ABSTRACT
The growth economies of Asia are a highly heterogeneous group of countries, far more so than is often recognized. Their spectacular, but differential, growth in the past few decades cannot be explained in simplistic terms. Such explanation demands a careful analysis of the specific ways in which internal and external forces-economic, political, social, cultural-have combined to produce particular outcomes. External forces have played an extremely important role in the growth of the Asian economies, although not in the excessively simplistic manner suggested by the rather primitive conceptualizations of much of the new international division of labour literature. (For important critiques of this literature, see Jenkins 1984, Schoenberger 1988, Henderson 1989.)
The aim of this chapter is to examine the global context in which the Asian growth economies have evolved and currently operate. There is no doubt that the particular configuration of global conditions-both political and economic-in the three decades following the end of World War II was especially conducive to the manufacturing export-led growth of a small number of East and South East Asian economies. However, the period since the mid-1970s has presented a very different global environment. Within the context of oil-price shocks and of a widespread recession and restructuring in the global economy, recent years have seen heightened politicoeconomic tensions between international actors and the emergence of new combinations of businesses and of states. The growth economies of Asia are the focus of many of these global economic tensions. Their very success has caused them to be a major competitive threat to the Western industrialized nations. Thus, in examining the changing
global context of the growth economies of Asia, we need to be as concerned with their impact on other parts of the world as with the influence of the global economy upon them.
