Doctoral Dissertation Research in Geography and Regional Science

最近的政治事件开始使社会主义经济转型的研究成为焦点。在社会主义国家内，外国直接投资被视为经济发展的一个重要组成部分。然而，人们对在一个正在转变的指令性经济制度中形成外国投资过程的体制基础了解甚少。令人关切的是，不同类型的外国投资如何与社会主义国家分散的经济制度的不同部分相互作用。自上世纪80年代中期以来，台湾在中国大陆的投资现象提供了一个从经验上回答这两组问题的机会。本项目将考察制造业从台湾向中国广东省和福建省的分散过程，并将评估这一活动对就业、产业结构、技术水平、生活水平、以及台湾资本输出地区和中国资本输入地区的产业联系的产生。它将检验在特定条件下外国投资者将与当地生产系统建立动态的生产联系并产生有利的区域影响的假设。数据将来自已公布的统计数据和对主要参与者的个人采访。研究将发展企业、地方、投资联系和进出口地区之间生产联系的类型学。本研究解决了制造业资本从新兴工业化经济体向其他发展中地区外流所造成的地方性和区域性后果这一基本问题。这种现象是否提供了促进经济合作或更激烈竞争的机会？台湾在中国大陆投资的案例很重要，因为这两个国家之间有着强大的民族和社会联系，而这在资本输出和资本输入经济体之间的其他直接投资关系中是不存在的。

Recent political events have begun to focus research on the transformation of socialist economies. Within socialist countries foreign direct investment is viewed as a vital component in economic development. Yet, there is little understanding of the institutional basis which shapes the processes of foreign investment in a transforming command economic system. Of concern is how different types of foreign investment interact with different segments of the decentralizing economic system in socialist countries. The phenomenon of Taiwanese investment in China since the mid-1980s provides an opportunity to empirically answer both sets of questions. This project will examine the process of manufacturing decentralization from Taiwan to localities in Guandong and Fujian Provinces of China, and it will assess the impacts of this activity on employment, industrial structure, levels of technology, living standards, and the generation of industrial linkages in both the capital export region in Taiwan and the capital import localities in China. It will test the hypothesis that under specified conditions foreign investors will establish a dynamic production linkage with the local production system and generate favorable regional impacts. Data will come from published statistics and personal interviews with key actors. The research will develop a typology of firms, localities, investment linkages, and production linkages between the import and export regions. This research addresses the basic issue of what local and regional consequences ensue from manufacturing capital outflows from newly industrializing economies to other developing areas. Does this phenomenon present an opportunity to promote economic cooperation or more intense competition. The case of Taiwanese investment in China is important because of the strong ethnic and social links between these two nations that are not present in other direct investment relations between capital exporting and capital importing economies.