Making Money uncovers the eventful history of Taiwan's small and medium-sized firms (often called “enterprises” and shortened to SMEs) from 1965 to the present while offering provocative sociological hypotheses about the evolution of global capitalism over the past half century. Part one follows the spectacular rise of the export industry and its peculiar integration with Japanese and American “big buyers,” resulting in a dynamic of “demand-led industrialization.” Part two follows the same Taiwan entrepreneurs to mainland China, analyzing the role of Taiwan capital in the Chinese economic boom. Overall, it is an excellent work.
Gary G. Hamilton and Cheng-shu Kao challenge the existing “developmental state theory” framework that dominates most studies on East Asia (p. 13). Such literature has stressed the role of state administrative guidance, bristling at the suggestion, voiced in the World Bank's 1993 report, that East Asia constituted a “miracle” of free market growth. Although Taiwan's economy...
