Word: asia
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...past 40 years, Americans have looked at Asia's phenomenal economic growth and asked, What are they doing right, and what are we doing wrong? Today the question rings louder than ever. As Asia surges out of the Great Recession, experts are searching furiously for the secrets of the region's resilience, those nuggets of Eastern wisdom that could rejuvenate a tired and confused U.S. economy...
...your hopes up. Asia can surely provide lessons for the West, but Americans often take the wrong lessons from Asia's growth stories - and we seem to be doing it again now. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
That's because many people mistakenly believe that Asia offers a superior political-economic model for meeting the modern world's economic challenges. That perception, however, is based on the incorrect notion that Asia's success is the product of intrusive governments. In the 1980s, when Japan was Asia's rising giant, some said its state-led economic system, in which bureaucrats "picked winners" by targeting industries for special support, was better than the more laissez-faire practices of the West. Today, pundits see China's "state capitalism" as the contender for global dominance. The heavier hand of the Chinese...
More important, the idea that the state made China rich is simply not true. China only started growing when the overbearing government got out of the way and allowed private enterprise, both Chinese and foreign, to thrive. The same is true in India. Across Asia, in fact, the primary engine of growth has always been the market, not the state. All rapid-growth Asian economies - including China's - succeeded by latching onto the expanding forces of globalization, through free trade and free flows of capital. South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore may have had active bureaucrats, but the true source...
Widen your perspective: take into account what's happening in Asia outside of China, and the message from the East looks starkly different. The problem with today's analysis of Asia is that it is far too focused on China. China is not Asia. In fact, in many ways, it is the exception (albeit a big one). Asia's other giant outperformer - India - is a quite fractious democracy. Only one significant economy - Vietnam - is following China's lead. Just about everywhere else, policymakers are rejecting the China model. The severity of the financial crisis hasn't caused political leaders...