Abstract:

Since the late 1980s, Taiwanese investment in Mainland China's agriculture has grown rapidly. As the main form of cross-strait agricultural cooperation, Taiwanese investment has greatly promoted the development of the agricultural economy of Mainland China. However, the question that follows is whether these Taiwanese-funded agricultural enterprises can embed themselves into the local network in order to drive the sustainable development of the region. At present, the academic community pays little attention to this issue. Therefore, following on the theory of embeddedness and the theory of relational economic geography, this study takes the Taiwanese-funded high mountain tea industry of Yongfu Town as an example. Field research and in-depth interviews were used to construct a framework of industrial embedding analysis from the perspective of the agents' relationship with each other, focusing on an analysis of the dynamic embedding process and related mechanisms in the Taiwanese-funded high mountain tea industry of Mainland China. The results showed the following: 1) The embedding of the Taiwanese-funded high mountain tea enterprises of Yongfu Town is a gradual process that can be divided into social, network, and geographic embedding. Among these, social embedding is the premise of embedding activities; network embedding is a further development of social embedding and the most important form of embedding; and geographical embedding constitutes the spatial background for both social and network embedding activities. These three steps are interconnected with and promoted each other, and together, they constitute the spatiotemporal scene of enterprises' socioeconomic activities. 2) The three relationships of Actors-Institutions, Actor Networks-Inter-Organization Networks, and Local-Global are intertwined with each other throughout the embedding process of the tea enterprises of Yongfu Town and profoundly affect the process and results of the embeddedness. In addition, the study also found that local governments and intermediary agencies play an important role in promoting the development of enterprise and network reorganization. In this regard, this research suggests that local governments pay attention to the cultivation and growth of enterprises that support the local community and simultaneously encourage further exchanges among enterprises and promote network integration to continuously improve the degree to which Taiwanese-funded high mountain tea enterprises are "embedded."

Key words: embeddedness, the perspective of relationships, Taiwanese-funded enterprises, high mountain tea, tea industry, Yongfu Town