Rethinking Colonialism and the Origins of
the Developmental State in East Asia
WONIK KIM
Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA
ABSTRACT Previous studies on economic development in East Asia focus exclusively on the recent
period (since the 1960s) and posit that East Asian ‘‘miracles’’ were largely a result of the
state’s exceptional capacity to implement consistent industrial policy. Yet, they neglect the question
of the origins of the developmental state. To confront this neglect, this article makes a
macro-historical comparison between Northeast and Southeast Asia, highlighting colonialism,
the role of income inequality, and subsequent socio-economic transformations. It is argued that
a crucial historical phase for new economic trajectory was the decolonisation period when East
Asian countries had an opportunity to break away from negative colonial legacies. This article
sheds new light on the ways in which colonialism shapes long-term economic development in East
Asia.
KEY WORDS: Economic development, inequality, colonialism, the developmental state,
East Asia
In 1820, the richest country in East Asia was the Philippines, while the poorest area
was today’s Taiwan. A hundred and fifty years later, c. 1970, the level of economic
development in Taiwan was double that in the Philippines. Thirty years later, we
now pay witness to Taiwan with a per capita income seven times higher than that
of the Philippines. The difference between their rates of growth in per capita income
is remarkable as well. For 1970-2000, the average growth rate in Taiwan was 7%,
while that in the Philippines was 1%. Using Lucas’ (1988) rule of thumb to obtain
the number of years it takes for income to double (divide 70 by the growth rate), we
can see that the Philippines’ per capita income will double every 70 years; Taiwan’s,
every 10 years. Taiwan has achieved an economic miracle, while the Philippines is
locked in a poverty trap. These two countries’ divergent economic performances
largely reflect an overall difference between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. For
a long time, Southeast Asian countries in general were as rich as, or even wealthier
than, Northeast Asian counterparts. Yet they fell behind. A clear ‘‘reversal of
fortune’’ took place in East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, and the income gap between
these two regions has been getting wider ever since.
Correspondence Address: Wonik Kim, Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, 240
Stubbs Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA. Email: wkim@lsu.edu
Journal of Contemporary Asia
Vol. 39, No. 3, August 2009, pp. 382–399
ISSN 0047-2336 Print/1752-7554 Online/09/030382-18 Ó 2009 Journal of Contemporary Asia
DOI: 10.1080/00472330902944446
The general purpose of this article is to explain why this happened. The
predominant explanation has been provided by the developmental state theory.
Although the previous studies in this research paradigm are successful in identifying
the positive features of the East Asian state apparatus that contributed to
phenomenal economic growth, they have neglected the question of the origins of
the developmental state. Taking this issue seriously, I have conducted a macrohistorical
comparison between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. Based on the
theoretical framework of comparative colonialism recently developed in the field of
political economy, I argue that the developmental state fundamentally requires
relative income equality as the initial socio-economic condition. Some of the
Northeast Asian countries (e.g., Japan, Taiwan and Korea) undertook radical land
reforms that dramatically equalised income in society. While most Southeast Asian
countries inherited ‘‘extractive colonial institutions’’ that perpetuated income
inequality, Korea and Taiwan were able to break away from the colonial legacy,
which allowed the emergence of the developmental state.
This article is organised as follows. The next section provides a critical review of
the developmental state theory. This is followed by a discussion of divergent
economic trajectories in Northeast and Southeast Asia from a historical perspective.
The next section explores theoretical issues and presents the various findings
including results from statistical analysis. The final section provides a brief summary.
The Developmental State Revisited
It seems to be now generally accepted that the success of the East Asian tigers – with
Japan as a pioneer, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore as models, and China as a tiger
still waking up – was largely a result of the crucial role played by the state. The
literature on East Asian ‘‘miracles’’ marshals abundant evidence to focus its
explanations exclusively on the East Asian state’s exceptional capacity to implement
industrial policy leading to phenomenal economic growth (e.g. Amsden, 1989;
Chibber, 2003; Evans, 1995; Johnson, 1982; Wade, 1990; Woo-Cumings, 1999). The
research paradigm in this literature largely centres on the developmental state,
providing a hopeful solution to those who have been disillusioned by neo-classical
theory’s universal policy implications as well as dependency theory’s impotent policy
prescriptions.
