Chapter 1 The Economic Map of Asia

Historically, Asia was known for its history of ancient civilizations, philosophies and religions, performing arts and exotic lifestyles, and of course, spicy culinary specialties. The rest of the world made tremendous efforts to discover this land of charm and mysticism. Asia, however, was not known for its economic scores. In general, the Asian economies were preindustrialized, traditional, and agricultural. The share of gross domestic product (GDP) from the agricultural sector was relatively large as the industrial revolution had yet to reach Asia. People farmed with primitive indigenous tools and the marginal productivity of labor was low. Hence, the income of the individual farmer, man or woman, remained insignificant and poverty was the overall end product. As late as the 1970s, ranking economists questioned if Asia beyond Japan could ever industrialize (Krugman, 1994;Lau and Kim, 1994). The doubt is no more. The historic success of the import–export-led growth model in the context of Asia has been robustly explained (Klein, 1990). The world now marvels at the success of Asia's industrial revolution.