds.), The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society, p. 291Google Scholar;

6. Harry J. Lamley, ibid. p. 288.

7. Hill Gates has provided a cogent analysis of the changing nature of the link between ethnic identity and social class relations in post-1949 Taiwan. See Gates, Hill, “Ethnicity and social class,” in Ahern, and Gates, (eds.), The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society, pp. 241–81Google Scholar;

8. Panned, and Ma, , China, p. 278Google Scholar;

9. Hayami, Yujiro and Ruttan, Vernon W., “Agricultural growth in four countries,” in Hayami, Y., Ruttan, V. W. and Southworth, H. M. (eds.), Agricultural Growth in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979), p. 11Google Scholar;

10. Taiwan Statistical Data Yearbook, 1983.

11. Ibid..

12. Myers, Ramon H., “The contest between two Chinese states,” Asian Survey, 04 1983, p. 538Google Scholar;

13. Cheng, Chen, Land Reform in Taiwan (China Publishing Company, 1961)Google Scholar; is an account of the land reform programme by the man who, as governor of Taiwan Province, was responsible for its enactment. Bernard Gallin has given an ethnographic account of the impact and sociological implications of land reform at village level. See his Hsin Hsing, Taiwan: A Chinese Village in Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966)Google Scholar; also, his article “Land reform in Taiwan: its effect on rural social organization and leadership,” Human Organization, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1963), pp. 109–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

14. Clough, Ralph, Island China (Cambridge: bHarvard University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; has written i (p. 73) that “(m)ore than any other single measure (land reform) encouraged agricultural productivity, as the new owner-operators had strong incentives to increase their incomes by working longer hours, increasing multiple cropping, and adopting technological innovations.” Lee Teng-hui and Chen Yueh-eh seem to hold a similar belief. See their paper “Agricultural growth in Taiwan, 1911–72,” in Hayami, , Ruttan, and Southworth, (eds.), Agricultural Growth, pp. 59–89Google Scholar;

15. For example, Thorbecke, Erik, “Agricultural development,” in Galenson, Walter (ed.), Economic Growth and Structural Change in Taiwan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 132–99Google Scholar; and Ho, Samuel P. S., Economic Development in Taiwan, 1860–1970 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; who states that “(historically, Taiwan's agricultural growth does not seem to be closely related to the presence or absence of cropsharing” (p. 165).

16. Stavis, Benedict, Rural Local Governance and Agricultural Development in Taiwan (Rural Development Committee, Cornell University, 1974), p. 35Google Scholar;

17. Bernard Gallin (”Land reform in Taiwan,” and Hsin Hsing, Taiwan) documents how land reform undercut the economic and political power base of the traditional rural leaders, the landlords, thereby creating a leadership vacuum in Hsin Hsing village.

18. Taiwan Statistical Data Yearbook, 1983.

19. The term is Huang Shu-min's. See his book Agricultural Degradation. Changing Community Systems in Rural Taiwan (Washington: University Press of America, 1981)Google Scholar;

20. Taiwan Statistical Data Yearbook, 1983.

21. The traditional agricultural mainstays (rice, sugar cane and sweet potatoes) are the least profitable, and overall production of these crops has been in decline. On the other hand, fruit and vegetable cultivation, together with livestock and aquacultural production, have been growth areas. Certain crops geared for export – notably bananas, straw mushrooms, pineapples and asparagus n have been successfully introduced.

22. Stevan Harrell has noted the unprofitability of agriculture for northern Taiwan, “ … agriculture of any sort no longer provides a decent living or opportunities for expansion in northern Taiwan. Anyone who wants to keep up with the urban, or at least the core, rise in living standards, must engage in industry.” Ploughshare Village: Culture and Context in Taiwan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), p. 48Google Scholar;

23. Preliminary Report on Agricultural Development Planning in the Taiwan Area (Council for Agricultural Planning and Development (CAPD), Executive Yuan, 1980), p. 5Google Scholar;

24. Tai-li, Hu, “My mother-in-law's village: rural industrialization and change in Taiwan,” Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, 1983, p. 233Google Scholar.

25. Ch'ing Han village lies near the coast of Yun Lin county in central, western Taiwan. My fieldwork was from March 1981 to August 1982. By farming very minimally, I mean the H farming less than 0·2 hectares.

26. Gallin, Bernard and Gallin, Rita, “Socioeconomic life in rural Taiwan: twenty years of development and change,” Modern China, Vol. 8, No. 2 (04 1982), pp. 205–246CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

27. Stavis, Benedict, Rural Local Governance, p. 21Google Scholar;

28. Factory workers in Taiwan are disproportionately young people, most of whom leave factory work after only a few years, a phenomenon that has prompted Hill Gates to refer to them as Taiwan's “part-time proletariat.” See Gates, Hill, “Dependency and the part-time proletariat in Taiwan,” Modem China, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1979), pp. 381–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

29. See Bernard and Rita Gallin, “Socioeconomic life in rural Taiwan”; and Hu Tai-li, “My mother-in-law's village.”

30. Ho, Samuel P. S., “Decentralized industrialization and rural development: evidence from Taiwan,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, No. 27 (1979), p. 83Google Scholar; For an understanding of modern rural Taiwan this is a key article.

31. Ibid.. n. 93.

32. Tai-li, Hu, “My mother-in-law's village,” p. 78Google Scholar;

33. Jacobs, Bruce J., Local Politics in a Rural Chinese Cultural Setting: A Field-study of Mazu Township, Taiwan (Contemporary China Centre, Australian National University, 1980), p. 13Google Scholar; This account by Bruce Jacobs, together with Benedict Stavis, Rural Local Governance, are the most comprehensive analyses of local rural government and politics available.

34. See Sung-hsing, Wang and Apthorpe, Raymond, Rice Farming in Taiwan: Three Village Studies (Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei, 1974), pp. 11–14Google Scholar;

35. See Bernard Gallin, “Land reform in Taiwan,” and Hsin Hsing, Taiwan.

36. See Pasternak, Burton, Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 114–16Google Scholar;

37. Jacobs, Bruce J., Local Politics, p. 39Google Scholar;

38. Ibid. p. 13.

39. The average size of landholdings for farming-families is only 109 hectare. Taiwan Statistical Data Yearbook, 1983.

40. See Steven Harrell, Ploughshare Village, Ch. 3.

41. See Burton Pasternak, Kinship and Community, for a trenchant discussion of the effect of frontier conditions on lineage formation.

42. Bernard, and Gallin, Rita, “Socioeconomic life in rural Taiwan,” p. 231Google Scholar;

43. See Wolf, Arthur P., “Gods, ghosts, and ancestors,” in Wolf, Arthur P. (ed.), Religion, and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 131–82Google Scholar

44. Watson, James L., “Rural society: Hong Kong's New Territories,” The China Quarterly, No. 95 (09 1983), p. 487CrossRefGoogle Scholar;