In this major addition to the literature on modern Japanese development, Bai Gao emphasizes the role of ideas and ideology in industrial policy, and explores how the Japanese themselves perceived the issue of economic development. During the Great Depression and World War II, the ideology of developmentalism - characterized by a nationalistic perspective, a production orientation, and a strategic view of the economy including restraint of market competition and rejection of the profit principle - emerged and strongly influenced policy innovation in Japan and institutional reforms in its economy. Liberal capitalism in the postwar era demilitarized the Japanese economy, and forced developmentalism to adapt to democratic political institutions and the free trade regime. Nevertheless, the economic principles that served to combat the Great Depression and sustain total war during the period 1931–45 survived. Transformed from a military to a trade strategy, developmentalism became the basic framework of Japanese industrial policy, facilitating economic growth and the development of modern economic institutions.

"Gao's book gives insight into how the Japanese viewed their own ecnomic development better than any author before, according to Pyle." Herald-Sun

"Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy provides a well reasoned and documented explanation of some of the most puzzling yet important questions in Japanese political economy. Its clear prose and solid grounding in Western theoretical debates should bring it a large non-specialist audience." Mark Tilton, Jrnl of Asian & African Studies

"[Gao] makes accessible to an English-language readership the ideas and thinkers behind Japan's industrial policy formation from 1931 to 1965." Richard Child Hill, Contemporary Sociology

"Gao's book is quite comprehensive in covering many of the critical ideas and policies of modern Japan's economic development." Akira Kubota, Pacific Affairs

"Bai Gao has given us a very learned book, buttressed by an impressive volume of research in both primary and secondary sources." Laura Hein, Journal of Japanese

"Bai Gao has, with great feel for the subject, mined and extracted from vast stores of Japanese-language material a valuable insight into that country's rationale for mercantilist nationalism." Journal of Asian Business