The Second Great Transformation: Taiwanese Industrialization in the 1980s-2000s

The theme of this book is to review the diversity of regional transformation and industrial restructuring in Taiwan industries in 1980s-2008. The structural frame and theoretical guide for investigation have three contextual sets: the global industrial integration, the cross-strait political economy, and post-development state intervention. Global production is the basis for cross-border production networking. Cross-state political economy, induced the state’s concern of dependency, sets up political hostility across the strait. Post-developmental state intervention supports the ascending tendency in global value chains for Taiwan’s industries, and promulgated anti cross-strait investment regulations. These context sets for industrial development provide a coherent analytic structure for studying Taiwan's industrial organizational adjustment and spatial restructuring. How industries were reorganized transformed and production regions were re-formed are the foci for empirical studies. This volume is divided into five parts with ten chapters.w The first part gives the general regional characteristics resulting from Taiwan’s political economy in 1980s-2008. The two chapters illustrate the economic and the political spatial consequences of the cross-strait effects. w The second part reviews the key factor for the evolutionary changes in Taiwan’s production regions, with a chapter each on the historical and present regional formation. w The third part explores two state supported industries - the well-established information and communication technology industry and the emerging software industry. w The fourth part examines the cross-strait production region formation of two un-assisted industries - the bicycle industry and the Mandarin pop music industry. w The fifth part investigates an industry and one region, both of which are little affected by the cross-strait effects. A rural district of hosiery production and the Eastern Taiwan region resists cross-strait migration, but for different reasons.This book gives an up-to-date insider's reports and commentary and seeks explanations beyond the rationale of globalization alone. Taiwan's cases of industrial global expansion provide a greater vista to our understanding of industrial strategies and production networks. By expanding the scope of research, it exposes the nuances of Taiwan’s industrial restructuring and network coordination, the how and why they differ from each other.