Reforming East Asian Labor Systems: China, Korea, and Thailand

Just as Karl Polanyi described the “countermovement” of society to contain and repair the disruption caused by the attempted instituting of free markets in nineteenth-century England, so we have reentered a period of social reconsolidation and renewal following two decades of sustained and sometimes forcefully imposed market liberalization, particularly in developing countries. While this most recent countermovement is global in scope, it is perhaps most visible and dramatic among those rapidly growing capitalist and transitional economies of East Asia collectively referred to as the “Asian Tigers.” In recent years, these economies have reinvented themselves as they shifted from guided or state-led development to market-oriented reform and external liberalization, after which they encountered a difficult period of economic crisis and social turmoil, rooted in part in the tensions and disruptions of continuing market reform.1 In response to these emergent difficulties, the Tiger economies have now embarked on a new development journey into relatively uncharted territory.