Rival Partners

Taiwan is often portrayed as an island under constant threat of being forcibly absorbed by the People's Republic of China, which makes its more than thirty years of investing money and talent in the mainland puzzling. This book examines that contradiction by following Taiwanese companies operating in China over a quarter century.

Wu Jieh-min argues that the shift in East Asian geopolitics from the 1970s, together with the reorganization of global supply chains from the 1980s, pushed Taiwanese entrepreneurs toward China despite serious political danger and weak protection for property rights. Their capital, combined with money from Hong Kong, helped build the manufacturing hub in Guangdong Province that became the world's workshop. Official Chinese accounts tend to minimize Taiwan's role in that growth, yet the author maintains that the Guangdong model would be hard to imagine without Taiwanese investment, and that China's rise could not have happened without that model.

Rather than relying on popular explanations centered on China's economic boom or on Taiwan's role as a single decisive factor, the book shows how Taiwanese business owners, working alongside local officials, brought global capitalism into China. In Wu's account, Taiwan gained substantially by partnering with its political rival, and in the process helped develop an economic giant that now extends its reach across the globe.