Chapter IV. Findings: Trade, Convergence, and Hollowing Out
IV.2. Manufacturing, trade, and industrial trends
Cross-Strait Trade and Industrial Trends
Cross-strait trade and industrial trends have seen a shift of manufacturing bases away from Taiwan and into China. Taiwan’s high value-added manufacturing sector is no longer seeing the same benefits it once had by producing in Taiwan and progressively greater amounts
131 Tsai, p. 70.
132 Wilson, p. 8.
133 Huang, 2010, p. 79.
134 Kailash Khandke, “The Economies of Asia Pacific,” 2007, p. 142.
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of high-sophistication manufacturing are moving to China. Typically, Fujian and Guangdong have received much more traffic from Taiwan than Taiwan has from them.
Figure 6. Top recipients of approved Taiwanese OFDI cases (January-April 2016)
Shanghai Jiangsu Guangdong Fujian Beijing
Cases 23 21 18 17 7
Value
(1,000 USD) 725,102 1,460,698 179,570 174,741 417,598
Source: Investment Commission, MOEA, ROC (Taiwan) "Taiwan FDI Statistics Summary Analysis (April 2016)"
Figure 6. highlights the orientation of Taiwanese investors in China at the beginning of the year 2016. Within the first four months approximately US$2.99 billion of approved direct OFDI was invested in the top five locations in China. With the exception of Beijing, these locations are all coastal and nearly make up a contiguous string of the Chinese southern and eastern coastal provinces. Shanghai, being an earlier experiment in pilot Free Trade Zones, as well as a financial hub, a global city, and the entryway to the Yangtze River, has taken the most of the investment cases. However, it has not attracted the lion’s share. Jiangsu, Guangdong and Fujian, have attracted a similar amount of cases, especially when compared to Beijing in fifth place with only 7 cases. In terms of the value of investments, out of the five locations Guangdong and Fujian have received the lowest amounts. This does not necessarily indicate the lack of preference for these locations, and real investment figures could in fact be betrayed by the preference for investments to go through Hong Kong and offshore havens due to the restrictions placed on investing in their higher-sophistication production and service sectors.
Cross-Strait Shipping Destinations and Values
Taiwanese annual investment in China increased from an average of US$1.71 billion from 1990-2000 to an average of US$7.31 billion between 2001-2008.135 Trade between Taiwan and China has continued to grow year on year. One recent report from the Swiss Consulate General in Guangzhou highlights the trend during the peak of China’s economic growth. Trade between China and Taiwan amounted to 4.4 per cent of China’s overall trade in imports and
135 Tsai, pp. 65-66.
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exports in 2012, at $168.96 billion. This figure is a 5.6 per cent increase from the previous year.
China exported $36.78 billion to Taiwan and imported $132.18 billion from Taiwan in 2012.
These are both increases from 2011. China approved 2,229 new Taiwanese FDI programs in 2012 valued at $2.85 billion used, falling 15.5 per cent from 2011. The Taiwanese invested in a total of 88,001 projects both old and new in China in 2012 amounting to $57.05 billion.136 2013 saw 84 per cent of Taiwan’s outbound FDI heading to China.137
Figure 7. Comparison of Approved Taiwanese OFDI for Guangdong and Fujian, January-April 2015
Source: Republic of China (Taiwan), Investment Commission, MOEA, "Taiwan FDI Statistics Summary Analysis (April 2016)"
Figure 7 compares approved Taiwanese OFDI in greater detail for Guangdong and Fujian provinces for the period of January-April 2016 with figures from the same time in 2015. What it finds is that officially, Taiwanese combined investments to these provinces only make up 11 per cent of early 2016 figures. While it is possible that these percentages will increase over the course of 2016, what is important to recognize is that the provinces that rank third and fourth for investments from Taiwan make up such a miniscule percentage. In addition, the table identifies that investment values have shrunk by more than US$600 billion for Guangdong compared to 2015, and have shrunk by more than US$77 billion for Fujian. Growth rates are significantly negative, particularly for Guangdong. What is possible? A few trends may be at play. First we can expect offshore re-routing of investments through Hong Kong and other havens to be a significant factor. Secondly, however, is that investments may be slowing down because Taiwan has found its nearest Chinese neighbors’ economies are converging with its own, driving down the amounts of investments available. As figures 3, 4, and 5 help to highlight, Taiwan’s traditional OFDI industries may not be finding themselves as successful in Guangdong and Fujian due to shrinking profit margins and greater rates of convergence.
136 Consulate General of Switzerland Guangzhou.
137 See European Institute for Asian Studies, “Taiwan’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) Into The European Union and its Member States,” October 2014.
