Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
third tier of countries: Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Behind these are yet
more countries with an uncertain future but potential for growth: Vietnam, the
province of Guangdong (Canton) in mainland China, and more dubiously, the
countries of the Philippines and Myanmar (Burma).
It is worth noting two different kinds of mechanism for transmission of the
development impulses. These are not always captured by the usual analyses of
economists, which deal with government policies or specific industrial sectors
and firms. First, there are direct linkages from Japan and from the second tier,
down through this group of countries, via trade and investment. Japan has strong
trade links to the macroregion, drawing on Indonesia especially for raw materials
such as oil and liquefied natural gas, and investing in branch factories in South
Korea and Taiwan. Further down what has been called the East Asian escalator,
Taiwan is a key player. It was, for example, the largest investor country in
Malaysia and Indonesia in 1991 (Government Information Office of Taiwan
1993).
A second level of linkage is through cultural affinities. There is no need to
refer to mystical relations or the inheritance of Confucian ideology, sometimes
used as a reason for the recent emergence of the region, in order to find the
cultural link. Direct migration has brought ethnic Chinese people, many of them
merchants and entrepreneurs, to all parts of the region. There are calculated to be
34 million Chinese living overseas, of which 88 per cent are in Hong Kong,
Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. These people are largely from the
coastal provinces of China, and from Taiwan itself, which is included as part of
China in this reckoning. From Taiwan a specific committee, the Overseas
Chinese Affairs Commission (OCAC), looks after these people's interests,
working like the British Council in promoting cultural links, language and
education, as well as helping to establish or maintain business links. It has
promoted investment tours of the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian
Nations) countries which bring heavy investment into these countries. In the
reverse direction, there has been heavy investment by the ethnic Chinese back
into Taiwan during the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently into mainland China
directly.
To these elements we may add the East Asian forms of association. In this
respect, the West is perhaps the exception, in having made economic life quite
separate from social life, so that all economic transactions are made at arm's
length. In east Asia, there would seem to be an extension of family life into the
economy, which reduces transactional costs because of the ability to rely on
trusted employees and business associates (Fukuyama 1995). Fukuyama's
interpretation of this phenomenon is as something that lies between the family
and the state. A standard view of societies is as individualistic or communitarian,
but between these, there are many, including the most successful such as Japan
and the USA, that have a strong private social organization. This “social capital”
in the form of societies and more informal groupings is put to good use in the
Search WWH ::




Custom Search