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  • The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization by Megan J. Greene
  • Wayne Soon
Megan J. Greene , The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. 224 pp. $56.50.

Taiwan, together with her three counterparts, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore, saw growth rates so high during the Cold War that outsiders labeled them the "four little dragons" and sought to learn the secrets of their success. Political economists in the 1990s argued that the state led the economic growth in these polities and termed them (excepting Hong Kong) "developmental." In examining the nationalist (Kuomintang, KMT) government's science and technology policy in Taiwan, Megan Greene asserts that the formation of the developmental state was a highly contingent process. Through reviewing archival material and personal correspondence from Taiwanese government leaders, ministries, and commissions as well as published annual reports, Greene argues that Taiwan became a developmental state in the 1970s, as opposed to previous scholarship that argued for an earlier date of 1930s. The process depended on external factors such as the threats posed by the People's Republic of China's (PRC) nuclear weapons program and the interventions of the US science and technology (S&T) missions to Taiwan. Indigenous efforts by Taiwanese technocrats in translating rhetoric into real institutional frameworks for industry-society collaboration such as the Industrial Technology Research Institute and the Hsinchu Science Park were also crucial in the transformation of Taiwan into a developmental state.

Chapter 1 shows how the KMT government started on the path of developmentalism on the mainland during the war. Through the formation of Academia Sinica and the National Resources Commission, as well as the promotion of the national defense science movement on the mainland, the KMT government sought to incorporate Western S&T into wartime industries and research facilities. However, as most scientists chose not to retreat with the nationalists to Taiwan after 1949, the new government had little talent to draw from in fostering S&T research. Coupled with the relatively low rates of industrial development in Taiwan and the poverty of the KMT state, S&T development came to a halt in the early years of the Republic of [End Page 155] China in Taiwan. Chapter 2 examines how the US government and academician Hu Shi started the KMT state on the path to integrating S&T with industrial policy in the 1950s. The US government disbursed funds to promote basic science education, and Hu Shi inspired the formation of the National Council for Scientific Development. Chapter 3 argues that theKMTstate took S&T policy more seriously in the mid-1960s as a response to threats posed by the PRC's testing of the atomic bomb, as well as to the suggestions provided by Donald Honrig's mission to the ROC. In response to these external interventions, the state reconstructed the National Council for Scientific Development to form the National Science Council, which took steps to encourage collaboration between the state, industry, and academia. The relationship between these three parties, however, as Greene argues in her final chapter, was poor until the 1970s and early 1980s, when the Science Technology and Advisory Group and the Industrial Technology Research Institute were established. The Hsinchu Science Park was seen as a culmination of these efforts, and by 1997, more than sixty-eight thousand people were employed in the S&T industry. Greene concludes by arguing that the ROC's experience may influence the PRC, even though the latter's authoritarianism and lack of intersocietal platform might impede future S&T development.

Even though Greene rightly shows theKMTstate's lateness in developing the S&T sector, the KMT did undertake a host of other economic reforms in its early years in Taiwan. The KMT state arguably was a developmentalist state when it enacted land reforms (1949-53), financially supported rural industries (1960s), and formed export-processing zones (1966-present) in Taiwan (Ho 1987; Wu 2004; Pomeranz 2001). Therefore, I wish Greene had further explained her reasons for excluding these earlier efforts from her analysis of Taiwan's developmentalism, and...

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