East Asian economy

A momentous economic event of historic significance is that the Asian economies, particularly those of East and Southeast Asia, grew at a vertiginous rate over the last four decades. The West took 300 years to industrialise and innovate and Japan 100, but the newly-industrialised economies (NIEs) of Asia ¹ took only 40 years, while China took merely 30 (Lin, 2011). The Asian economies went through an unprecedented process of economic development, industrialisation and urbanisation. They were inter alia driven by the forces of regionalisation and globalisation. One indicator of their rapid growth is the trend in per capita income in Asia, which surpassed the world average per capita income in the early 1980s and has maintained a higher growth rate since (Bai, et al., 2009). By the dawn of the twenty-first century, they had been transformed manifestly, which in turn had a decisive impact over the global economy. That Asia has begun to play a pivotal role in global sustainability is demonstrated by its role during the global financial crisis of 2007–9, the Great Recession and the recovery.