CANBERRA – Is Japan Asian? Geographically, this is a silly question. Yet in an age in which identity politics have become increasingly critical, by economic logic, political orientation and geopolitical alliance, Japan is Western.
The question is prompted by a brilliant new book by Deepak Nayyar: “Resurgent Asia: Diversity in Development” (Oxford University Press). His focus is on the development experience across Asia since 1968.
Japan was the only Asian country in the 19th century to have successfully followed the Euro-Atlantic path to an industrialized modern economy and Asia’s only major power in the first half of the 20th century. Regrettably, Japan also emulated European powers in their colonial aggression, over-estimated its military prowess and paid a heavy price with military defeat, atomic bombing and occupation. Subsequently, too, Japan still belonged to the Western group of wealthy nations after recovering and re-establishing itself as the world’s second-biggest economy.
Nayyar comes to the task with exceptional academic qualifications and real-world national and international policy experience. The book, magisterial in scope, blends wide-angled study of the Asian experience overall (minus already industrialized Japan) with a detailed granular study of four sub-regions and 14 countries. It combines a wealth of empirical data with numerous tables and charts and an analytical narrative with a compelling storyline. Nayyar also has a rare command of the language that makes the book a pleasure to read.
His point of departure is the influential book by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal titled “Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations” (1968). Myrdal was pessimistic about Asia’s future because its “soft states” lacked the institutional capacity and political strength to defeat vested interests and entrenched elites. Confounding the pessimism, in the 50 years after 1968 Asia’s economic growth was without precedent in history. In successive chapters Nayyar develops a seven-part argument.
First, European powers rose to economic and geopolitical dominance on the back of the Industrial Revolution. This gave them the military wherewithal to conquer Asian lands to pursue their own commercial-strategic interests.
Second, for the colonies the result was deindustrialization and impoverishment. The main reason for the “great divergence” of European and Asian income levels for over 100 years was that the terms of Asia’s integration with the world economy were dictated by the needs of the colonial powers, which extracted Asia’s resources to accumulate capital and flooded Asia’s markets with their industrial products. This caused prolonged negative growth rates and Asia’s share of world income fell from half in 1820 to 15 percent in 1960, and manufacturing share from half to 6 percent.
Third, Asia’s postcolonial growth was far better than in the preceding century under colonialism. Industrialization is necessary for economic growth, and economic development for nations and social progress for peoples form a virtuous circle. There was a migration of workers from the countryside to cities, a decline in the role of agriculture in economic output and employment, and the growth of economic activities in city-based industrial and services sectors. The economic transformation underpinned a major social transformation with falling infant mortality rates, and rising literacy and life expectancy as key indicators of wellbeing
Nice one