BOOK REVIEWS

Yves Bougon et al.: Asie, les nouvelles règles du jeu

This book has been put together by well-informed observers who, over several years, have followed developments in Asia. It has several strengths. Unlike many other books that confine themselves to analysing the economic crisis that has rocked Asia since the summer of 1997, this book offers the reader a much more complete perspective, by drawing together the political and social dimensions of the crisis. Certainly, we may reproach the writers for allowing the chapters dealing with social and political affairs (especially where Japan and South Korea are concerned) to overlap occasionally. In the main, however, they have succeeded in conveying the essential message that the Asian crisis is one of maturity, and the product of weaknesses and sclerosis in the political systems of various countries when it came to managing their economies.

Asian governments thought they could do as they wished. They even thought they could just invent “Asian values”, which they could proudly hold up as the magic potion that explains these last three decades of rapid development. The writers show us what a rude awakening the crisis has been for them. Financial transparency, economic and political checks and balances, efficient business management, the introduction of a social security system: no longer are such questions culturally unsuited to Asia, as the adherents of “Asian values” used to claim. Rather, they are central to Asia’s recovery and long-term economic development.

Alongside these common problems—and this is a further strong point of the book—the writers also emphasise the diversity of Asian responses to these questions. Examining the problems of Japan, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, they present them in the light both of the cross-disciplinary economic arguments resonating across the world economy (financial liberalisation, industrial competition, regional co-operation) and of the purely national reasoning rooted in these countries’ politics, culture and social conditions. This dual viewpoint is of particular interest for China specialists: it liberates them from the notion that Chinese conditions are unique, an intellectual gag that stifles much of the debate and the thinking devoted to China.

The book is brave too, in that the writers avoid the easy stance of explaining in retrospect a crisis that no-one actually foresaw (not even the star economist Paul Krugman who, in his 1996 article on the unsteady foundations of Asian growth, was largely mistaken when he came to explain them (1)). The writers have indeed sought to define the challenges to be faced over the short and medium term by different Asian countries, while weighing up each one’s chances of success. Looking into the future is never easy; and even though the recovery in Asia seems at present to be proceeding faster than expected, the conditions prescribed for it by the writers are still valid today. In different chapters they skilfully analyse a wide range of situations, from that of South Korea, advancing towards a real economic revolution, to that of Malaysia, struggling to preserve an economic system based on cronyism. The writers also describe the various opposing views to be encountered in Asia today. On the one hand, they examine the nationalist belief in Asian values, held by Dr Mahathir, the (still) powerful Lee Kuan-Yew and the Chinese communists; on the other, they set out the internationalist view personified by that old fox of South Korean politics, now President of his country, Kim Dae-jung, the will to fit in with and to contribute to the global values shared by the world’s leading economies.

Readers may regret, nevertheless, the absence of a chapter on India—and the book is unfortunately not alone among Asian studies in ignoring it. India’s demographic tendencies and the new economic policies introduced by recent governments make its progress interesting to observe, to a point where it is capable of making an overwhelming impact on Asia’s economic and political fortunes.

Lastly, in consideration of the book’s layout, the failure to provide an index is a limitation in a book intended as a work of reference. On the other hand, praise must go to the lucidity and conciseness with which the economic explanations for the crisis have been set out, with an apt selection of tables and useful footnotes that will help those readers seeking greater depth in specific areas.

In short, then, this collective undertaking deserves our attention, for its clarity, its multi-disciplinary approach and its wide analytical perspective over a continent in turbulent evolution.

Translated from French original by Philip Liddell