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THE CHINESE TRIANGLE OF MAINLAND CHINA, TAIWAN, AND HONG KONG: Comparative Institutional Analysis. Edited by Alvin Y. So, Nan Lin, and Dudley Poston. Westport (Connecticut): Greenwood Publishing Group. 2001. vii, 312 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$70.00, cloth. ISBN 0-313-30861.
The functional integration of the global economy has had various manifestations in different world regions. The formation of continental trade blocs in Europe and North America has been extensively documented. By comparison, the complex processes of cross-border regional integration in East Asia remain poorly understood, partly because the rapidity of socioeconomic transformation taking place there has made it extremely difficult to follow, and partly because the Asian financial turmoil in 1997-98 effectively challenged many of the notions previously held for the Asian economy and "Asian Century." The extant literature has tended to focus on the pattern and composition of the cross-border flows of capital, commodity and people in the region. Relatively little has been written about how social institutions affect the formation and transformation of integrated economic regions across national borders and political boundaries. The collection of papers in this volume, co-edited by Alvin So, Nan Lin and Dudley Poston,...