> Quoting Jonathan Lassen <jjlassen at chinastudygroup.org>:
>
> > The class relations that gave rise to the
> > 'developmental state' just don't exist outside of Japan
>
> Sure they do.
I think Jonathan is right. The ASEAN and north east Asian economies, including those cited by you, fall into several broad political-economic types. They have very different cultures, histories and economic resources and are as disparate from each other as the US is from France, France from Sweden, and Sweden from Russia.
In other words, there is no single, homogenous East Asian "developmentalist" model.
For example, mainland China and Vietnam are ex-Soviet-style-communist societies where egalitarian ideals have gone out the window, although the state nominally owns a significant proportion of enterprises. As aspiring capitalist economies, both have big "problems" in agriculture, which employs the vast majority of the population and is resistant to "reform".
At the other extreme, Hong Kong -- whether or not we consider it to be "independent" -- remains a paragon of laissez faire, perhaps the most successful entrepot in world history.
Whereas Singapore is an unusual "Fabian capitalist" type, combining the hyper-entrepot role with state capitalism, lures for foreign capital, benign authoritarianism, and the ultimate "nanny state".
In Taiwan and South Korea -- both ex-Japanese colonies -- the key to their success was the communist menace, which excused authoritarian governments, which managed "armed camps" behind the US nuclear shield and which picked winners within the nascent heavy industrial sectors.
Following significant privatisation and anticorruption campaigns over the last 20 years, the Philippines is a mixed bag: good economic growth, surging FDI and huge remittances from expat labourers are undermined by what bourgeois economists call a "stalled reform program", characterised by significant public debt/expenditure, lack of confidence by foreign capital (due to regulatory flip-flopping etc) etc.
For most of the last 35 years, Indonesia and Burma are/were classic right-wing military dictatorships, in which the political and economic elites are still fused or at least joined at the hip.
Brunei is a kind of "rainforest Kuwait", complete with sharia, sultan and decadent minor royals.
And so on. Some of the other East Asian states are combinations of the above archetypes. Others are different again.
regards,
Grant.