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Through a case study of Taiwan, this paper seeks to address recent debates surrounding the transformation of developmental states in East Asia. Whilst a number of authors have cited the Taiwanese state as being both cautious and resilient in the midst of global restructuring, this paper seeks to critically engage with such arguments by highlighting the dynamic and mutually constitutive relations between the forms of social relations that underpin late development and the wider geopolitical system in which such development occurs. Specifically, Taiwanese industrialisation can be viewed as an outcome of the US intervention in the Chinese civil war and subsequent exclusion of China from the regional political economy in the period between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The Kuomintang (KMT)'s retreat to Taiwan established the basis for the autonomous developmental state, and the US underpinned this state through military protection, aid and access to its own domestic market. However, the relative decline of US hegemony and the readmission of China into the international system have posed significant challenges to Taiwan's developmental state. The US sought to redress its trade imbalance with East Asia by placing pressure on Taiwan to liberalise its political economy. Furthermore, the very process of development itself served to undermine the autonomy of the state as it came under pressure from new social forces. Taiwan has more recently been faced with a dilemma of closer integration with the mainland or the maintenance of its de facto economic and political independence at the risk of becoming isolated from the global trading system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to explore the foreign influences on Taiwan's economic transformation over the past 40 years. While exports have always been important in sustaining Taiwan's economic growth, the driving force behind exports has changed from inward investment to outward investment. The analysis carried out is from an international political economy perspective and takes a historical overview. It argues that the US, Japan and China pursued economic policies based on their own economic interests. These foreign governments' economic policies together with their entrepreneurs' business interests are the more important variables for shaping Taiwan's economic structure. During the 1960s, without the US's financial guarantees for American MNCs and security guarantees for the island, the KMT's foreign investment promotion policy would not have been as successful as it was when Taiwan faced a military threat from China. The US and Japanese economic policies changed, and since the 1970s competition between their businesses in the world market has integrated Taiwan into a regional production network. Subsequent to the Sino-US rapprochement, the US gradually opened up its market towards China. With America's rising trade barriers against Taiwanese-made products, Taiwanese entrepreneurs found profits by investing in China. Even though the Taiwanese Government tried hard to pull back the mounting outward investment in China, it was unable to achieve it. In contrast to the traditional point of view, this paper offers insights into the economic interaction between first the US and Japan and later between the US and China that resulted in Taiwan's economic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This survey reviews the growing role and presence of China in the Island Pacific. As the late Professor Ron Crocombe remarked, in the Pacific a major transition is under way from a range of European to Asian influences. Many Western observers have viewed this rise of Asian, and specifically Chinese, influence with alarm, but Crocombe saw it as offering Pacific Islanders new opportunities. This paper first analyses the diversity that can be masked by terms such as ‘China’ and ‘the Pacific’. Then it surveys recent literature on China in the Pacific and scholarship concerned with longer Chinese histories in the region that most recent commentators ignore and which question a number of their assertions. Finally, it suggests possible future directions for historical research on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]