ABSTRACT
Mongolia follows North Korea, Vietnam and China in the series, published by Routledge, entitled Guides to economic and political developments in Asia. China is the example par excellence of gradualism in economic transition and has greatly influenced policies in Vietnam and even in North Korea (where economic reform has been on a far more modest scale). Mongolia is very different, and it is not difficult to make a case for saying that the country could be classified as having adopted a broadly ‘big bang’/’shock therapy’ programme for economic transition as opposed to ‘gradualism’. (See Appendix 2 for a general discussion of these issues.) In the real world, of course, there are always various combinations of relatively fast and slow elements in policy packages adopted by individual countries. But it is still useful to make a distinction between the two approaches. After all, China’s broad approach is patently different from that adopted, say, in Poland, Estonia or Slovenia!
