The biomedical industry, which includes biopharmaceuticals, genomics and stem cell therapies, and medical devices, is among the fastest growing worldwide. While it has been an economic development target of many national governments, Asia is currently on track to reach the epicenter of this growth. What accounts for the rapid and sustained economic growth of biomedicals in Asia? To answer this question, Kathryn Ibata-Arens integrates global and national data with original fieldwork to present a conceptual framework that considers how national governments have managed key factors, like innovative capacity, government policy, and firm-level strategies. Taking China, India, Japan, and Singapore in turn, she compares each country's underlying competitive advantages. What emerges is an argument that countries pursuing networked technonationalism (NTN) effectively upgrade their capacity for innovation and encourage entrepreneurial activity in targeted industries. In contrast to countries that engage in classic technonationalism—like Japan's developmental state approach—networked technonationalists are global minded to outside markets, while remaining nationalistic within the domestic economy. By bringing together aggregate data at the global and national level with original fieldwork and drawing on rich cases, Ibata-Arens telegraphs implications for innovation policy and entrepreneurship strategy in Asia—and beyond.

Nationalists think about the economy, Marvin Suesse argues, and this thinking matters once nationalists hold political power. Many nationalists seek to limit global exchange, but others prioritise economic development. The potential conflict between these two goals shapes nationalist policy making. Drawing on historical case studies from thirty countries – from the American Revolution to the rise of China – this book paints a broad panorama of economic nationalism over the past 250 years. It explains why such thinking has become influential, despite the internal contradictions and chequered record of many nationalist policy makers. At the root of economic nationalism's appeal is its ability to capitalise upon economic inequality, both domestic and international. These inequalities are reinforced by political factors such as empire building, ethnic conflicts, and financial crises. This has given rise to powerful nationalist movements that have decisively shaped the global exchange of goods, people, and capital.

Because governments increasingly believe that long-term wealth creation depends on superior technical skills, they are inclined to provide direct or indirect assistance to potential technological winners. This raises the risk of trade and subsidy wars

Balancing the requirements of national security and economic competitiveness

This book investigates how technology and innovation policies in contemporary China are impacted by collaboration and conflicts between different classes and interests in a world economy, in which competitiveness is defined by the successful leverage of emerging technologies. Focusing on the actual processes and outcomes of technological upgrading in three dynamic sectors, the book presents an alternative approach to understanding China’s industrial upgrading strategies, by examining the ways in which the making and implementation of policies are shaped by political struggles between state actors and dominant capitalist interests in the context of global capitalism. In doing so, the book challenges influential institutionalist approaches as explanations of institutional change, positing instead a political economy framework grounded in social conflict theory to reveal how power relationships and politics are intrinsic to the evolution, form, and function of institutions. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of international political economy, development studies, globalisation and innovation, China and Chinese politics, and public policy.

In mid-May 1997, a financial crisis erupted in Asia after an attack by private investors on the baht, the Thai currency. The crisis spread quickly across the region, where investor confidence plummeted, resulting in massive capital outflows, stock market collapses, high unemployment, and even insurrection. The Asian economic miracle that had stimulated so much awe and even dread, now invoked pity and apprehension in greater measure. The contributors to this volume investigated change in the innovation and production systems of Asian states in response to economic and political upheaval. They conducted empirical studies of several regional industries - autos, semiconductors, and hard disk drives - and seven different national economies: China, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan. In the face of crisis and global competition, the Asian states superimposed change at the margins, seeking unique technohybrid solutions to build capabilities to compete in local, regional, and even global markets.