ABSTRACT
The Asian renaissance adds immeasurably to our store of knowledge concerning how and why countries develop. In fact, the Pacific Rim represents a “fourth world” of development emulated in some regions of Latin America, South Asia, Central America, and increasingly, in the former Soviet bloc. This trend is particularly evident in countries such as Thailand, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Ivory Coast that have already forged economic links with the more advanced Asian regions. On a cultural level, reference to the virtues extolled by Confucius does little to explain Asian growth or to predict which other culturally divergent regions may adapt a Pacific strategy and enter a new era of economic growth. By 1990, as military dictatorships in Taiwan and Korea gave way to new political realities, it became clear that most Asian leaders had recognized that the imposition of untrammeled dictatorship can exert a high economic price.
