A comparison of the development process of industrial structure between Mainland China Guangdong and Taiwan

Sammanfattning: As China’s Guangdong Province has been in the forefront of Chinese growth, and it is one of the biggest contributions to Chinese economy, this paper compares the development process of industrial structure between Mainland China Guangdong province and one of Asian four tigers’ Taiwan. This paper is aim to see if the structure components are similar or difference during the growth process. Taking a broader view in the more descriptive parts like GDP per capita, composition of GDP by industry, productivity of each industry, gross output value of each industry and each industry output and the composition of the employed population. Then applying the shift-share analysis to examine employment and productivity for three sectors primary industry (agriculture), secondary industry (industry) and tertiary industry (service). The results are that Guangdong started about 1980 from the same level as Taiwan about 1960, and despite fast growth in Taiwan (tiger economy), Guangdong caught-up with Taiwan and before 2010 was at about the same level. The GDP per capita of Guangdong exceeded Taiwan in 2008. In Guangdong,the high proportion of net output and low proportion of secondary employment population in secondary industry may caused by high-intense overtime working. The result of shift share analysis shows that the annual rate of change of GDP per capita of Taiwan is lower than Guangdong.