Resurgent Asia: diversity in development (original) (raw)

2020, International Affairs

The distinguished Indian economist, Deepak Nayyar, has written a fascinating and illuminating account of the economic rise to ascendancy of Asia over the course of the past 50 years. Its rigor, lucidity, statistical evidence, and reasoned analysis entitle this book to stake a claim of being the definitive account of the Asian extraordinary rise that has reconfigured the world economy since the collapse of European colonialism in the two decades after World War II. Nayyar tells us near the beginning that "The object of this book is to analyze the phenomenal transformation of Asia, which would have been difficult to imagine, let alone predict, fifty years ago."[4] It would indeed seemed so absurd to have been upbeat about the Asian economic future as late as 1960 as to exhibit the "imagination running wild."[2] To drive this striking point home he looks back at The Asian Drama (1968), the classic threevolume work of the celebrated Swedish economist, Gunnar Myrdal, who despite a magisterial effort to marshal all available information at the time, turned out to be totally wrong in its central pessimistic prognoses of the economic future of Asia, which accorded with and reinforced the conventional wisdom of the time. Nayyar helps us understand why Myrdal was so wrong, and if I get correctly the force of his well-honed argument, the foreboding prognosis resulted from the gross underestimation of Asian human resources and governmental capabilities. Asian states emerged from colonial governance and imperialist exploitation much less shattered than did their African or Latin American counterparts, and were better able to steer their economies in ways that produced developmental success. A major theme of Nayyar's groundbreaking study of what he labels 'Asian resurgence' is the critical importance of rational guidance of development by a strong and autonomous state that can operate in a rational manner when it comes to formulating its approach to economic development. As a result, Asian governments did not need to defer to the status quo orientations of traditional elites while implementing polices designed to promote rapid industrialization, education, health, and technological innovation. A distinctive feature of Nayyar's ambitious approach is to broaden inquiry beyond the rise of China, or at most China and India, to examine the economic experience of no less than 14 Asian economies over the half century, beginning in 1970. This comparative methodology enables a search for clues as to why some countries in Asia did far better than others when it comes to GNP growth per annum and per capita without losing the other part of the story, which tells of the startling progress achieved by Asia as a whole. In effect, some Asian countries did better than others, and some did better in certain intervals than at other times, accounting for two dimensions of diversity. Yet this deconstructive insight should not divert attention from the central assertion: that Asia as a region did much better than was expected, at least after 1970, and from economistic perspectives far better. It is obvious that Africa and Latin America did not fare nearly as well as Asia, which is a part of the puzzle that Nayyar takes note of, but does not try to solve beyond a casual observation that their state formation lagged, their human capital declined, and these countries did have nearly as robust pre-colonial economies as Asia with its impressive manufacturing and governance capabilities. In one sense, the most startling finding, given this comparative approach, is that ideological orientation meant far less than the effectiveness of state intervention in the economy by its pursuit of industrial policies designed to promote growth, especially via export promotion and an opening of the national economy to trade and investment potentials arising from profits, CHALLENGE