In his 2011 op-ed, Winston Dang 陳重信, Taiwan's former Environmental Protection Administration minister, calls for the re-evaluation of the Kuokuang Technology Co's eighth naphtha cracker complex and Formosa Steel Mill, both supposed to be built in Yunlin County. The Kuokuang project was eventually proposed for Dacheng, Changhua County, where it would threaten wetlands, but the project was later stopped. The Formosa Steel mill, in turn, was built in Central Vietnam.
During my fieldwork, I learned that one argument made by economists engaged in the anti-Kuokuang campaign was that the petrochemical products would be exported to China, leaving Taiwan only with the pollution, but not the products.
