http://japanfocus.org/-Anne-Booth/2418
To return to the question posed at the beginning of this paper, was there
already clear evidence by the late 1930s that Korea and Taiwan had benefited
from Japanese "developmental colonialism" to a greater extent than elsewhere
in Asia? In fact, it would appear from Table 14 that if a composite index of
human development were to be constructed for 1938 on the basis of per capita
GDP, demographic data and educational enrolments, the Philippines would have
come out on top. [10] Taiwan would certainly have been second; if we allow
for the probable understatement of per capita GDP in the Maddison data,
Taiwan may have been top of the rankings, or first equal with the
Philippines. Although both Korea and Malaya had higher per capita GDP, and
similar demographic data, they scored less well than both Taiwan and the
Philippines on educational enrolments. It is likely that French Indochina
would have come bottom followed by Burma and Indonesia. Although per capita
GDP was relatively low in Thailand, crude death rates were lower and
enrolments higher than in French Indochina, Burma, or Indonesia. [11]
原來台灣在戰前亞洲殖民地中發展名列前茅