Taiwan’s Intra-Asian Trade and Migration in the 1930s

Abstract

Since the start of the 21st Century, trading relations among the East Asian countries have been and need to be strongly reinforced. By reviewing intra-Asian economic relations in the 1930s, we could see assets and load left by history to the present world. In the 1930s, Taiwan was ruled by Japan. By contrast with Hori Kazuo, a professor of Kyoto University to have touched upon the intra-Asian trade of this decade focusing upon Japan, this study depicts the intra-Asian trade and migration of this decade by focusing upon Taiwan. This paper obtains the following findings: 1. In the 1930s, Taiwan’s trade with the Northeast Asia had been vividly increased. The increase rate of trade between Taiwan and Manchukuo as well as Korea was greater than that between Taiwan and the Japan proper. Migration between Taiwan and all Asian areas in this period was in general increased, in which that to China increased most. All these increases had been made possible by the rise of Asia-Pacific navigation relative to the Asia-European navigation. 2. In this expansion of intra-Asian trade and migration, the national boundary with all these various areas for Taiwan was clearly observed rather than imagined. For example, following the treaty between Japan and Korea signed in 1910, the relation between Taiwan and Korea turned more and more from being international into being domestic. When Taiwanese products, deemed as Japanese products, were rejected in the Southeast Asia and welcome in Manchukuo and other newly Japanese conquered Chinese mainland, Taiwanese vested interest was more and more intertwined with the Japanese empire which climaxed its war victory in China by conquering Wuchang and Hankou in 1938. By contrast with the mostly labor population among immigrants from other Asian areas to Taiwan, many of the emigrants from Taiwan to these areas were rich merchants.