Newly Industrialized Countries Research Articles

State, Institutions and Industrial Development in East Asian NIC's

During the last two decades, we have seen a wave of literature on the East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs). The majority of this literature is oriented towards the superior industrial performance of the East Asian NICs compared with other developing countries. In addressing this issue, the present article focusses on analytical and theoretical issues. It largely leaves out the empirical evidence and is more concerned with questions than answers. The answers that are given try to encapsulate what we already (think we) know, while the questions, hopefully, point out some of the areas where we ought to focus our future research in order to get a better understanding of the East Asian capitalist "miracles". The paper will not cover all possible types and levels of explanation but will concentrate on such factors as political and societal institutions. In the last section, however, a broader variety of determinants, including the external determinants, are discussed.

Migration and Trade: The Case of the Philippines

Can expanded exports of both goods and people accelerate economic development, and thus eventually reduce the desire to migrate for employ? ment? A conference in Manila on June 24, 1993 investigated the extent to which exports and emigrants can help the Philippines to achieve its goal of being a Newly Industrialized Country (NIC) by the year 2000. First wave NICs?Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan? made the transition from net emigration to net immigration areas during the 1980s. If the Philippines could join the ranks of the NICs soon after 2000, and also go through a migration transition, then Asia's major labor exporter?which today sends abroad about 600,000 workers annually? could join the NICs as a labor importer. Conference participants concluded that the Philippines finally has em? braced the marketand export-oriented policies that are necessary for the country to achieve its ambitious economic goals. These goals include an annual GNP growth rate of 10 percent or more (versus 1% in 1992); an average real per capita income of $1,200 (versus $740 in 1991); and no more than 30 percent of the population in poverty (versus 50% in 1992). However, there was no agreement on whether the exit of the equivalent of the country's annual work force growth and their $3 billion annual remittances would accelerate or slow the attainment of Philippine 2000 goals. Three themes were highlighted in the discussion. First, the Philippines has a history of being unable to achieve its economic goals, so there was perhaps understandable cynicism that the government will once again be unable to create the agribusiness jobs in rural areas and the labor-intensive manufacturing jobs in urban areas that it aims for in order to make rural-urban migration and emigration unnecessary. Second, even though

Review essay: Postcolonial industrialization and NIC-dom—Myths and “lessons” from East and Southeast Asia

In an era of poststructuralism, postmodernism, post-Marxism, post-Cold Warism, and the bright new vistas opened up by the New World Order and the victory of capitalism, an earlier debate over exactly what lessons might be derived from the experience of the East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs) has largely been settled. During the two decades of the debate, the major contenders rarely confronted each other directly. The economists loftily ignored attacks on the model, a model that highlighted the lessons they wanted drawn from the NIC phenomenon. The opposition never sought to correct specific aspects of the neoclassical economic project but to reject it for a self-reliant, self-sufficient, and therefore largely autarkic egalitarian vision for Third World development. The continued success of the NICs, the growing power of the world market system, and the increasingly evident decline in the efficacy of the socialist model settled the debate.

India's Electric Power Crisis: Why Do the Lights Go Out?

In May 1991 the respected British publication, The Economist, called India a caged tiger waiting to be released so that India could fulfill its potential-an economic miracle waiting to happen.' A few months later, the new government of P. V. Narasimha Rao began the process of unlocking the cage by initiating changes in India's restrictive foreign investment policies, slashing elaborate permit and licensing systems, proposing a reduction in the massive subsidies, and starting privatization of the large and inefficient public enterprise system. The new initiatives are intended to attract more investment by multinational companies, increase the slow economic growth rate of the previous decades, and launch India into the world trade system in the same league as the newly industrialized countries (NICs) and the emerging NICs of China, Malaysia, and Thailand. However, one factor-the availability of electric power-will influence both foreign investment and the pace of India's economic reform and development. The growth of electric power capacity closely correlates with increases in GNP, and an adequate power supply is a prime infrastructural priority for countries seeking to attract and hold foreign investment and sustain rapid economic growth. India has endured a crisis in electricity supply for over 20 years, and the problems for the country could become more severe in the future. This article will explain the nature of the power crisis and how it came about, then evaluate attempts to alleviate it. While electric power in many developing nations is a scarce commodity and a number of other Asian nations also suffer serious shortfalls, India has devoted a large portion of its planning outlays to the power sector. Moreover, electricity production and distribution is not a frontier technol-

