ABSTRACT
Today Asia is seen as a miracle continent with large, populous economies composing the foundation of the modern industrial world. Students of Asian history, however, know that this has not always been the case. Since the end of the Second World War, East Asia (i.e. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan) is said to have been adhering to a specific model of state-led development based on agricultural reform and equal access to productive resources (see, e.g. Amsden 2001). It is evident that since the 1960s, with the help of new technology and resources, many East Asian countries have managed to break with the old order of large, stagnating, agriculturally based economies. In a short space of time, agriculture has changed from a stagnating and dominant sector to one that could release labour and capital to other sectors through land reforms and productivity gains thus benefiting the masses. The East Asian model of development thus implies that the transformation process could be carried out without major displacement and marginalisation. Equal distribution was not just an outcome of policy but actually a driving force in the development process (Axelsson 2008). The East Asian countries showed how inclusion in the transformation process led to impressive poverty alleviation and rural areas were transformed into the vanguard of early industrialisation providing an industrial sector with not just labour but also capital and a market. Gradually, agriculture became less important but the lesson learned was that the development of agriculture had played a central role in the initial industrialisation and that agricultural modernisation dominated by smallholders is a forceful tool in battling poverty (Oshima 1987; Mellor 1998).
