ABSTRACT
East Asia astonished the world during the second half of the twentieth century as it grew at a pace that nobody had thought possible during the preceding history. Hong Kong’s economy inhibited the establishment of a correlation, because during the second half of the twentieth century, the British colony was one of the most market-driven economies in the world. The 1990s were actually the time during the twentieth century when Japan produced by far the largest share of the technology it utilized, and it was the time when gross domestic product figures were at their lowest. The Americans decided to allow Japan to maintain restrictions on United States (US) imports while giving Japanese products unrestricted access to the US market. Japan’s policy of promoting exports had appeared since the late nineteenth century, mostly because of balance-of-payments concerns, and since a number of circumstances had driven policy makers to support mostly manufacturing because of its vast potential to generate exports.
