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The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia Revised Edition
Contributor(s): Vogel, Ezra F. (Author)
ISBN: 067431526X     ISBN-13: 9780674315266
Publisher: Harvard University Press
OUR PRICE:   $31.35  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: March 1993
Qty:
Annotation:

Japan and the four little dragons--Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore--constitute less than 1 percent of the world's land mass and less than 4 percent of the world's population. Yet in the last four decades they have become, with Europe and North America, one of the three great pillars of the modern industrial world order. How did they achieve such a rapid industrial transformation? Why did the four little dragons, dots on the East Asian periphery, gain such Promethean energy at this particular time in history?

Ezra F. Vogel, one of the most widely read scholars on Asian affairs, provides a comprehensive explanation of East Asia's industrial breakthrough. While others have attributed this success to tradition or to national economic policy, Vogel's penetrating analysis illuminates how cultural background interacted with politics, strategy, and situational factors to ignite the greatest burst of sustained economic growth the world has yet seen.

Vogel describes how each of the four little dragons acquired the political stability needed to take advantage of the special opportunities available to would-be industrializers after World War II. He traces how each little dragon devised a structure and a strategy to hasten industrialization and how firms acquired the entrepreneurial skill, capital, and technology to produce internationally competitive goods. Vogel brings masterly insight to the underlying question of why Japan and the little dragons have been so extraordinarily successful in industrializing while other developing countries have not. No other work has pinpointed with such clarity how institutions and cultural practicesrooted in the Confucian tradition were adapted to the needs of an industrial society, enabling East Asia to use its special situational advantages to respond to global opportunities.

This is a book that all scholars and lay readers with an interest in Asia will want to read and ponder.

Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Business & Economics | International - General
- Business & Economics | Industries - General
- History
Dewey: 338.095
Series: Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures
Physical Information: 0.42" H x 5.39" W x 8.25" (0.39 lbs) 152 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Japan and the four little dragons--Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore--constitute less than 1 percent of the world's land mass and less than 4 percent of the world's population. Yet in the last four decades they have become, with Europe and North America, one of the three great pillars of the modern industrial world order. How did they achieve such a rapid industrial transformation? Why did the four little dragons, dots on the East Asian periphery, gain such Promethean energy at this particular time in history?

Ezra F. Vogel, one of the most widely read scholars on Asian affairs, provides a comprehensive explanation of East Asia's industrial breakthrough. While others have attributed this success to tradition or to national economic policy, Vogel's penetrating analysis illuminates how cultural background interacted with politics, strategy, and situational factors to ignite the greatest burst of sustained economic growth the world has yet seen.

Vogel describes how each of the four little dragons acquired the political stability needed to take advantage of the special opportunities available to would-be industrializers after World War II. He traces how each little dragon devised a structure and a strategy to hasten industrialization and how firms acquired the entrepreneurial skill, capital, and technology to produce internationally competitive goods. Vogel brings masterly insight to the underlying question of why Japan and the little dragons have been so extraordinarily successful in industrializing while other developing countries have not. No other work has pinpointed with such clarity how institutions and cultural practices rooted in the Confucian tradition were adapted to the needs of an industrial society, enabling East Asia to use its special situational advantages to respond to global opportunities.

This is a book that all scholars and lay readers with an interest in Asia will want to read and ponder.


Contributor Bio(s): Vogel, Ezra F.: - Ezra F. Vogel is the author of numerous books on Japan and China, including Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize, and a Best Book of the Year in the Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. It was also a New York Times Editors' Choice and a Gates Notes Top Read. Vogel is the author of the classic work Japan as Number One, whose Japanese edition topped the bestseller list there for many years. He is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Harvard University.