ABSTRACT
Japan’s awesome and sustained expansion acted as both “a direct stimulus and an example” for the newly industrialized countries (NICs)—Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. The NICs—in spite of meager resources and external threats, energy shortages and originally illiterate populations—made the great ascent from poverty to prosperity in fewer years than any other region of the globe. Politically, the NICs followed somewhat differing paths. Wisely, the NICs increasingly began to focus on the Pacific Rim itself or the Third World for sustenance and markets. By 1985, Singapore had become the telecommunications and medical center for all of Southeast Asia. Hong Kong played its central role in facilitating financial flows among Asian nations. Fortunately, the NICs were surrounded by great outlying areas, particularly China and the nations of Southeast Asia whose economic needs and resources complemented those of the NICs.
