A site of transnationalism in the “Ungrounded Empire”: Taipei as an interface city in the cross-border business networks

Abstract

This paper explores the dynamics of the economic development of Taipei City under conditions of globalization. Although Taipei City had undergone rapid industrialization and exploited the rural–urban division of labor since at least the 1960s, the city’s economic base changed dramatically after 1980. Initiating a process of industrial restructuring, the nation state encouraged high technology industries to help upgrade Taipei City’s role within global production chains. It was the transnational connection that kept regional growth within high ‘value-added’ activities. Instead of relying on a few major transnational corporations as the key agents of internationalization, Taipei City transformed itself into a node for high-technology knowledge, which connected the city with high-technology hubs elsewhere, and to Silicon Valley in particular, through transnational technical communities. At the same time, companies headquartered in the city extended their production chains across the Taiwan Strait to locate production facilities in the major coastal cities of mainland China. In consequence, Taipei City became a nodal city in these cross-border connections. These developments illustrate the limits of global city discourses which fail to pay sufficient attention to the role of developmental states and transnationalism in the process of global transformation.