ABSTRACT
The ultimate purpose of an examination of the Republic of China's development experience should be more than simply an attempt to understand what happened during a specified period. It should be to distill conclusions that may be relevant to other developing societies and to determine special features that are likely to be irrelevant elsewhere. Taiwan's experience demonstrates that if assets are not distributed too unequally, this result can be achieved by following a growth path that consists initially of a flexible version of primary import substitution and later allows relative factor and commodity prices to better reflect changes over time in the availability of resources and production factors. Economic development in Taiwan has been characterized by industrialization and labor intensiveness. That is, successful labor absorption and growth have been possible, first, because of rapid industrialization and, second, because of Taiwan's relatively labor-intensive strategy.
