Abstract

"State Forestry Research and the Birth of Taiwan's Plastic Industry"

Ying Jia Tan, Wesleyan University (ytan@wesleyan.edu)

Taiwan’s plastic industry can trace its origins to its forests. In 1949, the co-founders of Chang Chun Synthetic Resin Factory established Taiwan’s first plastic resin manufacturing facility by drawing on the research on wood processing at the Taiwan Forestry Institute. The research facility that the Nationalist government inherited from the Japanese was studying ways to strengthen the durability of low-quality wood harvested from Taiwan’s forests. Three graduates of the Taipei Technical College, who assisted the researchers in installing experimental equipment, tapped into Japanese research that studied the effects of impregnating wood with phenolic and urea resin. Drawing on the expertise accumulated by the Forestry Institute, the three men founded Chang Chun Synthetic Resin Factory, which started out by making Bakelite molding powder with improvised furnaces and reactors, then later went into urea formaldehyde glue that was vital to the rise of Taiwan’s plywood industry, one of Taiwan’s first successful exports during its transition from import substitution to an export-oriented economy. Chang Chun’s connections with forestry research is an example of co-creation by state actors and private enterprise. While private enterprise relied on the state to tap into the latest developments in material sciences in the early stages, it became increasingly independent of the state's research agenda as the company expanded beyond the production of thermosetting adhesives for plywood. The case study offers key insights into the interdependence between state-funded research and corporate R&D and examines how Taiwan became a hub of industrial innovation.