Technology and the Modern World-System: Some Reflections

This article represents a preliminary attempt to conceptualize the relationship between technology and global inequality, using a political economy of the world-system perspective. Despite the crucial role that technical innovation and adaptation play in the process of international development, many macroanalyses of social change focus little explicit attention on technology. Only neoevolutionary theory discusses its role in long-term social change, and then in ways that miss some key dimensions. The author argues that technology is a social product designed to fit the needs of the rich and powerful. In the contemporary world, it is usually produced by a highly organized (and expansive) research and development (R&D) industry, often explicitly linked to military- industrial complexes. Rhetoric about increased globalization notwithstanding, technology is a key resource in the present capitalist world-economy that is very unevenly dtstributed, with the advanced industrial "core" states (and their giant transnational corporations) controlling technological innovation and dissemination. Even newly industrializing countries (NICs) like South Korea, which many consider technologically sophisticated, experience profound technological dependence, limiting their prospects for truly autonomous economic growth. Differential control of technology and techno logical innovation is a defining trait of global inequality in the late twentieth century.

The Relative Effects of Price, Warranty and Country of Origin on Consumer Product Evaluations

In buying foreign products, consumers base their decisions not simply on a country of origin cue but on trade-offs with price, warranty and other product attributes. This research shows how to measure their relative effects, and exmaines the relationship of consumers' ethnocentric, nationalistic and similar attitudes to the importance that consumers place on country of origin. Export marketing managers in newly-industrializing countries need to recognize that oversease buyers may be sensitive to the country of origin, but that their sensitivity can be enhanced or offset by price or warranty.

The next NICS of Asia

The spectacular economic success of the Newly Industrialising Countries (NICS) of Asia since the 1960s, has led to the quest to identify other less developed countries which may be just about to become the next NICS of Asia. This paper examines the arguments for and against the view that there is a 'second tier' of less developed countries which are about to join the ranks of the Asian NICS. While Malaysia and Thailand are generally thought to be the most likely candidates, this paper argues that one hitherto unrecognised contender, China, is likely to join these countries in achieving NIC status. This paper examines the question of whether there are likely to be more Newly Industrializing Countries (NICS) emerging over time, following in the footsteps of the original four in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan). While some writers suggest that several developing countries are about to achieve NIC status in the near future, others argue that world trading conditions have deteriorated to such an extent as to make this very unlikely.

Thailand's NIC Democracy: Studying From General Elections

G IVEN its fairly impressive economic growth in recent years, Thailand Uris increasingly being considered one of the newly industrializing countries (NICs) of Southeast Asia. At the same time, Thailand differs from the other Asian NICs in one important respect. While most of these nations have had fairly authoritarian political systems, Thailand's democracy functioned fairly continuously between 1975 and 1991. The only interruption of this parliamentary system was a brief period between 1976 and 1977 under the Thanin Kraiwichian government. Although there was always the threat of a military coup throughout the 1980s, and a successful coup actually occurred on February 23, 1991, the fairly long term stability of the parliamentary system is not easily explained. Beginning in the late 1980s, scholars of Thai studies began to debate whether the bureaucratic polity phase in Thailand had come to an end. This phase was characterized by the dominance of bureaucrats in the government and the absence of extra-bureaucratic forces.I Central to this

The Dynamics of Export-Oriented Growth in a Second Generation Nic: Perspectives on the Turkish Case, 1980-1990

