When Taiwan was restored to China in 1945, there were two cotton mills, two jute mills, and one woolen mill. The last was weaving fabric for Japanese navy uniforms.
Today the island has 80 cotton mills with 469,224 spindles and eight major woolen mills with 34,092 spindles. In addition, it has a staple fiber industry of 71,116 spindles. Textile mills employ 100,000 workers as compared with 10,000 in 1949.
The boom began when capital and equipment were moved to Taiwan just before the mainland was occupied by the Communists.
In only five years, the island was clothing its own people and producing a surplus for export. Soon it was the fifth largest supplier of cotton textiles to the United States, trailing Japan, Hongkong, India, and Portugal. That success story boomeranged. Alarmed U.S. producers protested against the low-cost competition. In October, 1962, the United States imposed an annual import quota of 44 million yards on Taiwan cotton textiles. The United Kingdom, Canada, and West Germany also established quotas.
In October, 1963, the United States and the Republic of China signed a four-year cotton textile agreement providing for U.S. import of 53 million square yards of 33 textiles in the first year. The quantity increases by five per cent annually in the second, third, and fourth years.
The agreement stabilized the industry. Manufacturers began to improve quality in an effort to earn more than the quota, to enlarge other markets, and to seek new ones.
As a result, the textile boom never faltered. Despite U.S. restrictions, exports for 1963 reached US$44,409,000 as compared with US$38,007,000 in 1962, and US$40 million was earned by cotton textiles. Markets were found in Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Cotton print yardage was the top seller, followed by ginghams, twill and sateens, gray sheetings, children's dresses, and T-shirts.
Taiwan produces only 10,000 bales of cotton annually, and efforts to expand the crop have met with little success. To provide the 240,000 bales required, a sizable amount (US$8 million in 1964) is purchased from the United States under Public Law 480. The rest comes from South America, Pakistan, and India.
Wool Imports
Woolen suitings are exported to Southeast Asia, the United States, and other areas (File photo)
Although subtropical, Taiwan has a brisk winter with temperatures in the 40s and 50s, and domestic demand for woolens is strong. A total of 1,060,000 yards was sold locally in 1961. The figure was 1,047,000 yards in 1962, then soared to 1,870,000 yards in 1963.
Woolens also are exported: US$760,000 worth in 1961, $2,105,000 in 1962, and $4,021,000 in 1963. Eighty-nine per cent was woolen yarn for the Middle East and 10 per cent suitings for the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and Hongkong. Gloves made up the remaining one per cent.
Taiwan produces no wool, which in the past has come from Australia. Now the government is placing orders for a million pounds, about one-fifth of the annual requirement, in Uruguay and Argentina. Efforts to cross native goats with the Angora imports are not encouraging.
Silk, though traditionally associated with China, has been relatively slighted in Taiwan's textile development. This is partly the result of natural obstacles—there were only a few mulberry trees growing wild in mountain areas and the island's heat was thought not to agree with the temperate silkworm—and partly because a thriving silk industry on the mainland made development elsewhere unnecessary.
During the Japanese occupation of 1895-1945, silk farming was encouraged only among the aborigines as a way of keeping busy the very young, who foraged for wild mulberry leaves, and the very old, who looked after the silkworms. Since the island was retroceded to China, sericulture has been largely a home industry and sideline for rural families.
Ready Market
Production from this hit-or-miss type of sericulture is understandably low. Taiwan has been producing only 300 bales (132 pounds to the bale) of raw silk a year. Most of this is processed by the Taiwan Silk Corporation for local consumption.
This year, however, the government is promoting a drive to boost silk production to 6,000 bales a year.
The Sericulture Promotion Section of the Provincial Agricultural Experimental Station is systematically planting mulberry trees and cross-breeding the local silkworm with the hardy Thai variety. An experimental farm of seven hectares is expected to encourage the planting of mulberry orchards on some 3,000 hectares of marginal mountain slopes and abandoned tea plantations.
Efforts to transform sericulture from a sideline to a major industry have been given added impetus by the prospect of ready buyers. Purchasers in the United States are prepared to buy all of a production of 6,000 bales and pay US$4 million. America presently imports some US$27 million worth of raw silk annually, principally from Japan.
If Taiwan succeeds with its eight-year development plan, silk should become an important foreign exchange earner for the Republic of China.
Taiwan's man-made fiber industry began seven years ago with the birth of the China Man-made Fiber Corporation at Toufen, Miaoli. It has 24 rayon spinning machines producing 4.5 tons of rayon filament and 9.5 tons of rayon staple fiber daily.
Taiwan exported 370,620 kilograms of rayon and a large quantity of rayon underwear to Hongkong, Thailand, Australia, Vietnam, and Singapore last year.
The corporation produces two other items of export significance. One is cellophane, which is competing with Japanese manufacturers in Southeast Asia. Japanese have cut prices by 20 to 30 per cent in this market.
The other is woven reproductions of Chinese paintings, using man-made fiber. Large orders are being placed, and 2,000 of these art items are on display at the New York World's Fair.
Demand for man-made fiber is increasing in both domestic and foreign markets. The corporation is building a plant to produce polynosic in cooperation with the Vonkorn Universal Corporation of Stanton, Calif. When completed next May, the plant will produce 10 tons daily. Polynosic is a new rayon staple fiber that washes well and has every advantage of natural fiber.
Orlon Plant
Three other new synthetic factories will be completed by the end of this year, one for nylon and two for polyester. The nylon plant, also at Toufen, is a joint enterprise of the Taiwan Man-made Fiber Corporation, the China Development Corporation, and the United Nylon Corporation.
The polyester plants are being built by the China Man-made Fiber Corporation and the Liang Yu Industrial Factory Corporation. The CMPC plant will make 2.5 metric tons of polyester staple daily from imported polymer. The Liang Yu plant will produce the same amount of nylon, polyester and polypropylene filament and fiber.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs in June approved the building of a polyacrylic (orlon) plant. It will have initial capacity of three metric tons daily.
Development of synthetic fiber depends on the existence of a petro-chemical industry. All petro-chemicals used for making synthetics, including caprolactam, polymer, and acrylonitril, can be produced from natural gas, which is abundant in the Miaoli area.
The government may establish a man-made fiber industrial zone at Miaoli. New plants will be built to supply raw materials.
Range of artificial fibers is large and growing (File photo)
Taiwan also has a ramie and jute industry, although it has a number of problems.
A plant of the nettle family, ramie is grown in the mountains. Before the advent of artificial fibers, ramie fabric was a preferred shirt material for summer. Today less ramie is being used in making fabrics but more is being used in the handicraft and rug industries.
Taiwan is the world's third largest jute producer, behind India and Pakistan. Principal use has been for sugar and rice sacks. Annual requirement is 16,000 metric tons of finished jute fiber and eight million bags. During part of the Japanese period, Taiwan had to import US$3 million to US$4 million worth of jute fiber and sacks annually. Later the Japanese encouraged the jute industry, and by 1945 the island was self-sufficient. The Chinese government continued to stress jute production and output reached 21,000 metric tons in 1952. Imports were banned. Acreage now is planned on a basis of need.
Jute's problems are reduced sugar production (until last year's high prices encouraged a reversal of the trend) and the decline of rice exports necessitated by the population explosion. Even more serious may be plans of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation to use plastic bags.
Taiwan has two large jute textile mills. They have 5,700 spindles and 210 looms with annual capacity of 10,000,000 bags.