WINNERS AND^475
ducers are more important than consumers. Anyone can buy, but not
everyone can make. If people spend less now, they save more (about
one third of income). Their children will have more and Japan will be
the stronger.Behind the Japanese, who by some measures may now be the richest
people in the world, come the "litde tigers" (or "dragons" if you pre
fer), the ambitious Asian newcomers who have shown the way to other
aspirants. Two of these are the former Japanese colonies of Taiwan
and Korea; two, Singapore and Hong-Kong, are global city-states that
hark back to the commercial-industrial centers of late medieval Italy.^4
No group has grown "more rapidly and more consistentiy" over the
last thirty-five years.* In all four the primary assets have been a work
ethic that yields high product for low wages; and, as in Japan, an ex
ceptional manual dexterity that comes from eating with chopsticks and
is especially useful in micro-assembly. (This last argument brings smiles
from my colleagues, but I stand by it. Much of modern assembly is fine
tweezer work, and nothing prepares for it better than eating with chop
sticks from early childhood, )t
The availability of fine-skilled, low-wage labor has made all of these
countries—plus regional followers such as Malaysia, Thailand, and In
donesia—attractive to advanced enterprises elsewhere, especially from
places with overvalued currencies.** Nothing has so persuaded the
Japanese to manufacture abroad as the costiy yen. Never has capital
- World Bank, East-Asian Miracle, p. 28. We are talking of growth rates averaging 6
or more percent per year. Taiwan, it should be noted, for all its economic power, is the
invisible man. The World Bank's Annual Development Report docs not include data on
Taiwan or even list it among the world's nations—this, apparentiy to avoid offending
the People's Republic, which resents any hint of recognition of Taiwan as a separate
entity. In the East Asian Miracle, Taiwan appears as "Taiwan, China." Give the World
Bank a tin medal for pusillanimity. - Almost everyone who writes about the economic performance of these East Asian
units comments on the quality of the workforce, but equally takes it somehow for
granted. Manuel Castells, "Four Asian Tigers," p. 55 and passim, finds the most im
portant common characteristic to be the role of the state, even in Hong Kong. My only
problem with that is that one finds state intervention all over the place, sometimes wise,
sometimes foolish. States may helpeconomic developement, but it takes a world of
good work and enterprise to make the state look good.
- The World Bank calls these the "high-performing Asian economies," which seems
appropriate, but then vitiates its nomenclature by offering dubious growth data for
other countries. What is one to make of a list of countries in order of growth per head
per year 1960-85 that has Egypt, Greece, Syria, and Portugal up in the top twenty, and
Botswana (diamonds) leading all the rest?—East Asian Miracle, p. 3, based on Sum
mers and Heston, "A New Set."
- The World Bank calls these the "high-performing Asian economies," which seems