Asian Historical Statistics: Taiwan(Abstracts)

This volume presents a compilation of long-term economic time- series data for Taiwan forthe period 1890-2000 in accordance with the rules and definitions of the System of National
Accounts (SNA) 1.

[Introduction and Chapter 1]
Following the general introduction, Chapter 1 by Masahiro Sato and Hiroshi Ikegami
provides an overview of the development of the statistical survey system during Japanese occupation(1895-1945) and under the Government of Taiwan (1945-2000).

[Chapter 2]
Chapter 2 by Osamu Saito and Tadayoshi Taniguchi deals with population and vitalstatistics. Not much effort has been made to compile a set of new time series of population and vitalstatistics, since the reliability of government statistics in both prewar and postwar times has long
been considered generally high.
However, there are four areas where correction is necessary. First, the aboriginal
population living in “aboriginal” districts was not covered by censuses before 1930; second, military
personnel were not included in the 1956 census; third, the prewar census reports tabulated age
groups by the traditional method of counting age; and fourth, published infant mortality rates before
1916 were apparently understated.
Having carefully examined contemporary materials in relation to the first three points, weset out an annual series of population totals with census years used as benchmarks and revised
age-specific population tables in census years. As for the infant mortality rate, a new series isestimated for 1906-1916 based on statistics of cause-specific deaths broken down by type of medical
doctor who issued the death certificates. This enables us to set out revised series of crude birth anddeath rates for the same 1906-1916 period.
Major tables in Chapter 2 include the following:(1) Male and female population totals,(2) Age-specific and sex-specific population totals in census years,(3) Crude birth and death rates, and(4) Infant mortality rate.

“Taiwan” in the present volume refers to the “Taiwan area,” as defined in the postwar
Taiwan official statistical volumes, ” and includes Penghu.
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[Chapter 3]
Authored by Tadayoshi Taniguchi, Tangjun Yuan, and Konosuke Odaka, this chapter presentsa systematic attempt at constructing annual time-series data on working population, employment,and wages by major (two-digit) industrial categories. Briefly presented are also descriptions of theirestimating procedures as well as the nature of the data sources used. These data suggest that (a) thelabor force participation rate of men declined markedly in the 1960s and the 1970s, while that ofwomen showed an upward trend during the same period, and (b) rapid economic development hasgone hand-in-hand with a decreasing trend in earning inequality, which, however, was accompaniedby short-term, counter-cyclical fluctuations. Due attention was paid to the wide practice of having
secondary occupations (fukugyō) in the pre-WWII decades. Attempts have been also made toinclude working hour statistics after WWII.
Major tables in Chapter 3 include the following:(1) Employment by industry,(2) Labor force and unemployment, and(3) Work remuneration.

[Chapter 4]
It should be noted that the following explanatory notes on Chapter 4 concern
mainly the estimate of pre-1960 series, as SNA production accounts for the period
1961-2000 have been published by the Taiwan Statistical Office (Directorate-General ofBudget, Accounting and Statistics, hereinafter abbreviated as DGBAS).
Chapter 4 by Toshiyuki Mizoguchi deals with the production statistics for the primaryindustry (agriculture, forestry, fishing, and animal husbandry). Reliable agricultural production
statistics by commodity are available for the period 1905-2000 from the Yearbook of Agriculture,
which were used in earlier systematic studies on agricultural total production. Among others,
Shigeru Ishikawa estimated time-series data of nominal and real values of agricultural production
while the Joint Committee on Rural Research (JCRR) calculated value-added data, both of whichhave subsequently been revised, on the basis of detailed reexamination of historical data, by a groupof economists at the National Taiwan University led by Tsong-ming Wu. In the present volume,these series are linked to agricultural accounts of SNA accounts for the period 1961-2000.
The production data on forestry and fishing are estimated using fragmentary information.
Major topics covered in the tables in this chapter include the following:(1) Nominal production and value added in the primary industry,(2) The composition of agricultural products,(3) Long-term production indexes for the primary industry,(4) Production and real value added in the primary industry in constant prices,2

(5) Production and value added in the primary industry in constant prices, estimated by theFisher chain-index method,(6) Basic statistics on the primary industry.

