Doug Henwood:
>I wrote this in the heat of the Asian crisis in 1998:
>
>>Now, as a condition of its bailout, Korea is expected to dismantle
>>most of the state, financial, and corporate structures that were
>>responsible for rapid growth. It will open its financial markets to
>>foreign owners and its product markets to foreign manufacturers
>>almost overnight. The foreign buyers will scoop up the sweetest
>>assets and the rest will be left to struggle. Korea may grow
>>strongly again, but it will probably be growth of a more subordinate
>>kind. Its ambitions to join the First World seem dashed for a long
>>while. If Korea can't make it into the imperial inner circle then it
>>seems no one else can. The hierarchies mapped on p. 3 [income
>>disparities over the long term] seem as good as fixed unless things
>>change radically.
South Korea is not really a typical third world country, nor are the other
"tigers". Surely we can all agree that the problem was rapid but distorted
growth and an unequal distribution of the surplus. However, most of the
third world never really fit into this exceptional category. We need
analytical tools to help explain Africa's plight, which can never dream of
achieving the status that the tigers achieved, albeit on a somewhat
time-constrained basis.
Countries like Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Congo, Egypt far
out-number the Asian tigers in terms of population size and occurrence.
While it is interesting to try to figure out to what extent hyper-growth in
Korea is a function of the chaebol versus US spending on arms and
infrastructure, the answers hardly have any relation to a country like
Tanzania whose main export is peanuts.
Louis Proyect
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