ABSTRACT
Earlier chapters of this book emphasized the historical uniqueness and extraordinary performance of the Asia-Pacific economy. For many, but certainly not all, countries on the East Asian side of the Asia-Pacific, the accepted statistical measures of rapid industrialization presented below support this generalization. Yet, it is also true that many countries increasingly integrated into the Asia-Pacific economy, i.e. the Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico and Peru, have not enjoyed the performance characteristic of what are called North-East and South-East Asia’s newly industrializing economies (NIEs). Before exploring the way in which historical, social structural and cultural factors – class, gender, ethnicity, regional identities and political networks – acted within states to determine ‘winners and losers’, let us first review differences among nation-states so as to underscore how state development policies sort out winners and losers in the Asia-Pacific.
