This edited volume is a welcome contribution to the study of globalization in trilateral US–China–Taiwan relations. Contributors to the seven-chapter book explore a variety of knowledge transfers as globalizing forces, encompassing the invention and production of goods and managerial know-how. They argue that the two main drivers of the knowledge transfers under discussion are returnees in Taiwan and China and government interventions in acquiring technologies from multinational corporations, including those headquartered in the US. Hence the book offers a welcoming corrective contribution to the body of scholarly work that views US actions regarding these relationships in hegemonic terms.

The introductory chapter by the two editors neatly places the book's theme in the context of general academic debates on economic developments among developmental economists, neo-liberals, and dependency and world system theorists. The editors should also be lauded for their efforts to select essays that adopt diverse approaches and engage in multiple levels of analysis, from individuals through private and government organizations to national governments; they identify these entities as the key actors in fostering technology transfers in the context of trilateral relations.

Without a doubt, the majority of the papers in the volume are well written and based on grounded empirical research. For instance, chapter one by J. Megan Greene effectively examines the role of the KMT state in facilitating technology transfers from foreign states, particularly the US, to help accomplish its economic development and nation-building objectives both on the Mainland and in Taiwan, specifically exploring the shifting domestic institutions and foreign partners involved. Chapter three by Douglas Fuller does a brilliant job exploring the segmentation of the IT value chain (particularly the IC and PC sectors) in the 1980s and the opportunity it created for the Taiwanese state actors’ successful pursuit of a technohybrid strategy (i.e. usage of globalist tactics in pursuit of its nation-building project). Chapter four by Fuller, Akintunde I. Akinwande and Charles G. Sodini convincingly explains the extent to which the modularization of the electronics production, due to the digitalization of information, has affected the twin processes of reorganization and relocation of production. This process, in turn, has benefited Greater China. While firms in Taiwan and the US were crucial to the process of reorganization, especially through the emergence of the fabless-foundry model in the global semiconductor industry, the relocation of firms from Taiwan to China arguably allows China to replicate and even improve the industrial organization models implemented in the US and Taiwan. Chapter five by Yu Zhou and Jinn-Yuh Hsu teases out the divergent behaviours of Chinese and Taiwanese returnees in shaping the technological improvement of their home countries; this divergence is further explained by the different political and economic dynamics between the US, Taiwan and China. Hence their findings challenge not only the assumption regarding common behaviours of overseas Chinese in helping with the technological “catch-up” of their homelands but also the cultural explanations (e.g. cultural affinity and social network motivations) of the returnees’ decision to return to their homelands.

However, the book is marred by the uneven empirical quality of essays. For instance, the claim on p. 93 in chapter four that the most innovative design firms in China are registered abroad with their core operations in China is not backed up by concrete empirical evidence. Additionally, the discussion of the Chinese state initiatives to attract returnees is underdeveloped on pp. 108 and 109 in chapter five. Despite these weaknesses, the most disappointing piece in the whole volume is chapter two by Murray Rubinstein. Although the author conducted interviews in 2004 with two American executives who led the first American subsidiary in Taiwan in the area of consumer electronics (General Instrument Taiwan), the chapter is weakened by a loose discussion of the trajectory of Taiwan's economic development, which has been well documented in the existing literature, as well as occasional incoherence in arguments and mistakes in spelling, abbreviations, and names of companies and government agencies. Worse still, the company case study fails to address, at the intra-firm level, the depth of technology transfer involved, thereby failing to engage with the central theme of the book.

In sum, the book as a whole is stimulating. Readers of this volume certainly come away with a nuanced understanding of the major players that have fostered various types of knowledge transfer in the trilateral relationship over the past decades. The book would also interest those who are concerned about the rise of China in the area of high technology through the forces of globalization as well as those who are curious about the path that Taiwan should take in order to further its own economic development.