How Asia Got Rich: Japan, China, and the Asian Miracle

The "East Asian Miracle" was widely touted in the western press as being a vindication of American-style laissez-faire economics. Hong Kong based journalist Terry suggests that this triumphalism is both premature and misguided. She argues that Japan offers an alternative model to the globalization of the Washington Consensus and that Japanese promotion of that model in neighboring countries shows the possibilities of globalization with many regionalisms. She traces the process by which Japan transitioned from having a single country industrial strategy to its challenging the economic ideology of the World Bank and the U.S. government. She locates the origins of this challenge in the grand sweep of Japan's global strategy vis-a-vis China, as they envision a time when they will no longer have the United States as a military or economic protector. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)