Economics, Politics And Asian Development In The Postwar World

Abstract

Through the 1950s and 1960s it was not clear that the economies of East and Southeast Asia would grow rapidly; on the contrary, they were universally regarded as part of the ‘underdeveloped’ world. The impact of the war and political instability placed a cloud even over Japan. Elsewhere war and civil war continued. The victory of Mao Zedong and the Communists in 1949 brought peace, but also cut mainland China off from the international economy. The defeat of the Nationalists transplanted their corrupt government to Taiwan. The division of Korea led to a new war and new dictatorships. As seen in Chapter 8, for Southeast Asia the end of the war against Japan merely opened the way for the wars of independence, the Indonesian war against the Dutch, the Malayan insurgency against the British, and the Vietnamese war first against the French and then against the Americans. The Vietnamese war involved Laos and spread into Cambodia, devastating that country as well. Conflict over the form of ‘Malaysia’ led to the expulsion of Singapore, and conflict within Indonesia to a massacre of ‘Communists’ and Chinese, and another dictatorship. None of the new regimes appeared likely to foster rapid development.