Can a new generation of countries emerge and establish themselves as major exporters of manufactures on the basis neo-liberal economic policies and thus replicate the outstanding performance of the first generation Asian and Latin American newly industrialized countries (NICs)? The article seeks to answer this question on the basis of a case-study, Turkey, a country which has managed to undertake a significant switch from import-substitution to export-orientation under an essentially neo-liberal reform package. The central argument may be summarized as follows. Neo-liberal reforms, when combined with a number of favourable “external conditions”, are quite successful in terms of engineering a shift of the existing productive capacity from import-substitution towards exports. Yet, such policies, on the whole, are less successful in terms of generating the level of investment necessary to sustain rapid growth in manufactured exports over time and also to achieve a steady process of export deepening. A sustained breakthrough in manufactured export growth cannot be realized by trade liberalization and exchange rate policy alone. Macroeconomic management and strategic industrial policy are likely to play a key role, particularly following the initial and comparatively easy phase of export-substitution.

The Investment Surge from the Asian Newly-Industrialising Countries into Indonesia

The Investment Surge from the Asian Newly-Industrialising Countries into Indonesia

Mother sold food, daughter sells her body: The cultural continuity of prostitution

This article provides a cultural interpretation of female prostitution in contemporary lowland Buddhist Thai society. The heterosexual transmission of AIDS through prostitution has exposed the shallowness of our understanding of prostitution as a sociocultural phenomenon. The data were collected through case studies, participant-observation, and review of Thai language media and texts. It is argued that in the past decade or so, the simultaneous rapid growth of prostitution as a lucrative sex industry and of the Thai economy as an emerging newly industrialized country (NIC) have, paradoxically, enabled female prostitutes to conserve the basic institutions of society. This has occured at a time when landlessness, rampant commercialism and poverty have threatened the survival of traditional lifeways among the majority rural agricultural population. Prostitution, although illegal, has flourished at least in part because it enables women, through remittances home and merit-making activities, to fulfil traditional cultural functions of daughters, conserving the institutions of family and village-level Buddhism, as well as of government.

The NICs, global accumulation and uneven development: implications of a simple three- region model

This paper develops a simple three-region model of the global economy along structuralist lines, with the North, newly industrializing countries (NICs) and the (rest of the) South. The North produces an investment- cum-consumption good while the NICs and the South produce two different consumption goods. The North grows with excess capacity along Kalecki- Keynes lines; the NICs are modeled along Marxian lines with a given rate of exploitation and the South along Lewis lines with a given subsistence wage. The short-run and long-run dynamics and equilibrium properties of the model are analyzed. It is shown that parametric shifts which result in a relative growth of NIC capital (as compared to the North and the South) in the long run usually result in uneven North-South development.

THE EMERGING MANUFACTURING PARIDIGM AND MANUFACTURING STRATEGIES IN FOUR NICs.

This paper presents a conceptual discussion of the significant changes in U.S. manufacturing philosophies over the years, using the framework of a paradigm. It establishes the relevance of the new manufacturing paradigm within the context of international competitive trends, particularly the trends in four newly industrialized countries (NICs): Hong Kong, S. Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Challenges for development in the Asia-Pacific region: the information sector, South Korea and the Philippines

Economic development is based on the creation of new infrastructure and a service sector capable of giving support to national economies to allow society to consolidate and grow. The newly industrialised countries (NICS) of the Asia-Pacific region are good examples of countries on the move. In the rapidly changing economies of these countries, the information sector has gained new prominence alongside other sectors. In recent years NICS have been able not only to absorb new information technologies from outside the region but also have been able to consolidate, improve and create whole new industries around them Such countries have been termed "information societies" because they have been able to manipulate new advances in information-communication to develop their economic bases. Not all countries in the region have been able to do this. This paper, therefore, will examine some of the successes in the information sector, discuss some of the problems experienced by other countries and attempt to provide some answers as to what should be done to improve their chances to keep on the cutting edge of techno logical change.

