In parts of Taiwan, the struggle is no longer how to grow, but how to endure.

Story and photos by BY STEVEN CROOK

Taiwan’s demographic crisis has become a front-burner concern for the government. Yet the burden of an aging and shrinking population isn’t distributed evenly. While parts of the north remain relatively insulated from the trend, scores of communities elsewhere are withering fast.

When Taiwan’s policymakers discuss regional revitalization (difang chuang sheng, 地方創生), they often invoke the concept of “local extinction” (difang xiaomie, 地方消滅). The phrase was borrowed from Japan, where it was popularized by an award-winning 2014 book. If anything, though, the problem in Taiwan is even more acute.

This isn’t simply because Taiwan’s birth rate has been lower than Japan’s for the past 20 years and may now be the lowest in the world. Even in wealthier societies, rural birth rates tend to exceed urban ones, as lower housing costs and more living space make larger families more practical, while cities attract those focused on careers or child-free lifestyles.

However, Hsinchu and Taoyuan’s urban areas now record more births per woman of childbearing age than more rural counties like Yunlin and Pingtung. Meanwhile, Hsinchu consistently reports the highest median household incomes in the country. The success of Hsinchu Science Park and the region’s thriving industrial clusters have given many young couples the financial stability to start a family.

Lottie Chan, a volunteer social worker in rural Kaohsiung, says that, from what she’s seen there, culture is also a factor. Some women are reluctant to settle in rural areas where traditional expectations often include caring for their husband’s parents. Their main reason for staying in the countryside may be to look after their own parents. And in districts like Neimen and Tianliao, she explains, few of the single men are considered viable partners.

In late 2018, Tianliao was designated by the National Development Council (NDC) as one of 134 districts and townships across Taiwan — covering roughly 70% of the country’s landmass — prioritized for revitalization. Yet collectively, they’re home to less than one-eighth of the island’s population. Population loss wasn’t the only criterion. The NDC also considered population density and median household income.

The list includes all but one of the townships in the outlying Kinmen, Matsu, and Penghu archipelagos, as well as 48 of the 55 local government divisions categorized by the central government’s Council of Indigenous Peoples as indigenous areas. Even though the number of births per woman among Taiwan’s Austronesian peoples is significantly higher than the national average, it is still well below replacement level.

Four of the five Kaohsiung districts abutting Tianliao and Longqi — one of the two Tainan districts that border Tianliao — also qualify for regional revitalization assistance. Backed by a nationwide NT$6 billion (about US$190 million) budget from 2025 to 2028, the NDC is coordinating programs that aim to empower youth to build sustainable businesses in their hometowns and cultivate unique industries that leverage each region’s “local DNA.”

By early 2026, Tianliao’s population had shrunk to just over 6,000, or a third of its mid-1960s peak. In Chan’s opinion, the district isn’t particularly remote. She points out that much of it is no more than a 30-minute drive from the rapidly expanding Kaohsiung Science Park. However, local topography remains a significant hurdle for both industry and commuters, flat land is scarce, and — Freeway 3 aside — the roads are notoriously narrow and winding.

At least the freeway makes it easy for outsiders to get to Tianliao Moon World, a starkly beautiful landscape that lacks the prolific greenery that defines much of Taiwan. A patch of jagged ridges almost as desolate as the surface of the moon, it’s the district’s most popular tourist attraction. A well-maintained network of paths and elevated platforms lets visitors walk directly through the photogenic mudstone formations.

Many of those who tour Tianliao Moon World also eat at one of the nearby restaurants that specialize in free-range chicken, but this isn’t enough to have much of an impact on the local economy, Liang Shu-ting told the Spring 2024 issue of 型農本色 (“The True Colors of Modern Farmers”), a publication of the Agriculture Bureau of Kaohsiung City Government.

Liang, who was born and raised in Tianliao, and her architect husband have launched a series of initiatives to reverse the district’s decline. They’ve worked with university students to transform bus shelters into community shops, collaborated with Tianliao Elementary School’s local history curriculum to bolster youngsters’ hometown identity, and organized guided tours and hands-on activities.

Not all of their efforts have gone as hoped. An eco-friendly sweet potato cultivation project failed, and they eventually shuttered the breakfast shop that Liang took over from her parents, despite repositioning it as a bridge between the community and visitors curious about the badlands. Liang attributed the shop’s closure to a combination of population outflow and road construction, which diverted even more traffic away from her village.

Driving north from Tianliao into Longqi, the picture is almost identical: Micro-communities where the shrines are well maintained but one in three homes is abandoned; orchards reconquered by Mother Nature; and a smattering of public-sector initiatives that perhaps reassure residents they haven’t been forgotten by the authorities.

In the liveliest part of Longqi, one recent project was the complete restoration of a 1941 wooden bungalow. The results are pleasing to the eye, yet some might argue that redirecting the NT$35 million (roughly US$1.7 million) spent on the former official residence of the Mayor of Tainan (原龍崎庄長官舍) to affordable housing for young couples would have been a more practical investment in the town’s future.

The Zuozhen example

A neighboring district has become a focal point in discussions regarding regional depopulation. Last year in Zuozhen (population of about 4,100 as of April 2026), 91 deaths were registered, but only 16 births. The birth-death disparity has been huge since at least 2018, when 93 residents passed away, and just 12 were born.