Neo-classical economic models generally posit that the role of the state should be
minimal in generating economic development, since any external influence other
than market imperatives would distort the allocation mechanism, dampen incentives
to invest, lower economic growth, and ultimately lead to a Pareto inefficient outcome
where some people are worse off due to the centralised allocation mechanism of
state intervention. The crux of policies adhering to the ‘‘official’’ doctrine of the
World Bank is fundamentally neo-classical and sends a strong universal message to
developing countries: deregulation, privatisation, central bank independence,
independent judiciary, and dismantling of the welfare state.
Dependency theory, emerging from Latin American experiences, criticised this
kind of universal message, claiming that developing countries’ retardation in terms
of economic development is due to the mode of ‘‘insertion’’ of national economies
into the world economic system (e.g. Carodoso and Falleto, 1979). This suggests that
Colonialism and the Developmental State in East Asia 383
underdevelopment is structural in that emulating ‘‘right’’ policies a` la Washington
Consensus cannot change poverty traps and may even deepen them.
The success of development state theory lies in its explanatory power, which
suggests a starkly opposite message to the neo-classical one. Based on particular
experiences in selective East Asian countries, this theory shows that the tiger
economies achieved miracles by doing exactly what the World Bank had told them
not to do: selecting and disciplining industries, connecting bureaucrats to businesses,
and ‘‘getting relative prices wrong’’ (Amsden, 1989). The theory has gained notable
attention from many scholars and decision makers for the particularity, not
universality, on which it is based. Moreover, it is this East Asian particularity, as
opposed to Latin American particularity, that has given poor countries a practical
solution to escape from their poverty traps. Not only is the theory practical, but it is
also attractive, because the tigers’ phenomenal growth and rapid transformation
from poverty traps to miracles have left a strong impression that there is some sort of
a short cut to sustainable high growth, namely a ‘‘pathway from periphery’’
(Haggard, 1990).
What is the engine of East Asian miracles? Although developmental state theorists
of different stripes propose various explanations, we can summarise the central
formulation of developmental state theory as follows.1
First, a particular industrial
policy is required to rapidly transform the ‘‘easy stage’’ of import-substituting
industrialisation to export-orientated industrialization (EOI). Essential to this type
of industrial policy is selecting promising industries and sectors, and then protecting,
subsidising, and disciplining them. Secondly, the state needs a strong capacity to
implement and sustain ‘‘big push’’ programmes. The state must also have an ability
to insulate itself from particular interests in society. State capacity and insulation are
two pillars of state autonomy, and usually they are embodied in a bureaucratic nodal
agency that can co-ordinate industrial policies (e.g. Japan’s Ministry of International
and Trade Industry or MITI and Korea’s Economic Planning Board or EPB).
Finally, the state is not only autonomous but also embedded in society: there is a
tight network of informal institutional linkages between economic planners in the
state and business sectors in society. This embeddedness helps the state to adopt
optimal industrial policies that maximise industrial interests and, as a positive
externality, social interests in the form of a high level of economic development.
Thus, a set of industrial policies characterised by EOI, state autonomy (capacity and
insulation), bureaucratic co-ordination institutions, and embeddedness are the
necessary elements for the developmental state to produce economic miracles.
Developmental state theory has been so successful in explaining the remarkable
East Asian economic performances that even the World Bank (1993), the centre of
neo-liberal doctrine, has come to admit the role of the state and to incorporate some
of its elements in its recommendations to other developing countries. In fact, statedirected
industrial policy is not just an East Asian phenomenon; it has also a strong
affinity with some of the European countries’ mercantilism in the early nineteenth
century. Chang (2002) shows that state intervention in the economy is not a
particular response that happened in specific historical contexts in East Asia, but a
universal feature common to all of the successful economies at an early stage of their
industrialisation, including England and the USA, currently hailed by liberal market
advocates as a paragon of success. If we accept this claim, the developmental state
384 W. Kim
theory ceases to be a model of particularity but aims at universality, so that other
developing countries can emulate the East Asian model.