Higher education, democracy, and development: Implications for Newly Industrialized Countries

Universities are central institutions in modern societies, providing education, research, and communication of scientific information needed by technologically based societies. The focus of this essay is on the role of universities in the emerging economies of the Newly Industrializing Countries (NIC) of the Pacific Rim, although this discussion has relevance for all countries seeking to enter the ranks of the industrialized nations. Universities in the NICs are especially important because they are the windows through which modern science enters society. Academic institutions have also served to provide an important critical voice to emerging democracies because their faculties often contribute to public debates and discussions. The roles of faculty and students in the development of the NICs is also examined in this essay.

The U.S.-Taiwan Copyright Agreement: Cooperation or Coercion?

THE U.S.-TAIWAN COPYRIGHT AGREEMENT: COOPERATION OR COERCION? Jean Lint Taiwan's' economic success has led to its international recogni- tion as one of the four Newly Industrialized Countries ( NIC ). However, Taiwan has historically failed to comply with the interna- tional standards set forth in the Berne Convention for the Protec- tion of Literary and Artistic Works ( Berne Convention ), 3 or even the much more lenient Universal Copyright Convention ( UCC ). Along with its fame for economic success, Taiwan has earned a rep- utation for piracy 5 of world intellectual property. Although Taiwan and the U.S. remain close trade partners, the problem of copyright infringement in Taiwan is a perennial cause of friction, as U.S. in- dustries annually lose millions of dollars due to inadequate copy- right protection in Taiwan. Ever since the U.S. listed curbing international piracy as one of the most important items in its trade agenda, 7 it has vigorously pressured Taiwan to reform its copyright laws. In response to U.S. t J.D. expected 1993, Cornell Law School. 1. In accordance with U.S. government usage, this Comment uses the term Tai- wan rather than The Republic of China whenever practical. See Taiwan Relations Act, 22 U.S.C. § 3314 (1988). 2. The other three NICs are Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong. 3. Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, Paris Ad- ditional Act, July 24, 1971, 828 U.N.T.S. 221 [hereinafter Berne Convention]. The U.S. adopted the Berne Convention in 1988. Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-568, 102 Stat. 2853. 4. Universal Copyright Convention, Sept. 6, 1952, 6 T.I.A.S. 3324, 216 U.N.T.S. 132 [hereinafter UCC, 1952 Text]; Universal Copyright Convention as revised at Paris, July 24, 1971, 25 T.I.A.S. 7868, 943 U.N.T.S. 178 [hereinafter UCC, 1971 Revision]. 5. For the purposes of this Comment, piracy is 'the unauthorized taking of another person's intellectual property through substantial duplication or production of a substantially similar product of information for commercial purposes.' GARY M. HOFFMAN & GEORGE T. MARCOU, ANNENBERG WASH. PROGRAM, CURBING INTER- NATIONAL PIRACY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 8 (1989) (quoting the Annenberg Program panel). 6. Id. app. B at 30. 7. Marshall A. Leaffer, Protecting United States Intellectual Property Abroad: To- ward a New Multilateralism, 76 IOWA L. REV. 273, 295 (1991).

Quasi‐proletarians and a patriarchal bureaucracy: Aspects of Yugoslavia's re‐peripheralisation

THE CRISIS AND COLLAPSE of 'real socialism' in Europe should be seen in the overall perspective of increasingly unequal conditions in confrontation with a global capitalist economy undergoing profound restructuring since the beginning of the 1970s. The social and economic systems of'real socialism' showed themselves incapable of commanding or developing forms of organisation consistent with the demands of the 'third industrial revolution' (the microelectronic) on increased 'just in time' flexibility, human creativity and decentralised institutional autonomy harnessed to intensified accumulation of capital in the postmodern era. This could be seen as one of the important factors undercutting their economies, leaving them hopelessly stagnating and outdated, and forcing them into rapidly increasing dependence on Western capital, knowhow and technology. This new dependence made them slide into the quagmire of the 1970s petrodollar foreign debt trap. At the same historical juncture, the vastly expanded integration of formerly 'Third World' regions into the economic orbit of transnational capital meant that the stagnating and increasingly world-market-dependent economies of 'real socialism' were rather abruptly exposed to ferocious competition from a mushrooming of new, vastly more modern plants within the classical base industries now resituated in low-wage, low-cost Asiatic and Latin American NICs (newly industrialising countries). Yugoslavia was the 'real-socialist' country in Europe longest and most intensively confronted with a number of dilemmas relating to socialist states' (re-)integration into a global capitalist economy. During the 1960s, according to a number of social and economic criteria, Yugoslavia could be described as a country aspiring to entry into the category of'core' industrial countries. There was the problem of rather extreme regional development imbalances. All parts of Yugoslavia, however, had experienced fast industrial development during the post-war period. Living standards had continuously improved, and the country had succeeded in controlling its de-agrarianisation process to a larger degree than most other NICs. A decentralising economy in combination with the social and economic incentives represented by incipient forms of industrial and local-level democracy, as embodied in 'self-management', appeared promising as a determined attempt to transform the structure of the national accumulation scheme, and to build up a strong and internationally competitive export sector. Growing

