Foreword

The newly industrialized economies of East Asia marked, in retrospect, the first wave of the globalization of late capitalism. By the last quarter of the 20th century, almost all Asian nations had embarked on the same industrial development strategy: vying for foreign direct investment and free flowing financial capital. Global capitalism gathered speed with the collapse, in quick succession, of the real socialist economies in Eastern Europe and Asia. In contrast to the mature capitalist economies of Europe and America, the rise of capitalism in Asia was largely a post-1960s phenomenon. The so-called East Asian economic miracle the successive rapid industrial development of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore saw economies growing annually at sustained double-digit rates for more than two decades, from the mid-1960s. In between was the 1997 Asian regional financial crisis. The expansion of consumption lingered on for a few years, but its peak was over.