Jinn-Yuh Hsu

The limits of guanxi capitalism: transnational collaboration between Taiwan and the USA

In this research we explore the relationship between high-technology regional development and ethnic networks in the connection between Silicon Valley, California and Hsinchu, Taiwan. We elaborate the argument that regional industrial structure and embedded social networks, rather than the multinational firm, should be the focus in the study of transnational business. The complementary regional industrial structures allow economic and technological collaboration between these two regions while the social networks help coordinate these transnational (cross-regional) collaborations. However, we seek to distinguish this account from the dominant perceptions of the role of guanxi (interpersonal relationships) in overseas Chinese business networks (OCBN). In contrast with the arguments for OCBN, that guanxi provides resources for Chinese firms to coordinate and control transnational business, we argue that the skill and competence required for technological upgrading are not necessarily guaranteed within the ethnic network. Although ethnic networks facilitate transnational business and technology cross-fertilization, it seems go too far to argue the Silicon Valley–Hsinchu connection is another version of Chinese guanxi capitalism.

The Chinese Diaspora, Foreign Investment and Economic Development in China

The opening of China to the capitalist world after 1979 was done in a spatial sequence designed to mobilize the resources of the overseas Chinese, with the Special Economic Zones located in the key areas of migrant origins. Including the ‘compatriots’ (tongbao) of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, the great majority of foreign direct investment in China has come from the Chinese diaspora. Local development patterns have been strongly affected by the extent, or lack, of emigrant connections. This article examines the impact on local development of the mobilization of resources from the diaspora. Second, it is suggested that a new stage in the relationship is developing, where the capital of the overseas Chinese is becoming less significant, at least in richer areas such as the Pearl River Delta, as the differentials between Chinese inside and outside are changing. Some new patterns of transnational connections seem to be emerging, however, as China strategically endeavors to develop a knowledge-based economy. T...

State Transformation, Policy Learning, and Exclusive Displacement in the Process of Urban Redevelopment in Taiwan

Abstract This paper explores the dynamics behind the changing regimes of urban renewal and its social impacts in Taiwan. Before the 1980s, the state was willing to solely shoulder the job of urban renewal with a wholly supportive financial budget and land appropriation law, while in the 1990s it became financially overburdened due to its renewal policy. Around the year 2000, the state turned towards promoting urban regeneration as a key business model. Through this historical exposition, the Taiwanese story of state transformation in urban renewal policy brings two issues to the fore. The first issue is the learning process concerning the policy of public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives. Trans-border policy mobility connects and constitutes cities, such as Taipei, with other places, such as London, through visits and seminars attended by policy makers and experts. However, policy transferred from abroad is “localized” in the learning process and used to prioritize the regeneration of public lands in the urban area. The PPP model is transformed in the face of domestic political struggles. The second issue is the social exclusion as a result of property-led regeneration. Rather than playing the role of an impartial institutional moderator, the state privileged landowners and developers and sacrificed the rights of tenants to stay put. By doing so, the state secures political support from landowner-cum-citizens and initiates a political culture of property in which local citizenship is predicated on ownership.

From Cultural Building, Economic Revitalization to Local Partnership? The Changing Nature of Community Mobilization in Taiwan

This paper analyses how community development was an important social parameter in Taiwan over the past two decades. Political changes occurred during and after the 1990s when the ‘community empowerment project’ enabled communities to be the new player between state and society. Various cultural contents and political manoeuvres were brought forth for empowering local society. However, soon economic concerns were introduced to community development. Community groups were encouraged to commoditize local history and develop local tourism or cultural industries to save the then marginalized local economy. Furthermore, the role of community changed dramatically under the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which ruled between 2000 and 2008. The DPP, aiming at creating a ‘well-being society’, summoned communities to become a local agent in tasks such as delivering infrastructures, modernizing administration, care and service. The community organizations were framed by this policy, functioning as the political partner in local society. Since this turn of community development was re-institutionalized by the professionals who served as mediators between community and state, this paper ends by reiterating good and bad consequences of such expert tending of governmental affairs.

Transnational Ethnic Networks

Instead of conceiving the multinational corporation as the core economic actor in a global hierarchical fiat system, this article sees social networks as the basis for the emergence of economic transnationalism. Driven by shared national identity, ethnic migrants establish social networks with other expatriates from the same source country and build up cross-border linkage. The reciprocal collaboration between the diaspora and the homeland can be in different forms: technology transfer and financial contributions, including both remittances and investments. A dominant example of the transnationalist approach is the analysis of the Overseas Chinese Business Networks (OCBN). It is referred to as the ‘global web’ of Chinese business and sees the close ties between the overseas Chinese and local Chinese communities as a central mechanism for economic cross-fertilization in the Pacific Rim. Ethnic ties render the utilization and coordination of resources among firms of the cross-border regions flexible and economical, reinforcing their competitiveness. However, all these possible links are established smoothly not on an individualistic base, but with the mediation of overseas organizations. Finally, the three causations of over-socialization pitfall, the ignorance of the state, and the lack of social network analysis are at stake to reflect on the culturalist argument.

