Industrialization And Dependence

Author : Yin-Wah Chu
Publisher : Open Dissertation Press
ISBN 13 : 9781374722217
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (222 download)

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Download or read book DEPENDENT INDUSTRIALIZATION written by Yin-Wah Chu and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "Dependent Industrialization: the Case of the Hong Kong Garment Industry" by Yin-wah, Chu, 朱燕華, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: ABSTRACT The present research is an attempt to analyze the experiences of Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) from the standpoint: of the dependency perspective. In turn, it is hoped that the empirical study can throw light on possible areas of refinement for the approach. The research has focused on the garment industry of Hong Kong. As such, it is also hoped that the study can further our understanding of the Hong Kong society as well as contribute to knowledge on the constraints and opportunities specific to the said industry. As a strategy to comprehend the possible facets and impacts of dependency, the experience of the industry has been examined from three particular angles, namely: the historical, structural and enterprise level analyses. It has been found that concepts and methods generated by the seminal work of Cardoso and Faletto (1979) have been of unmistakable heuristic value for comprehending the experiences of the Newly Industrializing Countries, fey these, we refer to some core concepts such as the 'situations of dependence1, and more importantly, the historical structural method. The latter stipulates the need to look for both structures of continuity and processes of change on the one hand, and attend to factors both internal and external to the country on the other. With such a framework, we have defined the 'situation of11 dependence' for the present phase Hong Kong as industrialization through the international subcontracting system. The economic space making for Third World participation into the garment industry has been the end result of interactions among three different forces: technological change, social struggles among different sections of industrialists and workers of the developed countries, and finally, unintended consequences of interventions by the states of the developed countries. The continuous influences of these world economic forces have together with some indigenous social and political factors, delimited the economic opportunity structure for aspiring industrialists of Hong Kong. Most importantly, the external dependence has defined the kind of industrialists that are most likely to succeed in the industry and at the same time, 'discovered* various kinds of casualised labor to be structured into a pattern of internal dependence. In emphasizing the active participation of local actors in the annexation of the economic space, we have pointed to the potentially strategic role of petite industrial production, which has a certain history in pre-war Hong Kong. Contrary to popular beliefs, this particular instance of Hong Kong's insertion into the world economy has not so much been brought about by giant industrialists from mainland China, British merchants or the Colonial government. Finally, our examination of the routine encounters between local industrialists and sourcing agents from theiii developed world has shown that the more resourceful indigenous industrialists have tried (quite successfully) to negotiate for themselves a greater measure of autonomy. This has been done on the one hand, by manipulating the compositions and numbers of sourcing agents, and on the other, by subordinating the casualised labors. The latter serve to buffer those industrialists from fluctuations and instabilities that this kind of industrialization necessarily entails. With these, we have reasserted the value of industry specific study of dependency and suggested that dif