ABSTRACT
South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore were the fi rst group of countries to join Japan as Asia’s NICs after undergoing sustained hyper-growth during the 1960s to 1970s. Although they were later joined by the three Southeast Asian tiger economies of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, known as NECs (newly exporting countries), the differences between the two groups of economies were widely noted. Whereas the NICs, together with Japan, were often characterised as ‘Confucian capitalism’, based on strong, effective state traditions, the NECs were described as ‘ersatz capitalism’, which was based on weak, ineffi cient state traditions (Yoshihara 1988).