Zuozhen’s decline dates from the early 1970s, when Taiwan Sugar Corp. ended passenger services along the narrow-gauge rail line it operated between Yujing and Shanhua, where travelers could transfer to Taiwan’s main north-south railroad. Traces of the railway corridor have been preserved in Zhecheng Park (左鎮蔗埕公園) near Zuozhen Old Street, the name of which translates from Taiwanese Hokkien to “an open area where sugarcane is collected for loading.”

Foot traffic generated by the town’s station fueled the rise of Zuozhen Old Street. Around a dozen buildings here date from the early 1930s. Following last summer’s makeover, what’s promoted as “the shortest old street, but with the longest stories” is certainly photogenic, even if it’s seldom bustling.

Architecture buffs, however, might find a derelict building between the park and the old street more intriguing. The Zuozhen Luo Family Residence (左鎮羅家古厝) was commissioned by Luo Lai-shou (1897-1964), a landowner who played a key role in Zuozhen’s development during the 1895-1945 period of Japanese colonial rule. A single-story abode around 200 square meters in size, the house has a gabled entryway and a triangular tympanum bearing the family name, but part of the hipped roof has fallen in.

Like more than a few people in this part of Taiwan, Luo was of indigenous descent. One of the few symbols of Austronesian heritage in Zuozhen is a somewhat forlorn statue on the north side of Provincial Highway 20 at Cailiao. There’s no plinth plate, and it’s not obvious if there ever was one, but this depiction is clearly based on a famous portrait of a Siraya woman and her child, taken by Scottish photographer John Thomson during his travels in Southwest Taiwan in 1871.

Another nail in Zuozhen’s coffin was the completion earlier this century of Expressway 84, which many motorists use in preference to the slower Highway 20. That’s not to say Highway 20 is ghostly quiet. Tainan Zuozhen Fossil Park, where visitors can see evidence that crocodiles, rhinoceroses, saber-toothed tigers, and steppe mammoths once roamed this region, draws hundreds of people each weekend.

A short distance to the east, and on the southern side of the highway, Karma Kagyu Monastery is a center of Tantric Buddhism and the official spiritual headquarters in Taiwan of Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the man accepted by many but not all Tibetan Buddhists as the 17th Karmapa Lama. The main hall features devotional scroll paintings known as thangkas, and a towering Buddha notable for its head of blue curls, one of the 32 physical characteristics attributed to the historical personage.

Religious institutions like Karma Kagyu Monastery attract considerable numbers of people to otherwise declining rural areas but do little to reverse the slide toward extinction. Nor is conventional tourism any solution to the crisis, if the rate of underutilized properties in much-visited districts of New Taipei City is any indication. In 2024, the proportion of apparently uninhabited houses across Jinshan, Pingxi, and Wulai was almost as high as Zuozhen’s 24%.

The Luo Family Residence isn’t the only vacant building in Zuozhen that could be fixed up and reborn as a homestay, a restaurant, or a wealthy person’s country retreat. Given the proliferation of unoccupied rural properties, many are wondering if Taiwan could replicate Japan’s akiya (meaning “empty house”) model, which represents one of the most affordable entry points into property ownership, and market these empty homes to international buyers. Howev er, various legal and economic barriers stand in the way.

Tradition dictates that each son receive a share of any realty, so fractional ownership is very common. Locating each heir — sometimes there are dozens — and getting their agreement is often extremely difficult, says Hsu Chin-lung, a Tainan-based land broker. High land values mean even derelict shacks can cost millions, and bringing an older structure up to modern earthquake-proof standards is likely to be expensive. What’s more, agricultural laws limit who can own farmhouses, Hsu explains.

Across Taiwan, one of the most noticeable consequences of aging and depopulation has been the shuttering of rural schools. Many more institutes of education are on their last legs; currently, around one in five elementary schools has fewer than 50 students.

Nanhua, the sprawling and ruggedly hilly district east of Zuozhen, hasn’t seen as much outflow as some other places, yet Tainan City Government closed two of Nanhua’s five elementary schools in 2025. A third will cease operations this summer. Its students will then have to travel to a campus 30 km away, prompting the authorities to convert unused classrooms into dormitories. Unneeded schools elsewhere have been repurposed as cultural-creative industry hubs, community health centers, or facilities for senior citizens.

Global trends suggest that government efforts to reverse Taiwan’s birth-rate slump are unlikely to succeed. Initiatives targeting foreign professionals, overseas students, and digital nomads will do little to prevent the collapse of rural communities. Perhaps the focus should shift from reversing population decline to adapting to it.

Accepting what appears to be inevitable and managing a gradual retreat from places in which hardly anyone wants to live wouldn’t just free up considerable sums currently being spent on road repairs and transportation subsidies. It’d also open the door to rewilding projects that could make Taiwan more resilient against flooding and biodiversity loss while helping the country attain its net-zero goals.

Since the colonial period, government-led displacements of indigenous communities have been deeply controversial. It’s also hard to see how Taiwan’s Austronesian cultures would survive if severed from the villages where indigenous people still speak their languages and celebrate their festivals. But in the case of remote and declining Han settlements, it might be time to acknowledge that their connection to the land is based on the economics of yesteryear, and pivot to a policy of compassionate relocation.