ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the 1950s, the government was faced with a difficult choice between inward-looking and outward-looking policies. Both policy choices were problematic. From the inward-looking point of view, the size of the domestic market was clearly too small to be depended upon as a source of sustained growth, and from the outward-looking viewpoint, the ready markets of Japan and mainland China were no longer available. At the same time, surpluses of rice and other agricultural products were substantially reduced by increased domestic demand caused by the abrupt population increase resulting from the influx of people from the mainland.
