Suchergebnisse

Until quite recently most commentators assumed that the international relations and political economy of the Pacific region would be dominated by the US-Japan relationship for the forseeable future. Two new factors have emerged in recent years to upset that judgement. The first is undoubtedly the rapid rise to economic prominence of China as a result of the post 1985 'economic miracle'; the second is the arrival of Chinese diaspora business as major players in the Asia-Pacific. This is evidenced by their ablity to outinvest Japan in the region by a consistently large margin since 1992 but particularly by their important role in the re-industrialisation of China and the latter's emergence as a major exporter. The Chinese diaspora presents a particular problem for International Political Economy (IPE): a series of highly integrated manufacturing, trading and investing networks operating throughout the region and beyond but lacking the backing of a powerful state. This purpose of this article is to begin the task of trying to conceptualise this phenomenon within IPE.

"It has been said that trust is 'a device for coping with the freedom of others', but the prime condition of requirements for trust is not lack of power but lack of full information" (Giddens 1990: 33)

An analysis of the causes and consequences of China's transformation from a minor player to the world's tenth largest trader in less than two decades. It locates the transformation in the synergy created by new forces unleashed in China and their interaction with entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, who invested capital, transferred production facilities and provided the marketing channels by which Chinese goods reached world markets. The book also examines the dynamics behind Japan's increasing role in China's foreign trade in the late 1990s and the growing trade friction between China and the United States, which it argues is produced by the failure of the latter to recognise the dynamics of China's export growth.