56 SOCIAL SCIENTIST our study, we have noted the increasing cases of Japanese-American combination in terms of equity holdings and/or debt financing within the same Philippine joint-venture corporations. What does this signify for the country's economy in general? These questions need to bfe confronted and answered by concerned scholars and government policy makers if we are to seriously forge a conscious, purposive, and self-directing programme of national development. In this regard, perhaps the present essay has only aspired to bring out the particular urgency of this task. 1 A well-documented account of the nature and impact of Free Trade Zones in Asian countries, including the Philippines, is provided in the 1977 official issue ofAMPO» entitled, Free Tro,de ^ones and Industrialization of Asia. 2 See for more details, Mamoru Tsuda, A Preliminary Study of Japanese-Filipino Joint Ventures, Foundation for Nationalist Studies, Quezon City, 1978. 3 The explanation for this is succinctly implied by Engels's interesting statement: "The social institutions under which men of a definite historical epoch and a definite country live are conditioned by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour, on the one hand, and of the family, on the other. The less the development of labour, and the more limited its volume of production, and therefore, the wealth of society, the more preponderatingly does the social order appear to be dominated by ties of sex." F Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the state, Preface to the First Edition. 4 In non-pioneer industries, the maximum foreign equity allowed by Philippine laws is 40 percent. 6 See Randolf S David, ^Aspects of Filipino Experience with Transnational Corporations," The Phils in the Third World Series no 7, Third^World Studies Programme, CAS, UP, Quezon City, February 1978, where attention is focused on the various mechanisms by which organizational control is secured by the Japanese.