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John Smith in the quoted passage from http://resistir.info/livros/imperialism_john_smith.pdf writes: "Sixty-five years on, and only Taiwan and South Korea have risen from the ranks of developing nations, and the global crisis will test how secure is their grip on the higher rungs of the development ladder."
Here's an excerpt from 'Neoliberalism: Myths and Reality' by Martin Hart-Landsberg with respect to South Korea (presumably the same applies to Taiwan) https://monthlyreview.org/2006/04/01/neoliberalism-myths-and-reality that develops Smith's observation:
"Mainstream economists claim that this rise in manufactured exports demonstrates the benefits of liberalization, and thus the importance of WTO-style liberalization agreements for development. However, this argument falsely identifies FDI and exports of manufactures with development, thereby seriously misrepresenting the dynamics of transnational capital accumulation. The reality is that participation in transnational corporate controlled production networks has done little to support rising standards of living, economic stability, or national development prospects.
There are many reasons for this failure. First, those countries that have succeeded in attracting FDI have usually done so in the context of liberalizing and deregulating their economies. This has generally resulted in the destruction of their domestic import-competing industries, causing unemployment, a rapid rise in imports, and industrial hollowing out. Second, the activities located in the third world rarely transfer skills or technology, or encourage domestic industrial linkages. This means that these activities are seldom able to promote a dynamic or nationally integrated process of development. Furthermore the exports produced are highly import dependent, thereby greatly reducing their foreign exchange earning benefits.
Finally, the transnational accumulation process makes third world growth increasingly dependent on external demand. In most cases, the primary final market for these networks is the United States, which means that third world growth comes to depend ever more on the ability of the United States to sustain ever larger trade deficits—an increasingly dubious proposition.
Few countries have escaped these problems. For example, UNCTAD studied the economic performances of “seven of the more advanced developing countries” over the period 1981–96: Hong Kong (China), Malaysia, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan Province of China, and Turkey. These are among the most successful third world exporters of manufactures. Yet, because much of their export activity is organized within transnational corporate controlled production networks, the gains to worker well being or national development have been limited.
For example, average manufacturing value added for the group as a whole remained consistently below the value of manufactured exports over the entire period, with the ratio declining from 76 percent in 1981 to 55 percent in 1996. And, although the group’s average ratio of manufactured exports to GDP rose sharply, its average ratio of manufacturing value added to GDP remained generally unchanged.21 Moreover, while the group as a whole generally maintained a rough balance in manufactured goods trade until the late 1980s, after that point imports grew much faster than exports. Mexico’s experience perhaps best symbolizes the bankruptcy of this growth strategy: “between 1980 and 1997 Mexico’s share in world manufactured exports rose tenfold, while its share in world manufacturing valued added fell by more than one third, and its share in world income (at current dollars) [fell] by about 13 percent.”22"
Moreover, in another article we find that liberalization and relaxation of protectionist policies and export controls have meant that Western transnational "vulture investors" have come in and obtained controlling shares in subsidiaries and sectors of South Korea's main companies, or bought them outright, including Daewoo. Samsung, Hyundai, Korea First Bank, Kor Am Bank, LG-LCD, Ssangyong Group - - and the South Korean economy has become increasingly transnationalized, at the expense of the working class.https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14qbn0SD1qDQVl1Zm5WU2NhS0U/view
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