The Leader Firms and the Evolution of an Industrial District: A Case Study of Hosiery District in Taiwan

The transformation of industrial districts has become a hot debate since the increasing globalization of national and regional economies occurred in the 1980s. This paper empirically examines the changing social networks, technological learning and industrial organization in the regional transformation of the hosiery district in Shetou, Taiwan. It shows that primordial social ties render the production networks costless and the networks of learning efficient for price competition in the early stage. However, as new challenges linked to the globalization process approach, the leader small and medium sized enterprises in Taiwanese industrial districts are not necessarily compelled to shift production jobs abroad, but they reposition themselves in local production chains with incurring extra-local resources to cope with the threats from new competitors. On the one hand, these leader firms take strategies of local reaction to rely overwhelmingly on local supply chains to meet the challenge. On the other hand, those owners of workshops which sit in the bottom of the local supply chains can do nothing but to live self-exploitative lives and face the perils of extinction.

Economic integration and the cross‐Taiwan Strait reconciliation

Abstract In this paper, I aim to explain the puzzle of why economic integration leads to political separation in a cross‐Strait exchange. Being a political economist heavily influenced by Marxist tenets, I argue two things here. First, the base structure, or the economy, is an indispensable element of the politics of cross‐Strait integration. More importantly, I argue that the effect of economic integration is an issue of class‐based analysis and, accordingly, the struggle between class alliances in varied sub‐national regions. In fact, the prevailing model of cross‐Strait economic integration resulted in both social and regional polarization in both Taiwan and China. Only a small number of people and regions benefit, and most of the rest, the people and regions, suffer. The arch criminal of the injustice was the zoning techniques, used as common practice in spatial selective disclosure in neo‐liberal discourse on both sides of the Strait to attract inward investments. Finally, I argue that the solution to the cross‐Strait reconciliation resides in fixing the states failure. On the one hand, it has to allow the right hand of the state (capital accumulation) to function. Instead of subsidizing capital to stop it from sneaking to China, the state should render the implementation of globalization strategies easy for the capital. On the other hand, the state should design an institutional mechanism to render the trickle‐down effect, both socially and geographically, possible and effective. Rather than following neo‐liberal discourse and preferential policies to serve big businesses, the cross‐Strait integration should take care of the interests of small and medium sized firms and obsolete regions with taxation and redistribution policies. Only by doing this can a sound and just economic integration infrastructure be expected for cross‐Strait reconciliation. The real political reconciliation should be built on a class‐cum‐region base.

Transnationalism and Technology Transfer

Based on a perspective of social network, a growing body of transnationalism, or globalization from below, tried to decode the technology diffusion and transfer which were usually engaged exclusively with the transnational corporations and nation-states. It contended that a transnational community of engineers has coordinated a decentralized process of reciprocal industrial upgrading by transferring capital, skill, and know-how to the source region and by facilitating collaborations between specialist producers in the two regions. In spite of the truth and contributions, most of the arguments did not take social network analysis seriously enough to tackle with the potentials and pitfalls of transnationalist explanations. This article addresses the network structures by resorting to the concepts such as ‘structural holes’ and ‘tie strength’ which were raised by some well-noted economic sociologists.

Hsinchu Technopolis: A Sociotechnical Imaginary of Modernity in Taiwan?

The Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (HSIP) – a special zone established by the Taiwanese government to attract overseas talented engineers back to Taiwan – has been referred to as ‘a Silicon Valley of the East’. As a dreamscape of Taiwan’s modernity, the HSIP aimed to exhibit futuristic ways of organizing employment and living a modern lifestyle. However, the success of the HSIP has created and deepened social and urban contradictions with its neighboring, mostly rural, areas. The government subsequently proposed the Hsinchu Science City (HSC) plan and the Unpolished Jade Project (UJP) to ‘harmonize’ the contradictions between these areas. Consequently, it led the HSIP to turn from an industrial enclave to an urban megaproject, or zone-city. The zone-city has shaped fantasies of modernity in the local people and inspired in them a will to improve. At the same time, it has raised suspicions of land grabbing and dispossession. This article argues that the production of space through zone-cities, an urban form that has been phenomenal in the East Asian context, revolves around a dialectic between the desire for regional improvement and the greed of land speculation. The inherent tension between both sides of this dialectic thus poses an ethical and practical challenge for critical approaches in urban studies.

A tale of two industrial zones: A geopolitical economy of differential development in Ulsan, South Korea, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Much scholarship on East Asian development has sidelined the crucial role of geopolitics by insisting that wars such as the Vietnam War had limited effects on industrial development and economic growth patterns. We find such arguments unpersuasive, and also unduly reductionist. The Vietnam War, in particular, had unambiguously powerful effects on industrial development in South Korea; but even in cases where the direct effects of war were somewhat less spectacular, such as Taiwan, the reasons for the differences were themselves deeply geopolitical and expressive of decision-making processes centered on the Vietnam War. In this paper, we explore the differential effects of such geopolitical decision-making by contrasting the development trajectories of the Ulsan and Kaohsiung industrial zones during the war period. We show, in addition, that the subsequent development of industrial projects in South Korea and Taiwan has continued to bear some of the marks of Vietnam War-era geopolitical economy.