Chapter One concluded that the concept of the developmental state, despite its alleged shortcomings, may still be considered a useful tool in addressing inadequate developmental dynamics in some poor countries. The concept itself will still be applicable as long as the globalisation process requires significant corrections in order to achieve more equitable development and as long as disguised interventionist forces shape the global economy. Moreover, when the neo-liberal economic ideology has been discredited, the guiding role of the state in development, as embedded in the concept of the developmental state, resurfaces as, indeed, an interesting option. Having analysed the process of post-socialist transformation in China and China's developmental exceptionality among post-socialist economies in Chapter Two, one needs to address the question as to the similarities and differences between China's development trajectory and the historical DS cases. The analysis needs to be conducted in two sets of dimensions: the policy dimension addressed in Chapter Four; and the ideological background, together with political and economic arrangements, discussed in this chapter, as drawn predominantly from specific DS features presented in the scholarly literature.

In order to comparatively analyse the Chinese case, one needs to refer to the countries whose economic, geopolitical and cultural proximity are the closest. Needless to say, these constitute the ‘consensus candidates’ (Stubbs, 2009) or the ‘Asian Three’ (Weiss, 2000), namely, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In order to focus on the largest DS economies, as China itself is a large economy, the comparative analysis will mostly be concerned with Japan and Korea. Naturally, there are significant differences between China, Japan and Korea. The relatively close geopolitical locality, a history of interactions resulting in a comparable culturally determined social structure and membership of the group of large economies creates, however, a more suitable platform for a mutual comparative analysis.

Economic nationalism

It is believed that a developmental state can be introduced in the social conditions of a nationalist state. Indeed, Johnson (1982) and others suggest a direct link between nationalism and the DS model. He points out that in the Japanese and Korean cases, the creation of the DS model was seen ‘as the means to combat Western imperialism and ensure national survival’ (cited in Woo-Cumings, 1999, p 6).