" Party-State System and the ‘Private Business’ Owned by Chinese Nationalist Party Regime since 1949"

Taiwan island’s history is characterized by its frequent change of the rulers. After experiencing the 50-year colonial rule by Japan, Taiwan became one of the provinces of Republic of China in 1945. As a result of the Civil War, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime retreated to Taiwan in 1949, and continued controlling Taiwan for the following 40 years, under its one-party dictatorship, or ‘party-state system.’ In the same period, Taiwan also successfully developed to become one of the most industrialized economies in East Asia, and the main contributor to this ‘economic miracle’ has been thought to be the small-and-medium-sized private enterprises in Taiwan. Contrary to that, the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the economic role played by KMT government have been neglected or underestimated in the literatures, but recent studies show that KMT regime set up a large number of ‘private’ enterprises and institutions in order to seek their own profits. This research examines how KMT regime set up and organized those ‘private’ enterprises and institutions in the post-1949 Taiwanese economy, from the perspectives of both economic and business history. Secondly, the research analyses the political and social backgrounds that drove KMT regime to expand their business territory, beyond the existing SOEs-dominant economic system. This research will be conducted based on the secondary literatures published in Japanese, Chinese, and English. Plus, the Chinese primary literatures (e.g., government documents, internal documents of KMT) collected during the field research in Taiwan will also be used for the research. The findings of the research are expected to help us to look into the business-government relations in the party-state system, contributing to the recent discussions on SOEs in the emerging economies (e.g., Aldo Musacchio, Sergio G. Lazzarini [2014], Andrea Colli, Pasi Nevalainen [2019]). In addition, the outcome of the research also implies that, the observed behavior of KMT party members and government bureaucrats is quite similar to that of ‘private entrepreneurs’, not to be understood within the traditional 'rent-seeking' framework.