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84 China Review International: Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1994 of this many-sided writer. Then we may be in a better position to assess his significance both in his own time and for the times Aiat followed. Edwin G. Pulleyblank University of British Columbia 7QC7QC Peter C. Y. Chow and Mitchell H. Kellman. Trade—The Engine of Growth in EastAsia. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. xii, 172 pp. Hardcover $35. In a very real sense, this admirable work could have been tided Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Trade, the Engine ofGrowth in EastAsia, but Were Afraid to Ask. Chow and Kellman have a considerable mastery of the literature and techniques of empirical international trade analysis. Using the voluminous OECD Trade Statistics-Series C database, they examine the better part of a score of hypotheses about the structure of exports in the newly industrializing countries (NICs), comprised of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, during the period 1965-1990. Moreover, they offer forecasts of the NICs' export competitiveness to the year 2000, as well as an assessment of the transferability of the NICs' experience to the countries ofASEAN. The eleven chapters of this spare, tightly written volume occupy barely more Aian 170 pages. Tables, charts, and figures reporting the results ofvarious correlations , regressions, and the like inhabit about seventy-five pages, well over forty percent of the total. The authors' prose is clear and focused, if a bit self-congratulatory ; the analysis to come is often described as "rigorous" and, occasionally, "penetrating." To be sure, the broad topic in which Chow and Kellman embed their analysis, the remarkable economic success of the NICs, is a jewel worthy of examination in detail in its many facets, not only for its own sake but also because of questions of transferability to other economies. As the authors observe, at the end of the 1980s the four NICs accounted for more than fifty percent of total manufactured exports from all developing countries, while containing only three percent of the population of these countries. Regrettably, Chow and Kellman devote only a paragraph to the panoply of inAuences—historical, sociological, insti-© 1994 by University tutional, structural, and economic—that have been adduced in a considerable Htof awai ? resserature as contributing factors to the NICs' meteoric development and transformation . Their book seems to have reached press without being informed by the World Bank's recent "East Asian Economic Miracle" series of research studies. Reviews 85 Still, they state—and, I believe, correctiy—that whatever one's favorite explanation of the NICs' success, exports must be a part ofit. They take their task to be the exploration ofthe "anatomy" of this export drive, and they succeed quite well in addressing a number of questions about the nature of the NICs' exports in the quarter-century to 1990. Chow and Kellerman begin by tracing the evolution of the comparative advantage of each of the four nations from 1965 to 1990. All start in labor-intensive manufactures (e.g., footwear, clothing, and textiles), then make the transition to higher-technology goods (e.g., electrical machinery), though at different rates. Interestingly , the authors find their export product mixes to have been, on the whole, complementary in OECD markets, rather than competitive. Next comes an analysis of the degree to which a nation's export success has been due to a fortuitous choice of a rapidly expanding national or industry market , as compared with the degree of its own cost- or product-differentiationbased -competitiveness. At the beginning of the period studied, the remarkable labor -cost advantages possessed by each of the NICs is most important. In Aie late 1980s, as Aiese nations modified their product mix more toward higher-technology goods, where competition is more intense, results are more varied. Singapore and Korea are still able to sustain better-Aian-average export performance via competitiveness factors that now include technology as well as labor; Hong Kong and Taiwan, in contrast, see their export growth slow compared to world average levels. I most looked forward to the chapter addressing the degree to which the NICs mimicked the success ofJapan. Indexes of Aie similarity of each of the...

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