Suchergebnisse

"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 award-winning Rival Partners, Jieh-min Wu 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."

AbstractUneven development has long been a critical issue in geography and urban studies, leading to economically inefficient urbanization, environmentally unbalanced regions, and socially unequal livelihoods. As one result, primate cities and urban primacy form within a hierarchical urban system, to which urban and regional planning must positively respond. It is worth noting that Thailand has experienced a number of important urbanization issues related to developing countries, such as semicolonialism and internal colonialism. This study aims to investigate regional uneven development based on primacy theory and the rank‐size rule, which are common in most Asian and developing countries. We examined the urbanization processes in Thailand, from 2000 to 2015, by looking at factors of population, GDP, land use, transportation networks, and nighttime light, which provide very recent regional development patterns. The second set of analyses explained the degree of primacy among different provinces and their ranking hierarchies. By presenting the persistent disparities of contemporary urbanization in Thailand and exploring its driving forces, this study offers insights into planning and policy and underscores the importance of regional coordinated development for achieving sustainable urbanization in Southeast Asian countries.

AbstractTransfer development rights (TDR) programs have been gaining popularity as a tool for farmland preservation, as they compensate landowners at minimal public cost. This study shows that despite their wide adoption, TDR programs do not save much farmland on the urban fringe. We use Department of Agriculture data and apply two quasi‐experimental methods, synthetic control, and difference‐in‐difference, to evaluate the effect of TDR programs on farm retention for three fringe metropolitan counties in the state of Maryland. We also compare land use patterns before and after TDR implementation in these counties. The result shows limited effects of TDR programs on farm preservation, even in Montgomery County, one of the national models for TDR programs. TDR programs do contribute to low and medium density residential development. This cautions observation planners about their enthusiasm toward TDR programs and highlights the difficulty of preserving farmland on the fringe of metropolitan regions. We compare the features of the studied TDR programs, and highlight those that account for the programs' relative success/failure. Based on these analyses, we make recommendations to planners to help improve TDR effectiveness.