ABSTRACT
During the 1990s, all East Asian newly industrializing economies (NIEs)
faced a litany of new development challenges – the globalization of financial markets, the emergence of a knowledge-based global economy and the
associated shift in trade, investment and production regimes propelled by
the acceleration of innovation in information and telecommunication (IT)
technology, the rise of China as a knock-out, low-cost producer of a wide
range of manufacturing goods, and the assault of economic neoliberalism
on the ideological and institutional foundation of their existing modes of
economic accumulation. In many respects the 1997-98 regional financial
crisis was a result of the failure of many East Asian NIEs to cope with these changing conditions and transforming forces.
