Transnational or Compatriotic Bourgeoisie?

Following the lifting of martial law and the opening of family and business travel from Taiwan to China in 1987, hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese investors, technicians, and managerial professionals have gone to China to set up manufacturing factories and to explore business opportunities. The first Taiwanese investors presented China as the factory of the world, where private enterprises could take advantage of its cheap and abundant labor to produce for a global market. Later, Taiwanese investors presented China as the world market, thus expanding their business operations and even transforming their firms from local Taiwan-based ones to free-market-driven transnational corporations. As a result, massive flows of people, capital, machinery, and industrial material, largely from Taiwan, have crossed the Taiwan Strait. According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, by the end of June 2011 the total number of accumulated Taiwanese projects approved by China was 84,444 with a total investment of Taiwanese capital of US$53.21 billion. The accumulated trade between Taiwan and China reached US$1051 billion, about US$792 billion exported from Taiwan to China and US$259 billion from China to Taiwan between 1988 and June 2011. ² Taiwanese businesses are major contributors to foreign direct investments in China and China is Taiwan’s largest trade partner. Taishang, Taiwanese business people, broadly referring to overseas Taiwanese investors, technicians, and managers has emerged as a common term in Taiwan and in the region. Some of them, including those capital holders and topranked managerial and technical professionals of the medium-to-large-sized corporations, have become a part of the transnational capitalist class across the Taiwan Strait and beyond. ³