TRAPS EMBRACED OR ESCAPED
Elites in the Economic Development of Modern Japan and China
by Carl Mosk (University of Victoria, Canada)
About the Author Carl Mosk is Professor of Economics at the University of Victoria. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Victoria in 1988 he taught the University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Clara University. His research and teaching specialties are Economic History, Population Economics, and Development Economics. He has published a number of books on the Japanese economy including Japanese Economic Development: Markets, Norms, Structures (Routledge, 2007). He has worked on economic and demographic issues involving globalization during the period 1850-2000, publishing Trade and Migration in the Modern World (Routledge) in 2005. He resides in Victoria and on Pender Island in British Columbia with his wife Donna and three cats.
This book explores economic development in East Asia between 1870 and 1953 in terms of escaping or succumbing to four interrelated traps: demographic; political; economic; and cultural. Demographic traps include Malthusian traps and poor health and longevity (measured by anthropometric indicators and life expectancy). Political traps include both domestic traps — corruption, internal conflict — and external traps, namely geopolitical traps involving foreign powers. Economic traps include poor infrastructure (banks, harbors, roads, railroads, steam shipping, hydroelectric power) or raw materials, or glaring regional variation in per capita income — all significant barriers to industrialization. Cultural traps include restrictions on “permissible knowledge”, and linguistic barriers to the culture of discourse in science and engineering which restrained the absorbing and diffusion of knowledge from foreign sources. Using Japan and China as examples, this book demonstrates how the four types of traps dynamically interact with one another, and how one of the two countries — Japan — was able to escape from the traps earlier than the other country, China. The book also explores the implications of the argument for post-1950 economic development in East Asia.
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