Regionalization of Networked Production: Taiwanese Manufacturing Capital in Southeast Asia and China

  • Sue-Ching Jou National Taiwan University
  • Dung-Sheng Chen National Taiwan University
Keywords: Taiwanese FDI, Transnational Corporations, Production Networks, Regionalization of Production, Newly Industrialized Economies

Abstract

This paper examines the trajectory and characteristics of Taiwan's outward capital flow in the Past two decades toward Southeast Asia and China to show its impact on the regionalization of the global economic system. It illustrates the experiences of cross-border capital flow from the newly industrializing economies (NIE's) and their potential effects on the transformation of the global economic system. It is found that Taiwan's foreign direct investment has been carried out mainly by manufacturing-based entrepreneurs to establish transnational production networks with multi-national investment sites in the second-tier industrializing economies of the same region since the mid-1980s to sustain their exported-oriented production. A dynamic and evolutionary viewpoint is noted for Taiwanese manufacturing firms as they reproduced and reconfigured production networks at the foreign production sites.

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Published
2016-02-23