The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (Edwin D. Reischauer Lectures, 1990) - Hardcover

Vogel, Ezra F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674315251 ISBN 13: 9780674315259

Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr, 1992

Synopsis

Japan and the four little dragons - Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore - constitute less than one percent of the world's land mass and less than four percent of the world's population. Yet since the 1950s they have become, with Europe and North America, one of the three great pillars of the modern industrial world order. How did they achieve such a rapid industrial transformation? Why did the four little dragons gain such Promethean energy at this particular time in history? Ezra F. Vogel, provides an explanation of East Asia's industrial breakthough. While others have attributed this success to tradition or to national economic policy, Vogel analysis illuminates how the cultural backgound interacted with politics, strategy, and situational factors to ignite the greatest burst of sustained economic growth the world has yet seen. Vogel describes how each of the four little dragons acquired the political stability needed to take advantage of the special opportunities available to would-be industrializers after World War II. He traces how each little dragon devised a structure and a strategy to hasten industrialization and how firms acquired the entrepreneurial skill, capital, and technology to produce internationally competitive goods. Vogel aims to pinpoint how institutions and cultural practices rooted in the Confucian tradition were adapted to the needs of an industrial society, enabling East Asia to use its special situational advantages to respond to global opportunities.

About this title

About the Author:

Ezra F. Vogel is Henry Ford II Research Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Harvard University and former Director of Harvard's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the Harvard University Asia Center.

Review:

[Vogel] explains how government and industry have interacted in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, turning charity case nations into business school case studies. [This book] may be the quickest dose of reality yet for anyone left with a romantic vision of Asia. (David E. Sanger New York Times Book Review)

Ezra Vogel...provides a fascinating look at the economies of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore...This well-documented analysis is recommended as good background reading for those doing business in East Asia and anyone looking for general information about the explosive economic growth in these countries. (Greg Jones China Business Review)

What a ride it's been for East Asians, and Vogel captures nicely, in conversational prose, the highlights of the Pacific Rim's 40-year march to industrial greatness in sectors as different as shipbuilding and textiles. It is an achievement that refutes, once and for all, the notion that industrial revolutions only occur in the West. (Davis Bushnell Boston Globe)

Ezra Vogel has written an immediately attractive book...[His] account of the spread of industrialization in the four countries is always eminently readable, yet scholarly and authoritative, with just the right amount of sharp detail. (Rupert Hodder Times Higher Education Supplement)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0674315251
• ISBN 13: 9780674315259
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 150