Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 8
The newly industrialized countries:
South
Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia
Amongst the countries outside the older advanced countries of western Europe
and North America, most attention has focused on the NICS, the newly
industrialized countries, as the success stories in development. There are
important differences in the way these countries have developed compared with
the overpopulated ones of Africa and Asia, and from the thinly peopled ones of
South America.
One macroregion of the modern world undergoing rapid development is that
of southeast Asia. Here, as
Table 8.1
indicates, a set of countries has achieved a
similar kind of growth and development over time, with powerful growth of
GDP from the mid-1960s, and an improvement in living conditions indicated by
the high life expectancy and low population growth rates. The analysis made
here is mostly in terms of two countries, but it should first be noted that a whole
system of industrial development has been occurring in the coastal and island
territories of east Asia. As noted by Park (1992), there was a sequence of
development impulses, spreading from one country to another through the region.
These impulses started with Japan in the 1950s; they spread to the NICS of
Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1960s; to Thailand, Malaysia
and Indonesia in the 1980s; and finally, in the 1990s, the spread has reached the
mainland of China, to the coastal provinces from Guang Dong (Canton) in the
south to Shandung (Shantung) in the north.
The similarities in these growth impulses are, first, that they have all been
based on industrial growth, not on primary sector products. Secondly, and linked
to this non-reliance on primary exports, and because of the needs of industry,
there has been a great reliance on human resources, education and training for
the population. Thirdly, they have all employed an outward-oriented strategy of
growth. This does not mean simply export-oriented, but also the use of foreign
capital, foreign technology and innovations, through a rapid learning process.
Outwards orientation has also involved the building-up of links between the
various countries of the region.
It must be noted that the influence of Japan is important throughout the region,
in moving out many of its labour-intensive industrial operations to neighbouring
countries with lower costs, and in investing financial capital and making direct