The conventional economic critiques of developmental state theory centre on the
causal link between the EOI and actual economic outcomes. Rodrik’s (1995) detailed
study reveals that East Asia’s growth can be largely accounted for by its rapid capital
accumulation and investment and that the growth had little to do with industrial
policy. In fact, he argues that the ELI was the result, not the cause, of economic
success. Another set of careful calculations was done by Young (1995) for the four
East Asian Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and
Singapore). For these countries, technological innovation and efficiency enhancement
measured by total factor productivity were very low during the miracle period,
but the rapid accumulation of capital and high level of labour force participation
were the main contributors to total growth. In other words, economic success was
based purely on perspiration rather than inspiration. These findings led Krugman
(1994) to argue that there is nothing mysterious about the Asian miracles, and that
economic performance based on the mere increase in inputs (capital and labour), as
in the case of East Asia, will inevitably show diminishing returns.
The main problem with these arguments is that they still need to explain why some
East Asian countries were able to mobilise a tremendous labour force and
successfully launch a big push to industrialise, while other developing countries
simply did not conduct such a bold economic plan. What the arguments criticise is
the effectiveness of the developmental state’s strategy, which may not lead to
sustainable growth, but their theory nevertheless takes as a premise that state
capacity and insulation are at least necessary for input-driven growth.
Another line of critique targets the nature of embeddedness. There is no
theoretical reason to believe that connection between economic bureaucrats and
business sectors will entail optimal policies. Indeed, one can think that a natural
consequence from this connection is collusion or monopoly, which in turn creates
moral hazards for industrialists and investors, ultimately resulting in a deadweight
loss for society. This critique has gained some empirical credibility after a series of
corruption scandals were revealed in Japan and South Korea during the 1990s and
after the Asian financial crisis erupted in 1997. The economy under the
developmental state was nothing but ‘‘crony capitalism’’ (Kang, 2002). The critique
is valid, for the developmental state theorists are usually silent about the negative
externalities of embeddedness to the overall economy, and usually they do not
specify the condition under which this close linkage necessarily leads to economic
development. Notice that this was a typical liberal rationale for the IMF-style
structural adjustment programmes in the countries hit by the financial crisis of 1997.
Yet even some critics of money politics in East Asia argue that some sort of rentseeking
behaviours or capture of private goods can be necessary for economic
development; otherwise there would be no incentive for both ruling elites and
industrialists to provide public goods (Kang, 2002). Seen this way, the problem
becomes simply a question of degree – how tolerable are bribery and money politics
for overall economic development? And, to be sure, money politics has been an issue
for more than just the East Asian countries.2
All these conventional critiques and debates largely miss one important aspect of
development state theory: the question of the origins of the developmental state.
Colonialism and the Developmental State in East Asia 385
Most studies on East Asian miracles have focused exclusively on the 1960s-80s, when
‘‘big push’’ industrialisation was launched and worked effectively. They have not
succeeded in resolving a problem arising from the endogeneity of the developmental
state; they take this type of institution as exogenous, neglecting the fact that the
creation of these institutions is linked with socio-economic factors that may be
correlated with economic development. In other words, they have not fully explored
the origins of the developmental state. As Cumings (1984: 3) points out, ‘‘[i]f there
has been an economic miracle in East Asia, it has not occurred just since 1960; it
would be profoundly ahistorical to think that it did.’’ To confront these difficulties, it
is necessary to consider a longer historical experience of East Asia: its colonial
legacies, the institutional frameworks inherited or established at independence, and
subsequent political socio-economic transformations.
Some detailed case studies have broadened our historical horizon, going back to
the colonial period and highlighting the historical continuity of economic
development. Eckert (1991) and McNamara (1990) document in detail the historical
formation of key Korean enterprises and argue that Korean capitalism and its
subsequent economic growth would not have been possible without Japanese
colonialism. In this spirit, a group of Korean economic historians at the Nakungdae
Institute have recently published a series of impressive empirical studies, in which
they argue that the basic industrial infrastructure necessary for the subsequent
economic miracle had been established already under Japanese colonial rule (Kim,
2006; Lee, 2004; Park, 2006). Political scientists Kholi (1994, 2004) and Krieckhaus
(2006) repeat this Japanese lineage thesis. These scholars provide solid evidence
about economic improvement during the Japanese colonial period, but, for their
continuation thesis to work, the economic downturn under the ‘‘predatory’’ Lee
regime from the end of colonial rule to the 1960s should be explored (Haggard et al.,
1997). Their narratives about the effects of Japanese colonialism on post-colonial
economic success are not grounded in theory or empirical observation that
systematically supports the continuation.3
A more serious problem with these
studies is their lack of comparative analysis. As we see in the next section, for a long
period of time some of the Southeast Asian countries were as rich as, or even
wealthier than, Korea and Taiwan. It may be true that the Korean economy grew
during the Japanese colonial period, just as Southeast Asian economies grew to an
even greater extent during the European colonial period. Yet the countries in
Southeast Asia all fell behind Korea and Taiwan in the late twentieth century.
