earticle

영어

There have been two different theories as for understanding Taiwan's economic transition since the opening of treaty ports(1860). The one is so called Theory of Chinese Merchant's Decline, which insists that the main cause of Taiwan Economies Decline was due to economic domination by foreign merchants(洋商). The other is doble dendency theory, which regards that under the double economic pressure by foreign merchants and mainland merchants(華商), Taiwan's indigenous economy grew considerably to the contrary of everybody's anticipation. I prerfer the latter theory to the former, but there also is some room for consideration in doble dendency theory, because the theory gives us an impression that Taiwan's economy was equally influenced by foreign merchants and mainland merchants, which is not true entirely. Through my own elementary research, I came to conclude that although Taiwan's indigenous economy was influenced by foreign merchants and mainland merchants alike, there are some evidence that foreign merchants enjoyed lion's share and mainland merchants' staus was not the same as foreign merchants at all. Therefore We can revise and enhance the doble dendency theory by proposing the concept of Differential Double Dependency, which means that foreign merchants secured the command of Taiwan's economy subatantially, and mainland merchants's role was secondary. In conclusion, basically I agree with doble dendency theory, but I also think that Taiwan Economy during the treaty port period can be more accurately described by Differential Double Dependency, which empahsize the coexistence of 'development' and 'dendency'.