一直以來，有關台灣的階級研究多集中於靜態的結構分析，或孤立地描述其變動及尋找變動的內部原因，少有結合外部的國際發展作整體的考量。有鑑於此，本文嘗試將八十年代以來台灣的階級變動放置於國際及國內政治經濟相互交纏的脈絡中進行研究。本文發現：隨著東亞經濟的迅速崛起、西方經濟的持續衰退和相俱而來的保護主義政策，及台灣內部生產成本的不斷高漲，自八十年代中開始，台灣便出現了資本大幅外移和勞工大量進口的現象。面對這些現象，台灣國家當局或是束手無策，或是妥協支持，加上它在其他社會經濟領域中所扮演的角色(如公營企業和政府福利支出)，台灣的階級結構及階級所得分配產生了微妙而又令人沮喪的變化。

Since their emergence, studies. on Taiwan's social classes have been largely concentrated on static, structural analysis, or on merely describing their transformation and searching for the internal causes of these tranformations. Few integrate the international developments to yield a comprehensive consideration. 1n view of this, the present paper attempts to locate and, consequently, analyze the class tranformations in Taiwan in the 1980s in the intricate context of the interplay of the national and international political economy. It discovers that; accompanied by the rise of the East-Asian economies, the continuing recession of the western capitalist economies and their economic protectionism thus introduced, and the rising production costs in Taiwan, since the middle of the 1980s there had appeared in Taiwan repid capital outflows and massive labour imports. Faced with these changing phenomena, the Taiwanese state either was paralyzed or compromised with support. In addition to the role it plcyed in the social and economic arenas (e.g. public enterprises and government expemditures on social welfare), Taiwan's class structure and class income distribution had experienced profound but discouraging changes.