Suchergebnisse

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.

ABSTRACT This article explores the transformation of industrial systems in transborder investments made by Taiwanese information technology investors in China. It asks how cross‐border firms would operate in these new territories. The study found that, by and large, Taiwanese investors chose to respond strategically to the tensions in different ways at different stages. At first, regarding China as a land of cheap labor and land, they relocated the Taiwanese industrial system in such a way as to avoid disturbing the hosting regions. The situation changed as China's market emerged confidently and opened gradually to foreign investors after the mid‐1990s. Exploring this huge new market in China provided a mandate for Taiwanese investors to prosper. They opened up their firm boundaries and added new departments of research, development, and marketing. They developed from being merely export subcontractors to producing their own brand‐name goods. In the most recent stage, Taiwanese investors have created networks to tap into local resources to support new activities. Echoing Yeung (2005) in a recent issue of this journal, this article argues that new investments change the developmental trajectories of the host regions and, at the same time, the regions imbued the incoming firms with their own regional stamp. From this perspective, location and localization decisions by cross‐strait firms may be regarded as geographically sensitive strategies whereby firms, as reflexive agents, protect and reinforce their competence through the evolution of a firm–territory nexus.

The impact of local resistance on environmentally destructive capitalist enterprises is examined through case study analysis of local resistance in Ilan, Taiwan, to the Formosa Plastics Group's (FPG's) proposed construction of a naphtha cracking plant. FGG's proposed naphtha plan received central government & local council approval & support, but the local Ilan county government & environmental groups opposed the plan. After nine months of political lobbying & grass-roots activities, FPG decided to stop all investments in progress because of Ilan's deteriorating investment climate & irrational labor movement. The antinaphtha movement redefined the meaning of space for the people of Ilan & represented a boon for local Ilan autonomy. The linkage between local resistance & global environmentalism is discussed. D. Generoli

AbstractProfessionals and entrepreneurs returning to developing countries from developed countries play key roles in the technological 'catch‐up' of their home countries, but they are rarely well‐conceptualized by the theories of globalization. This is especially the case in Asia. The American‐trained Chinese engineers who returned to Taiwan were instrumental in creating Taiwan's excellent semiconductor industry during the 1980s and 1990s. In a similar vein, since the late 1990s, Chinese professionals returning to the mainland have also emerged as the most innovative industrial and capital agents in the technological industry. In this article we compare the roles and business strategies of transnational entrepreneurs on the two sides of Taiwan Strait in the information communication industry (ICT). While these Chinese returnees share striking similarities in their educational and personal trajectories, we identify major structural differences underlying their particular resources and commercial strategies. These empirical findings move beyond the assumptions of common behaviour by overseas Chinese, for they highlight the different political economic dynamics between mainland China, Taiwan and the United States in shaping the divergent engagements of these entrepreneurs in the emerging global technology industry.

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.