markets, are South Korea and Taiwan. Although the internal industrial structures of the two countries present several differences $ ^{12} $ , a common characteristic lies in their decreasing dependency from foreign investments (especially from USA and Japan) and increasing efforts in R&D activities. They have reached the technological autonomy in several productions of electrical and electronics equipment industry, and other fields where the technology is more standardized. Their production frontier is also gradually expanding toward industrial equipment goods, including the development of local engineering and part supplying industries. A further typical feature of these two countries, which originated during the second half of the 1980s, is the dramatic outflow of FDI flows towards the group of ASEAN4 and China.

The other two NIEs seem to follow a different development pattern. Singapore is rapidly increasing in importance as a financial and R&D centre, where foreign multinationals tend to locate their regional headquarters. It is still poor in terms of technological autonomy from foreign capitals, but has reached very high levels of international competition, especially in microelectronics. On the contrary, despite being largely independent from FDI, Hong Kong's competition on international markets is relatively low and the role played for the regional development of electronics industry still remains a secondary one.

## The ASEAN4

The development of electronics in the ASEAN4 countries has been induced by dramatic inflows of FDI coming from more advanced countries (USA, Japan, Europe and recently also from the Asian NIEs). Like the NIEs, the sectors which experienced a faster development and reached higher levels of international competition are those of electrical and electronics equipment and of microelectronics.

Malaysia and Thailand are the countries where the rapid growth of foreign investments followed to the currencies realignment of 1985 had been initially concentrated. They offered good labor market conditions, good infrastructures, convenient packages of investment incentives and a quite stable political situation. However, since the pace of starting new manufacturing projects was very fast and several bottlenecks occurred with regard to the availability of skilled workers and the need of new infrastructures, operational costs suddenly started to increase. As a consequence, in the very recent years also Indonesia and the Philippines have been addressed growing amounts of FDI. A main characteristic of the ASEAN4 countries is therefore their remarkable dependency on foreign capitals. While they have greatly benefiting from these investments $ ^{13} $ , their process of technological development remains largely dependent on the induced transfer and on their absorption capability.

In conclusion, one of the principal differences in the pattern of development of electronics industry among Japan, the NIEs and the ASEAN4 countries is the degree of the trade-off between autonomy from foreign capitals and competition on international markets. Due to the high technological content, the later the industry started to develop, the stronger the need to rely on FDI. To this regard, the process of industrial development transmission which is occurring in the APR will not necessarily induce to the same pattern experienced by Japan. However, South Korea and Taiwan already seem to move towards a similar direction.

Consumer goods