The Global Cold War and Hong Kong’s Manufacturing Capacity: The Payoff of Economic Warfare, 1950-1990

Date(s)： 2024/02/21

Time： 14:00~16:00

Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall

Host： Prof. Kuan-Jen Chen （Assistant research fellow, IMH,AS）

Speaker：Prof. Macabe Keliher （Associate Professor, Southern Methodist University)

Organizer： IMH

Abstract:
Hong Kong was one of the fastest growing economies in the postwar world, regularly registering annual GDP increases over 20 percent and real per capital income of over 6 percent. Scholars frequently explain this phenomenon as a result of the perfect combination of macroeconomic stability, rule of law, and free markets. Showing the fallacy of this explanation I argue that Hong Kong’s postwar economy was a result of political competition and economic warfare between the US-Taiwan alliance and the PRC. Drawing on firm-level interviews and archives, this study traces the role of the largest industrial machine supplier in Hong Kong, Universe Machinery Enterprises; it shows that Hong Kong firms acquired advanced manufacturing capacity in key industries from the PRC through Universe, facilitating industrial upgrading and growth.

Photos：