> The keiretsu are not small, premodern units of production -- the Japanese
> keiretsu alone make up probably a third of Japan's manufacturing output,
and the
> globally competitive, high-tech third at that. Keiretsu-like structures
are
> beginning to show up elsewhere in East Asia
Just like the German _kartellen_ of the late 19th C and early 20th C --- Siemens, Krupp, IG Farben, AEG, Thyssen, etc --- which gave the German economy a quite different structure to the British or US examples. One of my professors, a German, referred to this phenomenon as "lumps in development". There really is nothing new under the sun.
(cf) Hermann Levy, 1934, _Industrial Germany_ http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/levy/Germany.pdf