ABSTRACT
A half-century of industrialization, supported (and in some cases directed) by the state and its agencies, has underpinned the growth and development of Asian economies in the postwar era. This trajectory of induced, or in some cases accelerated, industrialization has encompassed a progressive development of product sectors, starting with low-value goods and relatively primitive production technologies, advancing to automobile manufacture and electronics, then to semi-conductors, and eventually embracing almost the full range of end-products characteristic of the most sophisticated economies. Over time larger shares of industrial production became available to domestic consumers, but the dominant orientation of industrial outputs was directed toward export markets, and especially the wealthy consumer markets of the developed ‘West’. This generated the sales and the incomes required to invest in the infrastructures for national and social development.
