Development States in East Asia: Capitalist and Socialist

Edited by: Gordon White and Robert Wade

May 1984
Volume 15 Number 2

The papers in this Bulletin focus on different aspects of the historical experience of state economic involvement
in three East Asian NICs, one socialist (China) and two capitalist (Taiwan and South Korea). Taking the two capitalist cases first, state economic involvement has been thorough-going in both (though with important differences): officials have imposed strict controls on flows of investment funds and have acted systematically to change the incentive structures of commodity markets in pursuit of national economic priorities. They have not only intervened to determine the evolving structure of the domestic economy, but also to capture the potential benefits offered by foreign capital and commodity markets by setting favourable terms of interaction conducive to strategic national goals.