Interlocking Global Business Systems: The Restructuring of Industries, Economies and Capital Markets

The speed with which business has become globally integrated is impressive and almost frightening. Much of this change has come from the Pacific Basin. At the same time, however, the Taiwanese, Chinese and Southeast Asians have also suffered from these rapid changes. The paranoia associated with rapidly escalating rates of foreign investment in China by a small country like Taiwan, for example, may provide an index of the anxiety that such change can engender.

The studies in this collection of research articles provide a considered, rational approach to some of these changing patterns of world business―economic growth, regional trade, foreign direct investment, capital markets, and trade restrictions. The patterns of changing interlocking global business systems revealed in these articles are fascinating and reassuring. It is interesting and enlightening to see how these Asian business systems interlock where the parallel political systems may be in conflict.

EDWARD B. FLOWERS is Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Finance, College of Business Administration, St. John's University, and author of U.S. Utility Mergers and the Restructuring of the New Global Power Industry (Quorum Books, 1998).

THOMAS P. CHEN is Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Finance, College of Business Administration, St. John's University.

JONCHI SHYU is Director of the Graduate School of International Business Administration of the Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan.