ABSTRACT
The 1960s saw the synchronization of high export-led industrialization with the intensification of heavy industrial manufacturing – a dual process that continued until the early 1990s. In the late 1960s, labor-market disequilibria were eliminated as labor markets were cleared. A number of studies have sought to explain Taiwan's accelerated economic growth and associated structural changes after 1960 through recourse to neoclassical economic theory. The single most important event, according to this interpretation, was the shift, in 1958, from the Republic of China's (ROC)'s previous import-substitution policy to a new strategy of export-led industrialization. The economist Mo-Huan Hsing states that "it was manufacturing, rather than agricultural product processing that was primarily responsible for accelerating economic growth, particularly since the early 1960s, and that to a large extent the growth of manufacturing industry was due to the success of export".
