Three Chinese Economies: China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: Challenges and Opportunities (review)

Reviews 219 3.As Sucheta Mazumdar first showed in "A History ofthe Sugar-cane Industry in China: The Political Economy ofa Cash-crop in Guangdong 1644-1834" (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1984). 4.The intercropping ofindigo and sugar that Daniels describes (p. 110) as a way ofopening up new lands is a form ofmigration based on commercial production that challenges the stereotype ofdestitute peasants scraping their subsistence by growing potatoes or corn. 5."L'industrie sucrière, le moulin à sucre et les relations sino-portugaises aux XVIe-XVIIIe siècles," Annales HSS 49, no. 4 (July-August 1994): 817-861. 6.J. Daniels and C. Daniels, "The Origin ofthe Sugarcane Roller Mill," Technology and Culture 29, no. 3 (1988): 493-535. 7.See A. Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques (Paris: Albin Michel, 1973). 8.Paul Chandler, "Adaptive Ecology ofTraditionally Derived Agroforesty in China," Human Ecology 22, no. 4 (1994): 415-442. 9.Nicholas K. Menzies, Forest and Land Management in Imperial China (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). Linda Fung-Yee Ng and Chyau Tuan, editors. Three Chinese Economies: China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: Challenges and Opportunities. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1996. xv, 212 pp. Paperback, isbn 962201 -670-7. This collection ofeleven essays, based on two conferences held in Hong Kong in the recent past, identifies some interesting economic development patterns that have taken place in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan since the 1980s. The essays, however, do not elucidate in any meaningful way whether the economies of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are becoming more integrated, ifthat is indeed the case. The first three essays examine all three economies and the impediments blocking their further integration. The first essay, by Anthony M. Tang, proposes that the Chinese authorities in all three economies consider a free-trade zone to promote labor mobility between the three as well as an integrated monetary union. Henry Wan Jr. argues that all three economies must upgrade the skills of their workforce, promote efficient enterprises, find substitutes for scarce re-© 1998 by University sourceS) an¿ s|owenvironmental pollution iftheyare to become high-income societies , efficient and prosperous for their people. E. Yegin Chen points out that these Chinese economies can no longer borrow technology from the advanced 220 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998 countries but will have to invest in research and development to lay the foundations for a relevant Chinese technological age. Justin Yifu Lin and Chen Chien-liang describe how Taiwan's economy in the 1980s began to experience rapid currency appreciation and rising wages, making many ofits enterprises uncompetitive in the world economy. By a combination of adroit public policies and private-enterprise adaptability, Taiwan successfully avoided a serious depression and a rise in unemployment by restructuring and deploying capital and management to Southeast Asia and China. Chou Wen-lin's essay asks whether Hong Kong business firms make rational market forecasts to conduct their business and concludes that they try hard to do just that. Choi Hak examines Hong Kong's industrial output growth, investment, capital and labor trends, and so on. He charts that economy's interindustry business -cycle trends and finds that, in industries with few fluctuations, productivity tends to be lower. Clothing and electronics are examples of industries with higher productivity and lower fluctuations. Kenneth S. Chan compares the exchange-rate policies of Hong Kong and Singapore and finds that, because the Hong Kong authorities pegged the exchange rate to the U.S. dollar, its financial markets tended to be more volatile and inflation higher than in Singapore. Joan C. Lo and Lee Kai-cheong use an econometric model to explicate Taiwan's trade development and its impact on the Taiwan economy. Lee Maw-lin and Ben C. Liu show that Taiwan-United States trade relations have continued to grow in recent decades but that the commodities traded between the parties have become increasingly competitive rather than complementary, as in the distant past. Christina Y. Liu describes the financial liberalization in Taiwan in the 1990s and argues that although Taiwan is slowly establishing foreign money markets, bond and stock markets, and derivative markets such as...