Another argument takes a different perspective to explore the origins of the
developmental state. Taking Tilly’s (1985) famous assertion seriously – ‘‘war makes
the state, and the state makes war’’ – this theory emphasises the external threat due
to the unique geopolitical environment in East Asia. Unlike most Southeast Asian
countries, Taiwan and Korea have faced a severe security threat from the People’s
Republic of China and North Korea, respectively. In these conditions, the ruling
elites in these countries had a strong incentive to increase the size of the economy for
their survival. At the same time, the political regime gained co-operation from the
citizens who reaped material benefits from the high level of economic growth
(Cumings, 1984; Doner et al., 2005; Woo-Cumings, 1999). Moreover, geopolitics
meant that Korea and Taiwan received enormous foreign aid from the USA, which
enabled them to initiate their industrial transformation (Stubbs, 1999). Although the
386 W. Kim
story is plausible for Korea and Taiwan, the external threat thesis can work in an
opposite direction. Callahan’s (2003) painstaking work suggests that Burma is poor
precisely because of this war factor, which has entailed the remarkable durability of
the Burmese military regime and a persistent low-growth pattern. ‘‘Making enemies’’
does not necessarily translate into a dramatic increase in economic development.
What is lacking in the existing studies on the origins of the developmental state is
the socio-economic factor that gave rise to the developmental state, which in turn
brought economic growth. Several recent political economy studies shed new light on
comparative colonialism and economic development, by focusing on this socioeconomic
mechanism (Acemoglu et al., 2001, 2002; Engerman and Sokoloff, 2002,
2005). They take a historical perspective and provide a sophisticated theory
regarding the impacts of different colonial institutions. Building on their studies, I
shall argue in what follows that the initial condition with regard to income
distribution in a society was fundamental to the emergence of the developmental
state, for the egalitarian distribution of income was common to all successful
Northeast Asian economies, as opposed to their Southeast Asian counterparts. This
income equality was achieved through radical land reforms undertaken soon after
independence. In this sense, the economic successes were not because of the
continuing influences from colonialism but because of the radical rupture from the
colonial legacy. Before I develop this theory and present evidence, a brief discussion
of the historical trends in East Asian development is in order.
Historical Trends
In this section, we take a look at economic development in East Asia from a long
historical perspective. Let us look at the raw data. The historical data on income per
capita (GDP per capita) are taken from Maddison (2003).4
Figure 1 presents income
per capita in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia from 1820 to 2000.5
All previous
studies have pointed out that the developmental state can be found in Northeast
Asia, with the sole exception of Singapore. From this graph, we can clearly identify
the divergent trajectories of economic development between these two regions.
Notice that on average, Southeast Asian countries were slightly wealthier than
Northeast Asian countries for a very long period of time. Divergence in development
paths occurred only after the 1960s solely because of the explosive growth in
Northeast Asia. The gap has only become wider since then.
The overall accumulation of wealth in Southeast Asia before the twentieth century
has been well documented. Criticising Eurocentrism in economic history, recent
scholarship has claimed that the largest trade core in the world for almost five
hundred years (1300-1800) centred on the Indian Ocean in which Southeast Asia was
included and played an important role (Abu-Lughod, 1989; Chaudhuri, 1990;
Frank, 1998; Lieberman, 2003; Marks, 2007). According to Frank (1998: xxv), this
overwhelming concentration of wealth and resources was a prime incentive for
Europeans to colonise this area later on, in other words, to ‘‘buy a ticket on the
Asian train.’’ These analysts have asserted that the colonisation of Asia enabled
Europe to launch the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century.
