Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis

by Walden F. Bello

Challenging the prevailing wisdom on Asia’s “miracle economies,” Dragons in Distress argues that South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are headed for crisis. Writing for a diverse audience, Walden Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld lead their readers on an exploration of the different dimensions of this environmental degradation, agriculture on the road to extinction, deteriorating labor-management relations, eroding political legitimacy, and deepening structural fissures in the industrial economy.

Showing how these problems stem from the dynamics of the model of high speed, export-oriented industrialization, they suggest strategies to surmount the unfolding crisis and open up the path to equitable and ecologically sustainable development. The first comprehensive critique of the “Newly Industrialized Countries” (NICs) paradigm, this book is a very welcome antidote to the usual uncritical celebration of the “dragon” or “tiger” economies.

Genres: Asia

168 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1990

Reviews

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of great data, but his overarching theory of how the economy works is shit. At a certain point, I just started scanning the book for numbers, as that was where this text proved most useful.

His theory is that these Asian Tigers, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan, have outgrown their growth model of using cheap labor to become export powerhouses and that they are going to have lots of trouble making the transition to a different growth model. He highlights the problems they were already at that time (first published in 1990) having trouble dealing with environmental and labor issues and how they were losing business to cheaper countries like China and regions like Southeast Asia. Throughout the book he implies that these three Asian tigers are about to have their lunch eaten by China and Southeast Asia and that they were suffer from massive labor unrest and environmental damage.

But he saw all that not because that was what was happening, but rather because he has this strong leftist orientation and thus wanted to see all that.

And little of what he predicted came to pass. None of those countries stalled. Taiwan is an electronics powerhouse, and still much richer than China, where much of its cheaper manufacturing went. South Korea and Singapore are also rich countries. Certainly, no one in Southeast Asia has challenged any of these Asian Tigers in importance or economic wealth.

Great data, but the lens through which he views the world is flawed. Looking back on this three and a half decades after it was published, little of what he predicted was borne out.

[Abe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally pretty good and data heavy (the latter especially is appreciated) it functions well as a moral and political critique of the NIC model and dispels myths as well. In this sense, I do sort of unfortunately share other criticisms of this book in that though the problems he discusses still remain in some ways the gloomier predictions largely did not come to pass. I don’t really begrudge him for this as it rather difficult to anticipate the future but I suppose it’s worth noting.