Textile Industry in Taiwan

Turning fiber into yarn, cloth, and finished garments, the textile industry was the first great engine of Taiwan’s post-war export-led industrialization. It took shape in the 1950s on a foundation of USAID cotton and a state buying policy that supplied the mills with raw material and guaranteed their output. Currency reform tilted incentives toward exporting by the end of the decade and the labour-intensive and largely female workforce made textiles one of the Taiwan’s leading earner of foreign exchange, accounting for over 30% of all exports at its peak in the early 1970s. Production clustered in factory towns consisting of sprawling textile complexes and worker dormitories, particularly in Tainan and Yilan.

From the mid-1980s a rising currency, climbing wages, labor shortages, and export quotas eroded that advantage, and once overseas investment was permitted in 1987 the commodity end of the trade moved offshore, first to Southeast Asia and then to China. What stayed behind moved upmarket into high-value synthetic and functional textiles: the technical performance fabrics featured in a significant fraction of the world’s premium sportswear.