Wu Jieh-min, "Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model" (Harvard UP, 2022)

Nov 9, 2023

Jieh-min Wu, author of Rival Partners, discusses the extensive Taiwanese investment in China despite political differences. He explores the impact of Taiwan's contribution to China's rise and the cooperative efforts between Taiwanese entrepreneurs and Guangdong officials. The podcast covers topics ranging from the Guangdong model to the challenges faced by Taiwanese businesspeople in China during the global financial crisis. Wu also delves into China's rent-seeking development model and its goals in chip-making, as well as the efforts of Western countries to contain China's high-tech development.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Taiwanese Investment in China

02:56 • 30min

Difference in Exchange Rates and Strategic Decision of Tai Yang Company

32:54 • 3min

Changes in Strategic Thinking and Negotiation Tactics

35:56 • 17min

Strategies for Upgrading and Adapting in the Changing Business Landscape

52:53 • 2min

Challenges and Strategies in the Global Financial Crisis

54:24 • 9min

China's Rent-Seeking Development Model and Ambitious Chip-Making Goals

01:03:54 • 10min

Expanding the Book and Translating Chinese Terms

01:13:28 • 9min

Taiwan has been depicted as an island facing the incessant threat of forcible unification with the People’s Republic of China. Why, then, has Taiwan spent more than three decades pouring capital and talent into China?

In Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model (Harvard UP, 2022), Wu Jieh-min follows the development of Taiwanese enterprises in China over twenty-five years and provides fresh insights. The geopolitical shift in Asia beginning in the 1970s and the global restructuring of value chains since the 1980s created strong incentives for Taiwanese entrepreneurs to rush into China despite high political risks and insecure property rights. Taiwanese investment, in conjunction with Hong Kong capital, laid the foundation for the world’s factory to flourish in the southern province of Guangdong, but official Chinese narratives play down Taiwan’s vital contribution. It is hard to imagine the Guangdong model without Taiwanese investment, and, without the Guangdong model, China’s rise could not have occurred.

Going beyond the received wisdom of the “China miracle” and “Taiwan factor,” Wu delineates how Taiwanese businesspeople, with the cooperation of local officials, ushered global capitalism into China. By partnering with its political archrival, Taiwan has benefited enormously, while helping to cultivate an economic superpower that increasingly exerts its influence around the world.

This book is the winner of 2023 Global and Transnational Sociology Best Publication (Book) by an International Scholar Award, the American Sociological Association, 國科會111年度(2022) 傑出研究獎, 2020年第九屆中央研究院人文及社會科學學術性專書獎, 科技部2020最具影響力研究專書(人文及社會科學領域), 2019年孫運璿學術獎最佳書籍.

Wu Jieh-min is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Stacy Mosher is a translator and editor based in Brooklyn.

Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.

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