Page 73 - AEI Insights 2019 - Vol. 5, Issue 1

AEI Insights: An International Journal of Asia-Europe Relations, Vol 5, Issue 1, 2019, ISSN: 2289-800X

Book Review

REVIEW OF “POST-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT IN EAST ASIA,
TAIWAN AND SOUTH KOREA IN COMPARISON” BY MIN-HUA
CHIANG, PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2018

Nurliana Binti Kamaruddin

Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya
50603 Kuala Lumpur

E-Mail: nurliana.k@um.edu.my

Abstract

There has been no shortage of books discussing the impressive economic development
experience of East Asian countries in the past few decades. Thirty years since the publication
of Chalmers Johnson’s seminal work “MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of
Industrial Policy 1925-1975”, scholars have continued to examine and debate the
circumstances that define and shape the economic success of East Asian countries. Today,
much of the interest lies with China’s growth and dominance, however, South Korea’s and
Taiwan’s development are also significant as they are the only other two non-city state
countries that have achieved rapid economic growth since the end of the Second World War.
For Malaysia, the recent change in government has brought about a re-emergence of the Look
East Policy and renewed interest in learning from the countries in East Asia. Min-Hua Chiang’s
book “Post-Industrial Development in East Asia, Taiwan and South Korea in Comparison”
provides a detailed insight in the recent development progress of South Korea and Taiwan since
the mid-1990s to the present. As South Korea and Taiwan are also major trading partners for
Malaysia, the development experience of these countries can provide significant lessons that
would benefit local policy makers and scholars alike.
Keywords: East Asia, developmental state, post-industrial development, Taiwan, South Korea

Introduction
The comparative study of South Korea and Taiwan have long been a popular topic for scholars
of East Asian development, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Most importantly the reasons
for the fast-paced economic development of these two countries, as well as their other East
Asian counterparts, has been subjected to intense debate. Neoliberals have argued that the
economic success of the East Asian countries have been the result of engagement in
international free trade (World Bank 1993; IMF 2006), claiming that the East Asian
development indeed proved that the market was the main driver of economic development.
The developmental state paradigm, on the other hand, emerged as a response to the
shortcoming of the neoliberal ideas. Scholars of the developmental state approach argue that
the role of the state was paramount in steering the development trajectories of these countries.
Some of the seminal work analysing the development experience of South Korea and Taiwan
include Alice Amsden’s book Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization
(1989) and Robert Wade’s book Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of
Government in East Asian Industrialization (1990).

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