Unavoidable industrial restructuring in Latin America

In the recent economic history of Latin America no country has yet found the means to combine effectively economic growth with equity. Unavoidable Industrial Restructuring in Latin America compares the development path of Latin America with that of the East Asian newly industrialized countries (NICs), the United States, and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s to show the national policies and international cooperation necessary to set Latin American countries on the road to healthy economies. Fernando Fajnzylber argues that technological and industrial progress is the driving force of a positive relationship among dynamism, competitiveness, austerity, and equity. Latin America's failure to master this technological progress underlies its economic difficulties. To overcome the inheritance of past mistakes, the author maintains, Latin America must undergo not only macroeconomic stabilization and a reduction of the debt burden, but also a complete transformation of the production structure. The role of the state and the institutional setup need to be modified and new social and sectoral policies devised. Fajnzylber sees this radical restructuring as an unavoidable step if Latin America is ever to achieve a workable balance between growth and equity.

The Surge of Asian NIC Investment into Indonesia1

Since 1987 a dramatic increase in both domestic and foreign investment in Indonesia, most of it in export-oriented activities, has occurred in response to improvements in a previously unattractive investment climate and in the country's trade regime. Most striking has been the rise in investment by Asia's four ‘newly-industrialising countries’ (NICs): Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. This paper analyses the factors contributing to this increase and the investment patterns of the four countries. It then focuses on investment in the manufacturing sector, where most of the NIC investments have taken place. The relative importance of each country as a source of investment in individual sectors and industries is examined. The paper concludes that this recent investment surge may yield net social benefits for Indonesia, provided the country continues to adhere to sound macroeconomic and export-promoting policies. 1 The author gratefully acknowledges the valuable comments of H.W. Arndt, Masaaki Horiguchi,...

Europe 1992: Views of Developing Countries

Developing countries in particular saw customs unions among industrial countries as irrelevant. They were suppliers of non-competing products. The attitudes of both those in and those studying developing countries may have been reinforced by the limited effects of their own trading groups and by the emphasis on domestic policies, aid and capital movements, rather than trade. When the EC was smaller geographically and economically, fewer countries were affected, and by less. 'I 992' came at a time of growing concern about the growth of protection in the United States and the EC, and its apparent persistence inJapan. Changes in production techniques and persistent slow growth in world output led to fears of a new retreat towards the centre in economic production, leaving the developing countries 'marginalised'. (Little empirical evidence can in fact be found to support this, and it appears to be based on an analysis of international trade in terms of absolute, rather than comparative, advantage.) There was also an increased sensitivity to how 'internal' measures like subsidies, regional aids, and government procurement could have external impacts as great as or greater than more traditional tariff on non-tariff barriers. The SEM was itself predicated upon the importance of such measures for intra-EC trade. It aimed at improving the performance of the European' economy relative to the rest of the world by international regulation of such 'internal' measures to increase the efficiency of production and markets in Europe. The change in perceptions was particularly important for the more advanced developing countries, the Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs) and those hoping to follow their success. Exports had been identified as a major element