INTRODUCTION: A NEW EAST ASIAN MODEL?

It has become fashionable in recent years to argue that China is following a “unique model” of rapid development – one that eschews democratisation or meaningful political opening while racking up world-beating economic growth rates. Leaving aside obvious parallels with the debates between Samuel Huntington and the modernisation theorists of the 1960s, it is useful to review the more recent East Asian developmental state paradigm before assessing specific arguments about the China model. Ideas about alternative Asian development paths that do not hue closely to European or North American experience have long enjoyed a ready audience in academic and policy circles. The current talk of a “China model” largely mirrors the discussion of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan twenty years ago.

During the 1980s, scholars such as Chalmers Johnson and Alice Amsden popularised the concept of an “East Asian model”. These early proponents contended that states such as Japan and South Korea exercised guidance and discipline over private firms organised into powerful industrial groups through a set of institutional arrangements that these authors came to characterise as the “developmental state”. By investing heavily both in infrastructure and education, as well as protecting sunset and sunrise sectors, the state provided the foundation for economic development alongside window guidance on the precise contours of trade and growth.

Later observers, such as Robert Wade and Stephen Haggard, advanced similar arguments regarding the cases of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.