ABSTRACT
Many parts of Asia have benefited greatly from globalization. The “East Asian Miracle” is the development success story to which all other developing nations aspire, and the region’s trade links with the industrialized nations have helped to propel it faster than anyone imagined possible. Where Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore and Taiwan led, the rest of East Asia soon followed, with export-based development strategies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines having similarly dramatic effects on incomes and quality of life.1 The 1997 financial crisis and subsequent recessions across the region took some of the gloss off the story, with some questioning even before then whether the “miracle” is sustainable,2 but the speed of the region’s transformation from agricultural backwater to thriving economic powerhouse is nevertheless a phenomenon that has yet to be matched.
