No, I think that would require the talents and efforts of a professional scholar, and probably one who was willing to devote a quite a bit of time and hard work to the subject. But I think that by borrowing some of the writings of others, I can provide a few pencil strokes toward the beginnings of a rough sketch:
[quote]The destruction of the factories [by U. S. bombing] brought unemployment, unemployment to which the Chinese added by bringing over their own relatives and friends and by deporting 100,000 Formosans from overseas.
China was in the throes of a civil war and her economy was suffering accordingly. She therefore had no money to spare for rehabilitation and restoration - in fact she took so much money out of the Island that it looked as though she did not know the meaning of rehabilitation - and money that should have gone into restoring the industrial and economic life of the Island was taken to bolster the tottering economic system on the mainland. Furthermore, the Chinese let their hatred of everything Japanese go beyond the bounds of common sense and hastened to ship the Japanese population to Japan with all speed. This rebounded and caused them very great difficulties in industry.[/quote]–Allan J. Shackleton, Formosa Calling
[quote]Looting was carried forward on three levels. From September, 1945, until the year’s end the military scavengers were at work at the lowest level. Anything movable - anything lying loose and unguarded for a moment – was fair prey for ragged and undisciplined soldiers. It was a first wave of petty theft, taking place in every city street and suburban village unfortunate enough to have Nationalist Army barracks or encampments nearby.
The second stage of looting was entered when the senior military men – the officer ranks – organized depots with forwarding agents at the ports through which they began to ship out military and civilian supplies. Next the Governor’s own men developed a firm control of all industrial raw materials, agricultural stockpiles and confiscated real properties turned over to them by the vanquished Japanese. By the end of 1946 these huge reserves were fairly well exhausted. . . .
By the end of November looting had become well-organized and was on a massive scale. Foodstuffs, textiles, and scrap metals were at a premium. Officers worked in small gangs, with conscript help. By sharing a percentage with “higher authority” they could use confiscated Japanese military trucks to move loot to depots from which it was shipped on to Shanghai. The “Peace Preservation Corps” arriving in September had promptly commandeered all of Taipei’s garbage trucks, for example, and by late November those that were still able to move were carrying loot to the ports.
The great Zuiho copper and gold mines near Keelung had at one time produced 20 percent of Japan’s total copper ore, and the machinery at the mines was developed to match the wartime importance of such production. Solitary conscripts, on foot, first roamed about the silent unguarded premises, picking up supplies and tools from undamaged machine shops. Then the officer-gangs moved in with commandeered trucks. Soon they had ripped out the heavier machines, removed wiring and all metal fixtures, and shipped the whole off to the ports and on to Shanghai. When I visited the site not long after, I discovered that even the metal door-frames and sheet metal roofing had been carried off, leaving empty shells where important industrial installations had once stood.[/quote]–George H. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed
[quote]If a factory was not yielding commodities which could be sold promptly, the working assets were sold, beginning with the stockpiled raw materials and finished products, and then by dismantling the factories themselves. Units which could be sold piecemeal went first, then the very framework went, shipped off to Shanghai as scrap metal.
The fate of the Tropical Chemical Industry Company near Chia-yi was an example. Here cassava root from some eight hundred farms was processed at a factory employing more than one hundred workers. In the face of organized community protest the new management simply dismantled and sold the works as machine units and as scrap metal. The cassava farmers were without a market, and the factory workers without jobs. In a similar fashion the industrial alcohol plant near Chia-yi (the largest of its kind in the Orient) was allowed to fall into complete disrepair and go out of production. From a maximum of 3200 employees the working staff was reduced to a skeleton maintenance crew of about 130 men. Much of the plant fabric was carted away as scrap metal.[/quote]–Kerr, ibid.