Multinationals, Technology and Employment in Some Asian Countries

Abstract

It would be of great interest and importance to compare some of our findings on Hong Kong with the experience of some other developing countries in Asia. Some of the findings for other developing countries have been mentioned here and there in the previous chapters. But, in the existing literature, published studies on the impact of multinational activities on technology and employment in Asian countries are not that many.¹ The Council for Asian Manpower Studies² in 1978 initiated a research package on the impact of multinational corporations on host country technology and employment. The participating countries include Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Some of the results on Hong Kong reported in this book are derived from the author’s participation in this research package. Although at the beginning it was the intention of the researchers of all participating countries to follow more or less the same methodlogy and address themselves to more or less the same issues, at the end, the final research products were quite different.