The Historical Trend of the Transformation of World Manufacturing: Refining the Cornerstone

Author: Li Yi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: The development of the manufacturing sector is a major issue in the development of human society. Historically, manufacturing has laid the foundation for the formation of the world economy since the Industrial Revolution; in reality, manufacturing is a crucial component of a country's comprehensive competitiveness. However, with the changes in socio-technical economic conditions and the growth and evolution of manufacturing itself, our understanding of its development patterns remains far from complete. For example, under today's economic informatization and globalization, the prospects for the development of manufacturing in relation to the economic development of various countries are a highly concerned issue. Especially, the debates about the "new economy" in the 1990s, along with the significant differences in the development of the new economy between the United States and Japan, have made the study of manufacturing issues a hot topic once again. In sectors closely linked to foreign trade, manufacturing and the growth of imports and exports have always been a focus of statistical analysis. Meanwhile, the informatization of manufacturing in connection with the industrial application of new technologies has enabled research on manufacturing at the technological level. Linked to the rise and fall of a country's competitiveness, from the second half of the 1980s, the United States, Japan, and even Europe successively completed their investigations and analyses on the restructuring and revitalization of manufacturing.
The book Reforge the Cornerstone systematically reveals the panoramic view of the development and changes of manufacturing over the long course of history. At the same time, it employs comparative research methods to highlight the different focuses of manufacturing transformation in different types of countries during the transition from industrial to knowledge-based economies, clearly presenting both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of manufacturing development. The analysis of manufacturing and other industrial issues in the book is conducted within the broad historical context of global economic development and change. For instance, the study of the transformation of the U.S. manufacturing system and the analysis of the historical legacy of Japan's industrial economy. In these studies, the analysis of each country's economic development is further deepened to the industrial level, attempting to organically integrate the study of industrial economics with that of national and global economics. This is precisely the unique perspective of the book on the study of manufacturing issues.