Taiwan-Fujian Trade
One of the most recent full pictures we can find from cross-strait Trade with Fujian comes from 2012. At this time trade between the two economies had grown by 3 per cent compared to 2011. Cross-strait trade was valued to be worth US$11.96 billion. Fujian was reported to have a trade deficit of US$5.78 billion, and reported its imports from Taiwan had grown by 3.1 per cent to US$8.87 billion. Fujian’s exports to Taiwan had also grown, increasing 2.8 per cent to US$3.09 billion. It appears that “machinery, apparatus and electronics” were the most important trade sectors during 2012: Taiwanese exports to Fujian were worth $6.15 billion, 69.3 per cent of total trade for 2012. Taiwanese imports in these sectors from Fujian were valued at $1.31 billion, 42.4 per cent of Taiwan’s imports from Fujian. Imported “agricultural products”
were valued at $0.93 billion, up 32.4 per cent from 2011.138
We can draw a few conclusions from the 2012 figures. Primarily it appears that more trade was going to Fujian than from Taiwan. Secondly it appears that trade during this period has seen a growing trend. Total trade between the two economies dropped for 2014 and totaled
$76.41 billion. Investments and exports to Fujian dropped 11.5 per cent between 2013 and 2014 to $52.94 billion while Taiwanese imports from Fujian made up roughly one third the total trade in 2014.139 The PRC National Bureau of Statistics identifies that since 1995 Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan-funded enterprises in Fujian have shrunk in number but have consistently proven more productive and efficient. Hong Kong is a significant economy to include, as Taiwanese investors often choose the city as an intermediary. Kevin Zhang of the University of Chicago estimates that between 1979 and 2001 56 per cent of China’s total inbound FDI came from Hong Kong-Taiwan investment patterns.140
Figure 8 indicates that over the years the number of enterprises being funded by Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwanese FDI in Fujian have dropped while these same operations have seen greatly increased output. This indicates an efficiency of production in Fujian has increased and potentially reached higher levels of sophistication while investors have likely found new locations for investing in low-cost, high-profit margin operations.
138 Consulate General of Switzerland Guangzhou.
139 Ding.
140 Kevin Honglin Zhang, “Why does so much FDI from Hong Kong and Taiwan go to Mainland China?,” 2005, p. 294.
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Figure 8. Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Funded Enterprises in Fujian
Source: People’s Republic of China, National Bureau of Statistics
While total trade may have dropped by 2014 we cannot determine that Fujian was no longer an attractive destination. One may think that it is quite possible that entire Taiwanese production cycles had moved across the strait due to ECFA, as is the case during periods of economic hollowing out. The significant drop since 2010 suggests that investors from Taiwan as well as Hong Kong and Macau may have pulled out in favor of other cheaper manufacturing bases. Another potential source may be that Taiwanese firms are registering in offshore havens and that figures are reduced because many Taiwanese firms have dropped out of the tally. This could be in response to restrictions on specific trade that Taiwan has placed on their firms in light of ECFA.
Taiwan-Guangdong Trade
Guangdong is a well-established “major export-processing base” for foreign investors of which Hong Kong and Taiwan are among the major investors.141 Xu and Yeh find that initial Taiwanese investment in Guangdong in the 1980s was labor-intensive assembly manufacturing of textiles, footwear, and toys while the second wave of Taiwanese investment in the 1990s became more sophisticated, including peripherals for PC manufacturers.142 We can see that compared to Hong Kong, direct Taiwanese investment to Guangdong is a very small proportion of Guangdong’s total inward FDI. This does not indicate that Guangdong is not a popular investment location. As many scholars have pointed out, a good proportion of Taiwanese FDI enters through third parties including the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, and other investment havens. These locations will be discussed in more detail in the next sub-chapter.
What we can tell is that Guangdong is experiencing the same patterns as Fujian.
141 Billy Wong, “Guangdong: Market Profile,” 18 December 2015.
142 Xu and Yeh, p. 447.
Figure 9. Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Funded Enterprises in Guangdong
Year Number of
HMT-funded enterprises
Gross industrial output of HMT enterprises (million RMB)
Gross industrial output of HMT enterprises (million USD)
1995 8,776 237,622 36,100.15
2000 6,731 474,730 72,098.11
2005 11,292 1,170,800 177,904.75
2010 13,151 2,181,334 331,393.91
2014 9,274
Source: People’s Republic of China, National Bureau of Statistics
Figure 9 indicates that although the overall number of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwanese-investing firms in the province has shrunk since 2010 the firms were becoming significantly productive.
Figure 10 highlights just how much of a role direct Taiwanese investments play in Guangdong. In general investments from Hong Kong dominate the figures, contributing the majority in the 1990s and most recently again in 2010. Taiwanese figures had barely managed to reach five percent of total FDI in 2000 before backsliding to just above one percent in 2010. We can make some assumptions about this data. First, Guangdong has not been a popular location for direct Taiwanese investments. Second, we can assume that Guangdong is a very popular location for investing and that Taiwanese investments go through Hong Kong before arriving in the province, adding to Hong Kong’s totals. We can see that in 2000 at the highest point in Taiwanese direct investment in Guangdong FDI from Hong Kong was at its lowest. This may highlight specific trends, particularly that once Hong Kong signed CEPA with China, Taiwanese investors saw no reason to invest directly and returned to the Hong Kong gateway.
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Figure 10. FDI in Guangdong Originating from Hong Kong and Taiwan Unit: US$10,000
1990 1995 2000 2005 2008 2009 2010
Total FDI in
Guangdong 202,347 1,210,037 1,457,466 1,236,391 1,916,703 1,953,460 2,026,098 From Hong Source: Guangdong Provincial Statistical Bureau, via research conducted by Zhihua Xu and Anthony Yeh