[Chapter 5]
It should be noted that the following explanatory notes on Chapter 5 concern mainly theestimate of pre-1960 series, as SNA production accounts for the period 1961-2000 have been
published by the Taiwan Statistical Office.
Chapter 5 by Yasuhiro Hara and Toshiyuki Mizoguchi presents long-term series on thevalues of production and value-added in the secondary industry in nominal and real terms, using
production series estimated by Miyohei Shinohara. The value added in manufacturing has been
estimated for the period 1912-1940 according to the International Standard Industrial Classification(ISIC), by using the worksheets on manufacturing production by Miyohei Shinohara. The series
have then been linked to the official data for post-1961, making use of semi-official data compiledby DGBAS for 1940-51 and the authors’ estimates for 1951-61.
Data on value added in mining are based on statistics collected from reports to the Bureauof Mining, Office of the Governor General of Taiwan (until 1945), and the Government of Taiwan(after 1945).
To estimate value added on electricity, gas, and water supply before WWII, the authors
have used data on electricity generation by the Taiwan Electric Company.
Data for the construction industry are scarce, and its value added has been estimated byrelying on our own estimates of construction investment (reported in Chapter 8), which are derived
by the commodity-flow method.
Major tables in Chapter 5 include the following:(1) Nominal production and value added in the secondary industry(2) The composition of manufacturing production(3) Production indexes for the secondary industry(4) Production and real value added in the secondary industry in constant prices, estimated byconstant price evaluation(5) Production and real value added in the secondary industry in constant prices, estimated by
the Fisher chain-index method(6) Basic statistics on the secondary industry.

[Chapter 6]
It should be noted that the following explanatory notes on Chapter 6 concern mainly theestimate of pre-1960 series, as SNA production accounts for the period 1961-2000 have been

3published by the Taiwan Statistical Office (DGBAS).
Chapter 6, by Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, examines statistics on activities in the tertiary industry(wholesale and retail trades, transport and communication, finance and real estate, and services).
Generally speaking, statistics on these industries are scarce, and fragmentary data have been utilized
to supplement whatever information available.
Relatively abundant are data on the transport and the communication industries, which arecomposed of “modern” and “traditional” sectors. The data on the modern sector (i.e., the sector withmodern, imported technology) are easily available from administrative reports of the public transportand communication agencies for the entire period. In contrast, systematic surveys on the traditional,
or indigenous, sector before WWII are scarce, so that administrative reports by police agencies havebeen used wherever possible to fill the lack of information.
Statistics on wholesale and retail trades are just as scarce. Fortunately, however, censuses onthese industries are available for some years (1944 and then every five years after 1961), so that thetime-series data have been estimated by extrapolation.
Value added in the private financial sector has been adopted from Chapter 7.
Value-added statistics of real estate and service industries have been estimated utilizing
relevant information from the expenditure accounts.
Major tables in Chapter 6 include the following:(1) Nominal production and value added in the tertiary industry,(2) The composition of production by type of commercial activity,(3) The composition of production by type of transport and communication activities,(4) Production and value added on the tertiary industry in constant prices, and(5) Production and value added in the tertiary industry in constant prices, estimated byFisher chain-index method.

[Chapter 7]
Chapter 7 by Toshiyuki Mizoguchi focuses on the statistics on public financing. While anabundance of data on public finances is available in administrative reports, painstaking work has
been required to compile public accounts data on an SNA basis. Fortunately, reliable SNA-based
data are available for the post-WWII period in the Official Report of SNA compiled by DBGAS sothat it has been necessary only to estimate the corresponding data for the pre-WWII period using thebudgetary reports by the Office of the Governor General of Taiwan. The data include government
consumption in the expenditure accounts and government service production in the production
accounts.
The original plan to include in this chapter a set of statistics on private financial
institutions has been abandoned, since a separate set of volumes on financial statistics in Asian4

countries have been published from the same publisher. 2 The present chapter restricts itself toreporting some major statistics of private financial institutions including that of currency incirculation.
Major tables for the government activities and the financial institutions are as follows.
(1) Government consumption and the provision of government services in nominal andreal terms,(2) The composition of government expenditures by purpose,(3) The number of private financial institutions, and(4) Nominal and real value added of private financial institutions.

