The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures) - Softcover

Vogel, Ezra F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067431526X ISBN 13: 9780674315266

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Japan and the four little dragons―Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore―constitute less than 1 percent of the world’s land mass and less than 4 percent of the world’s population. Yet in the last four decades 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, dots on the East Asian periphery, gain such Promethean energy at this particular time in history?

Ezra F. Vogel, one of the most widely read scholars on Asian affairs, provides a comprehensive explanation of East Asia’s industrial breakthrough. While others have attributed this success to tradition or to national economic policy, Vogel’s penetrating analysis illuminates how cultural background 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 brings masterly insight to the underlying question of why Japan and the little dragons have been so extraordinarily successful in industrializing while other developing countries have not. No other work has pinpointed with such clarity 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.

This is a book that all scholars and lay readers with an interest in Asia will want to read and ponder.

About this title

About the Author:

Ezra F. Vogel is the author of numerous books on Japan and China, including Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Harvard), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize, and a Best Book of the Year in the Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. It was also a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Gates Notes Top Read. Vogel is the author of the classic work Japan as Number One (Harvard), whose Japanese edition topped the bestseller list there for many years. He is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

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

“Ezra Vogel’s magnificent synopsis explains how it happened that the little East Asian dragons have been so successful. Since he has already written big books about the Japanese accomplishment and the unfolding capitalist miracle in Guangdong, this work is really part of a continuing series of studies that have given us a fairly complete picture of what modern East Asia is all about. Here, his empirical descriptions are brief, but he manages to include broad comparisons that tie his arguments neatly together... This readable, concise book ought to be required reading for all economists, for all theorists of development, for all politicians who want to understand the rudiments of what makes some societies healthy and others not, and for those engaged in business anywhere in the world where East Asian products are important.”―Daniel Chirot, Contemporary Sociology

“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 University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 067431526X
• ISBN 13: 9780674315266
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 152