This uneven distribution reflects the emergence of the Southern region as an industrial area. The major goal was to stimulate industrial development in rural areas so as to retard out-migration to cities. Export-processing zones in parentheses. In order to promote balanced regional growth, industrial estates were located with a view to influencing the distribution of population and economic activities in the 1980s and thereafter. Table 6.13 also shows that more industrial estates were established in the Northern and Central regions in the 1980s than in the 1970s.
Urban areas are the product of industrial development.
With the dispersion of industrial estates, cities spread all over the island. Economic structural change From 1949, the government encouraged agricultural production to meet the need for food, and agriculture dominated the economy until 1960. In other words, industrial production was only about 60 per cent of agricultural production. Taking advantage of Taiwan's abundant labour force, the government employed a strategy of promoting exports to maintain economic growth and developed industrial estates in rural areas. As a result, the value of industrial output surpassed that of agriculture for the first time in 1962, with the former accounting for 28.2 per cent of GDP and the latter for 25 per cent.