Four Asian Tigers: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:01, 2 April 2005

Revision as of 16:04, 2 April 2005

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An important question is the relevance of the experience of the Tigers to current economic growth in Mainland China. In the 1980s it was common to argue that the export-centered growth of the Tigers was of limited relevance to Mainland China because the Tigers were small and any effort to mimic them would result in more exports than the developed world could handle. This objection was later less often raised since the pattern of economic growth has been for exports to trigger economic growth in the coastal regions, and for these coastal regions to serve as markets and triggers for growth in the interior.

Since the late 1990s, some of the heat has dissipated from this debate, in part because its become of more historical than current interest: as a result of the Deng Xiaoping reforms, the PRC has one of the world's highest rates of per capita [[Gross domestic product|GDP]] growth (if not the highest). Furthermore, the [[Communist Party of China]] and [[Kuomintang]] today both view [[Taiwan independence]] as a common adversary and are much less likely to assert superiority over the other.

Ironically, and to the chagrin of many Westerners, it is now common for the Communist Party of China to use the experience of the Asian Tigers as justification for its authoritarian rule. The argument by the Party is that at the current stage of economic development the PRC needs a non-democratic system similar to those that the Tigers had in the early years of growth.