Reflections on the structural function of industrial design in capitalism through development experiences of NICs

Industrial design is the offspring brought about by the marriage of art and the industry; this profession not only brings huge profits for corporations, but also is the intermediary of modernization experiences, promoting living standards of the vast majority of the population. However, the realization of this historical process in Taiwan was developed by foreign capital and local state through their dynamic intertwining under the post-war new international division of labor. After the Second World War, various countries commonly applied Keynesianism, using high wages and high consumption to promote post-war economic recovery, counter inflation, and batter price hikes. As a result, wage differences among individual countries gradually became the factor that influences the international competitiveness of products. Labor-intensive industries that had become profitless in developed countries largely relocated to developing countries. Under the cold war structure between eastern and western camps, based on the strategic thinking of international geopolitics, Taiwan was incorporated into the system of global division of labor since the 1960s, accumulating huge amounts of foreign exchange through export-oriented economic policies, creating the world-renowned economic miracle. In the stage of economic growth, Taiwan was actually the offshore assembly plant for American and Japanese multinational corporations, the so-called "international processing base". Industrial design was tamed and used by the-developmental state", entrusted with the great responsibility of promoting exports, creating foreign exchange, and eliminating the stigma of counterfeiting that stuck to MIT (Made in Taiwan) products in the international market. Above all, Taiwan withdrew from the United Nations in 1971 and cut diplomatic ties with several countries, gradually disappearing from the international political stage, and MIT products instead created Taiwan's political identity in the economic realm. In the mid-1980s, the "Plaza Accord" signed by international economic powers brought huge impacts to international trade, the exchange rate of the Taiwan Dollar gradually appreciated following the appreciation of the Japanese Yen and the Deutsch Mark. After the "Washington consensus" was addressed in 1989, advanced capitalist countries further raised the slogan of free trade, forcing newly industrializing countries (NICs) to adopt measures, e.g. lowering tariff and import liberalization to balance their trade deficits. Nation states retreated and protectionist policies were abandoned; as a result unscrupulous global capital cooperated hand-in-hand around the globe. And while local industries were battling with transnational corporations, industrial design moved deeply into the war of market competition and created competitive advantages in the close combat between local and imported products, saving production lines that were almost brought to a halt in local businesses, resolving the crisis of industrial development. The expressing of the structural function of industrial design not only mediates the gap between production and market in capitalism, but also reflects the historical process of the dynamic tugging between state and capital in developing countries.