In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Technology and Culture 45.2 (2004) 465-467



[Access article in PDF]
Crisis and Innovation in Asian Technology. Edited by William W. Keller and Richard J. Samuels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xi+251. $75/$27.

Nothing better exemplifies the role of technology as the key engine of economic growth than the recent economic history of East Asia. With the exception of China, the nations of this region have little in the way of natural resources, but their ability to effectively use human resources for the absorption, development, and commercialization of modern technologies has been unsurpassed. The economic crisis that engulfed the region in 1997-98 threatened the prospects for continued success, and concerns about the region's economic future form the background for this book, which consists of papers presented at conferences in 1999 and 2000. Since [End Page 465] then, the massive withdrawals of foreign investment that produced the crisis have abated. Unemployment and shaky financial sectors remain serious concerns, but the viability of effecting economic growth through technological advance and participation in the world market has not been significantly undermined.

In examining the technological roots of the region's developmental successes, the book's editors, William W. Keller and Richard J. Samuels, provide an introductory chapter that sets down some of the key themes explored in the articles that follow. Here they delineate three general approaches to technologically driven development strategies, which they summarize as "technonationalist," "technoglobalist," and "technohybrid." Each consists of a complex of strategies, policies, institutions, and leadership styles, all centering on the degree of national autonomy sought in the acquisition and use of productive technologies.

This general theme is pursued in subsequent chapters that explore the cross-nationalization of Japanese production networks, economic policy shifts in Korea, the Korean automobile industry, the semiconductor industry in Taiwan and Korea, shifting economic strategies in China, and disk-drive production in Malaysia and Singapore. Through these chapters the reader is presented with much useful information about interactions with multinational firms, the role of universities in fostering technological advance, the successes and failures of central government institutions in fostering technological advance, and the extent to which technologically advanced enterprises have forged forward and backward linkages with small and midsized enterprises.

Overhanging all of the articles lies the question of whether a distinctively "Asian model" of economic and technological advance can be discerned. The short answer is that no single model encompasses the strategies, policies, and modes of implementing technological advance that have been employed by each of the region's countries. To take one example: as one of the articles notes in considerable detail, Taiwan and South Korea have both benefited from their involvement in semiconductor production, but they have gone about it in very different ways. On the other hand, it can be fairly stated that all of the countries under consideration have been "technonationalist" in the sense that they are committed to using foreign technologies to promote indigenous technological advance and are not content to serve as high-tech maquiladoras for European and American firms. But in their pursuit of autonomy they have taken significantly different paths; Japan remains committed to the strategies, policies, and institutions that served it so well in the past, while Korea has rejected many of the key components of this model, which seems to have outlived its usefulness in both Japan and Korea. China, in part due to its vast size, has the luxury of experimenting with a diverse and even contradictory set of strategies, [End Page 466] while Singapore and Malaysia have differed in the ways they have used disk-drive production as a basis for economic advance.

The sclerotic condition of the Japanese economy, a situation that shows little sign of improvement, has demonstrated the sharp limitations of "technonationalist" policies. In their place, the editors contend, it is likely that "technohybrid" models will likely prevail; nations opting for this strategy will maintain an openness to foreign technology and investment, but economic sovereignty will be promoted through the relentless pursuit of technological parity and even superiority.

Although the introductory chapter claims that one of...

pdf

Share