[Chapter 8]
It should be noted that the following explanatory notes on Chapter 8 concern mainly theestimate of pre-1940 series, as the Taiwan Statistical Office (DBGAS) publishes the SNA nominal
and real expenditure accounts for the period 1951-2000.
Chapter 8, by Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, provides estimates of the expenditure accounts on anSNA basis. As government consumption and foreign trade are examined in Chapter 7 and Chapter 9
respectively, this chapter covers private consumption and gross capital formation.
Nominal private consumption in the pre-1940 period is estimated relying on Yasuhiro
Terasaki’s estimates, which have used the commodity-flow method. However, the following items
have been replaced by new estimates by the present author:(a) Tobacco consumption expenditure,(b) Housing rent, and(c) Transport and communication expenditures.
Whereas Yasuhiro Terasaki estimated real values (in constant terms) only for aggregate
consumption expenditure, its breakdowns by separate expenditure categories have been attempted byestimating respective consumption deflators, and linked to the post-1951 data available from theSNA Report by DGBAS.
Data on gross capital formation in the pre-1940 period have been adopted from previous
work by the Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, which made use of the commodity flow method. They are also
linked to the post-1951 data by DGBAS.
Major tables compiled in Chapter 8 include the following:(1) Nominal and real expenditure accounts,
Jūro Teranishi, Shin’ichi Fukuda, Hidenobu Okuda, and Fumiharu Mieno, Asia nokeizai hatten to kin’yū shisutemu [The economic development and financial system in2Asia], 2 volumes (vol. 1 on Northeast Asia and vol. 2 on Southeast Asia), Tokyo: ToyoKeizai Inc., 2007; chapter 2 and 5 and statistical appendix tables 2-1 through 2-11,
authored by Shin’ichi Fukda, deal with post-W.W.II Taiwan5

(2) Nominal and real private consumption by expenditure category, and(3) Nominal and real gross capital formation.

[Chapter 9]
Taiwanese foreign trade data are collected and tabulated as long-term series from 1900 to2000 in Chapter 9, authored by Noriyuki Nojima. Considering the sizable quantity of foreign trade
statistics, the period has been divided into four periods, i.e., 1900-1943, 1944-1948, 1949-1962, and1963-2000.
Taiwanese official foreign trade statistics for the post-1963 period are available onmagnetic tapes held by the Institute of Developing Economies. Kozo Kiyota and Kyoji Fukao
reclassified these IDE data on the basis of the 1960 Standard International Trade Classification(SITC). Official foreign trade statistics were published in the period 1949-1962 (The Trade of China(Taiwan), 1950-61), but some additional work has been required to make them comparable to thedata for the post-1963 period, based on SITC.
Statistics during the period 1944-1948 are incomplete, and available data are of limited
reliability because of the upheaval caused by WWII and the civil war in China.
Data for the pre-1943 period are available from the reports of the Office of the Governor
General of Taiwan (i.e., Annual Return of the Foreign Trade of Taiwan 3). The data have been
re-tabulated in accordance to the SITC standard.
The reader should note that the foreign trade statistics of Taiwan for the pre-1945 period
are defined as trade with the rest of the world, including Japan and its colonies. More specifically,exports and imports in the pre-1945 decades are defined as follows:

Total exports = Exports to foreign countries + Exports to the Imperial Japan= Exports to foreign countries including Kwantong Province, Manchuria, and thearea under the control of the South Manchuria Railway + Exports to theImperial Japan including Japan proper, Korea (1913 and after), the Southern
Karafuto and the South Sea Islands,
Total imports = Imports from foreign countries + Imports from the Imperial Japan= Imports from foreign countries including Kwantong Province, Manchuria, andthe area under the control of the South Manchuria Railway + Imports from theImperial Japan including Japan proper, Korea (1913 and after), the Southern
Karafuto and the South Sea Islands,
Value and quantity series for imports and exports are available by commodity. Nominal
3

The present work depends mainly on the 1917 and newer editions of the report, although earlier
editions have been used to fill data deficiency.

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and real series are shown in accordance with the SITC, being classified by principal countries. For
the pre-WWII period figures are shown only for the years 1903, 1908, 1913, 1918, 1923, 1928, 1933,
and 1938, while annual data are tabulated for the post-1950 period.
Major tables compiled in Chapter 9 include the following:(1) Total export and total import,(2) Exports and imports of SITC 10 commodities(3) Exports and imports of SITC 57 commodities,(4) Exports and imports by country,(5) Exports and imports of SITC 10 commodities by country (before WWII), and(6) Export and import price indexes of SITC 10 commodities (before WWII)[Chapter 10]
In Chapter 10 Toshiyuki Mizoguchi has consolidated the SNA tables. For nominal
accounts, the estimates of production and expenditure in previous chapters are adjusted in such away that statistical discrepancies are nil. In order to obtain long-term real national accounts series, it
has been necessary to link time-series data, which are compiled on different base years.

Threealternative estimating methods have been used and tabulated separately, namely,(a) Constant price evaluation method, which keeps 1960 as the base year throughout ,(b) Semi-official SNA method, which changes base years in accordance to the GDBAS
rules (every 5 years, in principle), and(c) Fisher chain-index method, which changes base year annually.

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