[PEN-L:4657] Re: East Asia Paradigm Shifts?

[lerner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (S. Lerner)]

Mark - Can you e-mail your paper to me?  Thanks  Sally Lerner


>A number of features of recent East Asian development suggest the necessity
>for fresh thinking and new categories.
>
>In contrast to the 60s and 70s, when the most interesting story appeared to
>be the rise of a small number of NIEs within the hierarchy of states that
>comprised the capitalist world economy, the story of the 80s and 90s is the
>rise of the region as a whole at a time when the world economy is in the
>doldrums.
>
>Can the world economy accommodate the rise of a region with more than 1.5
>billion people?  What are the structural implications and how will this
>affect the positioning of other regions and nations?
>
>Barkley Rosser and Bruce McFarling rightly suggest that Braudel can be
>helpful in locating East Asia's rise historically, both in terms of longer
>cycles and by reminding us of the historical trajectory of East Asia as a
>world economic leader and dynamic economic region in times past.  But
>Braudel can't help us to define the categories that distinguish the present
>rise.  The most interesting longterm historical work is being done by
>Japanese historians, Takeshi Hamashita perhaps preeminent among them, who
>pose questions about the historic nature of the East Asian tributary trade
>world over the last millenium, and reflect on linkages to contemporary
>changes.
>
>Anthony D'Costa finds it helpful to describe what is happening in Asia as
>"capitalist development in a marxist sense" and "imperialism (export of
>capital)."  There is plenty of "capitalism" and plenty of export of capital
>going on. . . yet these categories alone don't help much to solve the
>riddle: why East Asia? why not, say, Latin America or North America? Nor,
>imo, do they capture what is most interesting and distinctive about East
>Asia pivoting on China and its relations with other economies.
>
>The view that what we are seeing is "capitalism" is widely shared across
>the political spectrum.  For me, neither "capitalism" nor "socialism" help
>much to clarify what is going on in China, a nation that has not
>experienced a political revolution, one in which Communist Party rule is
>without significant direct challenge, and  in which the most explosive
>forms of growth defy easy categorization of this kind.
>
>The most dynamic sectors of the Chinese economy are found not in the cities
>but in the countryside.  Their form, the township and village enterprises
>does not readily accommodate notions of socialism or capitalism: it is
>redistributive, in the sense that these enterprises often are owned and run
>by county, township or village government; but they are very much in the
>market, subject to bankruptcy and the discipline of a Chinese style law of
>value or, if you prefer, hard budget constraints; many are also hybrid
>forms which include private as well as foreign capital cheek by jowl with
>local government.  They constitute important engines for growth and the
>vast gains in employment and income for underemployed rural workers.  We
>can view this from many angles: it is the dynamic of rural
>industrialization which distinguishes China from urban-centered development
>elsewhere; it is the source of bonanza for foreign capital (virtually all
>Hong Kong industry, and already significant parts of Taiwan's are moving or
>have moved to China).  It is a source of cheap labor . . . but we also
>observe the anticipated effects of rising labor costs in the dynamic
>coastal regions and capital's move in search of cheaper labor.
>
>The emergence of the regional economy (with far weaker political or
>strategic institutions than those found in EC or even now in North America)
>forces us to rethink the limits of national approaches to economics shared
>by bourgeois, marxist, and world system economists, despite the claims and
>efforts of the latter to transcend national limits.  Take China's borders:
>long virtually impermeable, they now should be understood not as walls or
>barriers but as magnets or hot zones for the passage of capital and trade.
>And while the state continues to play a crucial role, much of what goes on
>occurs quite outside of, often in conflict with the desires of policymakers
>at the center.  The emergence of Greater China, and the regional and global
>role of Chinese (including overseas Chinese) enterprise, permit new
>approaches to economic change.
>
>An extension of this point, one of Hamashita's contributions, is that it
>also forces us to rethink geography.  Whereas my mental map of Asia had
>long focused on land masses centered on China, I now see concentric circles
>of seas and coastal regions as the defining feature, and opportunity, for
>the region: a map which slices across and redefiines national boundaries. .
>. just as the surge of coastal China may well give rise to new national
>boundaries in that region.
>
>Finally, Giovanni Arrighi's important new book on the Long Twentieth
>Century draws our attention to the study of hegemonic cycles, and in
>particular to the crucial role of financial power in periods of hegemonic
>shift like the present . . . one clue to East Asian regional and global
>change.
>
>My paper (draft) "China, Japan and the Regional Political Economy of East
>Asia, 1945-1995, is available by e-mail to anyone who wishes to pursue
>discussion of these issues.
>
>mark selden