I doubt that KMT China could go the export boom route post world war 2. The only reason why the US gave crazy market access to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan was to counter Communist China. A KMT China will basically ruin any hope of Communist inroad into Asia. The US planned to have KMT China form an economic pendant with the rest of East and Southeast Asia. Expect more regional trade post war. The US will not give anybody in Asia market access right off the bat. It will have to be negotiated at GATT and opened up gradually.
Does the economic growth of China seem almost like alternate history?
- Thread starter Malone
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I doubt that KMT China could go the export boom route post world war 2. The only reason why the US gave crazy market access to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan was to counter Communist China. A KMT China will basically ruin any hope of Communist inroad into Asia. The US planned to have KMT China form an economic pendant with the rest of East and Southeast Asia. Expect more regional trade post war. The US will not give anybody in Asia market access right off the bat. It will have to be negotiated at GATT and opened up gradually.
Not necessarily, this study's definition of engaged in the world economy still includes East Asian Tigers that have dabbled with stuff import restrictions and export subsidies. I'm skeptical of the infant industry argument, some involvement in world trade is necessary for development.
Import-substitution doesn't have a great track record, but almost any alternative would probably outperform the OTL command economy.
The Asian tigers protected their infant industries while promoting an export oriented direction. This is the opposite of import substitution. However, the Asian tiger methods should only be temporary. South Korea had good timing, Taiwan liberalized from 1983 onwards but Japan held on too long. This is why they are stuck in Abenomics mode.
If you are a backwards, underdeveloped country with fledgeling industries, you need some type of protection.
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What about the american and european farmers? They are in developed economies but still need protection against cheaper imports from bigger producers in the third world.
I've booked a holiday to Hong Kong in October and I've been reading up on Hong Kong. I learn that I need an Octopus card otherwise I won't be able to function.
According to the World Bank's incredibly useful website Hong Kong's GNI per capita in 2018 is $46310 vs $8690 for China. The relative populations are 7,392,000 vs 1,386,000,000 so if you scale up China's GNI per capita so that it matches Hong Kong it would have a total GDP of $64.185bn (or $64tn).
In comparison the entire world economy is only $80tn. Obviously this kind of calculation is absurd in real-life terms - people aren't robots and the economy is a complicated interconnecting thing. It appears that Hong Kong has avoided taking on lots of debt and has had slow but steady growth since recovering from the Asian financial crisis whereas China skyrocketed from 2004 onwards. It's odd - I think of 2004 as relatively recent history, but although I was aware that China's economy was doing well I didn't comprehend that it was outstripping the entire world.
If the URL works, this graph should show the relative GDPs of China and Japan since 1960 - it also illustrates that Japan has had essentially a lost quarter-century:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN-JP