英文摘要 |
Infrastructure is a mechanism for state-building. It is an interface negotiating the relationships among state, society, and nature. The state in this sense is not an accomplished legal sovereign entity, but rather has to maintain its legitimacy by continuously constructing and maintaining itself through developmental projects and infrastructure. This paper reviews the four stages of state-building through infrastructurization in Taiwan: (1) The Japanese colonial regime built modern infrastructure to facilitate its exploitation of natural resources and to ensure material deployment and the legitimacy of its rule. (2) US aid during the Cold War and authoritarian clientelist period aimed to substantiate America's declaration of a Free China through materialization of infrastructure. (3) From the 1970s to 1980s, a period of surging economic growth facilitated by export processing, the Ten Major Construction Projects and Twelve Construction Projects built up domestic infrastructure to compensate for weakening Chinese nationalism. (4) Since the 1990s, under competitive global capitalism and the trends of indigenization and democratization, economic construction projects turned to emphasize industrial transformation, regional competition, digital infrastructure, social welfare, participation of civil society, decentralization of power, ecological modernization and cultural governance. However, after 2000, infrastructure construction to build future economic competitiveness was replaced by construction aimed at coping with governance dilemmas in infrastructure deployment, reflecting a legitimacy crisis in state-building. |