Taiwan After Globalization: Twilight of the Developmental State?

In the last 70 years, the small island of Taiwan has achieved what many believe to be a “miracle”: its economy has grown at a record-setting pace, driven and guided by one of the world's most successful set of industrial policies, and it has become one of the richest and most open nations in the global trading system, with particular sway in the vital semiconductor sector. In more recent decades, however, the authoritarian government that originally led Taiwan’s miracle has given way to a more open and pluralistic democracy and the growth of the island’s semiconductor industry has slowed. Meanwhile, Taiwan finds itself in 2023 caught in the middle of a trade war between the United States and China, heightened by the threat of invasion from the PRC. Can Taiwan’s newly pluralistic political system and plateauing technology sector maintain its miracle in such a vastly different environment?