Industrial development in Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea

A comparative study of the economies of the three economies most often compared to Hong Kong, conducted by four Hong Kong economists with an eye towards offering lessons for the island economy. Beginning the studies in the early 1960s, the start of heavy industrialization in the countries, they come to a number of conclusions. Singapore's reliance on attracting foreign direct investment is found to be very different from the other countries, but deemed to be successful in building a technological industrial base. Taiwan and Korea, on the other hand, focused on promoting and developing domestic industries in high-technology sectors. While they have had some successes, Taiwan's promotion of its automobile industry has been a failure because Taiwan's economy doesn't support the economy of scale required by automobiles, and Korea's encouragement of heavy industries comes at the expense of a slowdown of the development of the light industries and agriculture. Finally a number of recommendations are made for the Hong Kong economy, in light of the lessons learned from the other three countries. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)