ABSTRACT
Asian communist countries demonstrated a different pattern of transition that was characterized by gradual, experimental, phased and partial reform as compared to the former communist countries in Russia and Eastern Europe that were illustrative of a "neoclassical" big bang or radical approach. This chapter presents a visual picture of the five communist and post-communist states in East and Southeast Asia, a map of their relative geographical locations and basic statistics of economic development. Asian communist states have by and large followed a similar strategy of transition, which resulted in a similar pattern of transition, which can be compared to the shock-therapist approach in Russia and Eastern Europe. Structuralist approaches help us to understand why the old regime is challenged, threatened, or forced to reform, but can not tell us why and how the elites make the change in one way or another, in other words, why different countries take different approaches to transitions.
