The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (review)

BOOK REVIEWS241 The Four Little Dragons: The Spread ofIndustrialization in East Asia, by Ezra F. Vogel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991. 138 pp. $9.95, paper. This slim volume contains more thought-provoking ideas than many a larger tome. Written by a respected scholar but addressed to nonspecialists —in the tradition of earlier works by Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank—it will be reviewed here by a member of the audience for which it was intended. In very concise but readable prose, Vogel examines the newly industrialized countries of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore to find factors that might explain their common success in the face of striking disparities in their political structures and economic resources. Instead of a single, overarching explanation, he offers a constellation of factors that include unique global opportunities after World War II and more particular situational advantages and cultural traditions enjoyed by East Asia. Of the four case studies, Taiwan and South Korea share the most similarities. As Japanese colonies during the first half of the century, they had received some experience of modern commerce, a rudimentary industrial structure, and elevated levels of literacy. By mid-century, both economies were still largely agricultural, with ready pools of cheap labor, and both governments were preoccupied with overcoming their communist opponents and reunifying their countries. Finally, like Japan, each country went through a cycle of agricultural development, import substitution, and then rapid growth fueled by exports. South Korea got off to a slower start. Unlike Taiwan, which had been spared during the Chinese civil war and had inherited a complete national government that had learned something from its earlier mistakes, South Korea had to recover from the utter devastation of the Korean War under the leadership of a new government with little practical experience. Nevertheless, it had some advantages. Its military leaders, unlike those of so many other military dictatorships, had valuable experience of the technological and logistical complexities of full-scale modern warfare; and universal male conscription no doubt hastened the transformation of country boys into organization men. But perhaps more important was South Korea's unparalleled knowledge of and access to Japanese institutions, language, and technology, coupled with a fervent desire to outdo its former colonial master. South Korea followed Japanese models much more closely than the other little dragons, even though the models were in some cases taken from prewar rather than postwar Japan. However, South Korea's fear of economic domination by Japan made it extremely wary of direct foreign investment. Unwilling to wait the 242BOOK REVIEWS extra time it would take to amass the domestic savings needed for capital investment, South Korea became greatly dependent on foreign loans. Taiwan and Japan, in contrast, relied much more on domestic savings, although Taiwan's diplomatic isolation after the 1970s caused it to begin actively courting foreign investors. Unlike the larger nation states, the city states of Hong Kong and Singapore were too small in size and population to allow an effective strategy of import substitution while building up capital reserves and manufacturing capacity. Instead, both welcomed foreign capital to build up their export industries and both virtually eliminated their domestic agricultural sectors, relying on hinterlands beyond their borders. Singapore even welcomed foreign managers while building its own local expertise in highwage industries, while Hong Kong invested its own capital across the border to exploit the abundance of cheap labor in neighboring Guangdong. However, the role of government in the two cities could hardly have been more different. While the competent but faceless colonial bureaucrats of Hong Kong adopted a laissez-faire approach that concentrated on building infrastructure and keeping corruption under control, the highly authoritarian government of Singapore under the charismatic leadership of Lee Kuan-yew made business entrepreneurs of its civil servants and dictated social policy to such a degree that its political structure has been labeled "capitalism with socialist characteristics" (p. 79). Vogel's clear summaries of the most essential features of industrialization in these four countries make this book an ideal supplementary reading for an East Asia survey course. At the same time, his multifaceted approach to explaining these phenomena contains enough sharp edges to puncture...