Yet, this picture raises a question about generalisation. Obviously, not all the
countries are the same in terms of economic development. Northeast Asia contains
Colonialism and the Developmental State in East Asia 387
some ‘‘disasters’’ as well as ‘‘miracles.’’ Mongolia and North Korea are unsuccessful
economies. In Southeast Asia, countries’ performances are diverse, with Singapore
as a clearly successful outlier; many have also proposed Malaysia and Thailand as
second generation tigers. Moreover, Southeast Asian economies did grow over time.
Hence, the correct question would be not why Southeast Asia fell behind compared
to Northeast Asia, but why most Northeast Asian countries were able to develop
exceptionally faster than most Southeast Asian countries in very recent history.
Given this caveat, let us study some countries’ actual figures over time. Table 1
breaks down per capita income by selected countries and years. As of 1820, the
richest country in East Asia (even in Asia as a whole) was the Philippines, where the
per capita income was $704. This is not surprising, because the Philippines under
Spanish colonial rule played a crucial role as the largest hub in the world silver trade
(Pomeranz, 2000: 159-62). Thailand was the third wealthiest country right after
Japan, and per capita incomes in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore were all
similarly high. China6
and Korea were slightly behind, and Taiwan was clearly the
poorest ($499). This pattern lasted until the end of the nineteenth century, as we see
that the Philippines was still the richest area in 1870. Most countries’ economies,
save China’s, started to grow in the early twentieth century. This early take-off in
growth is confirmed by previous case studies, as discussed by the Korean scholars of
recent economic history. These findings led them to argue that Japanese colonialism
was not completely malevolent, contrary to nationalist Korean scholars’ belief.
However, because we see an increase in the income level in other countries, we can
conclude that economic development was not limited to some peculiarity of Japanese
rule; in fact, other countries under European colonial rule grew at even higher rates.
Figure 1. Divergent paths of GDP per capita in East Asia 1820-2000. Source: data are taken
from Maddison (2003).
388 W. Kim
Most countries’ per capita incomes, however, either dropped or stagnated right
after they became independent. The period from 1945 to the 1950s was a disastrous
era for East Asia as a whole. The decreases in income levels during this period differ
from country to country, but they all experienced some kind of economic crisis
during the decolonisation period. Burma and Korea were the worst cases. Burma
had to face a drop in income of more than 60%, and per capita income in
Korea tumbled from $1020 to $770. The general trend of the income reduction
during this period was so evident that we can clearly identify it from the graph in
Figure 1. If we accept these figures, the Japanese lineage thesis, which highlights the
continuation between the colonial period and the miracle period of the post-1970s,
has no face value. The disintegration of colonial administrations left East Asian
countries without growth, suggesting economic development under colonialism was
unequal development – only beneficial to the colonisers, or in Huh’s (2005) apt
words, ‘‘development without development.’’ But as the scholars for the continuation
thesis can argue, it may be that the productive ‘‘potential’’ embedded in physical
infrastructures and modern bureaucracy created by colonial regimes remained
largely intact during the political economic turmoil of de-colonization, survived the
Korean War, and became the main driving force that led to the emergence of
the developmental state and its subsequent growth. One cannot evaluate this claim
from these simple statistics. We need a different approach, as discussed in the next
section.
To summarise the development patterns, it is useful to think in terms of three
periods. The long colonial period roughly until the end of World War II was the one
in which most Southeast Asian countries were wealthier than their Northeast Asian
counterparts. Economic growth was slow for a long time but started to increase
during the first half of the twentieth century. We can identify the short period
roughly between 1940 and 1960, characterised by the independence era, when
colonial institutions suddenly collapsed and nation-state building began. An
excessively negative growth rate and a radical decrease in per capita income were
the general pattern. Finally, during the last three decades of the twentieth century,
Table 1. GDP per capita in East Asia by the Selective countries and years
Countries 1820 1870 1930 1950 1970 2000
Burma 504 504 902 396 646 1353
China 600 530 567 439 783 3425
Indonesia 612 654 1164 840 1194 3203
Japan 669 737 1850 1921 9714 21069
Korea 600 604 1020 770 1954 14243
Malaysia 605 663 1636 1559 2079 7872
Philippines 704 776 1476 1070 1764 2385
Singapore 615 682 1279 2219 4439 22207
Taiwan 499 550 1099 924 2980 16642
Thailand 646 712 793 817 1694 6336
Vietnam 527 505 724 658 735 1790
Note: GDP per capita is the Geary-Khamis 1990 purchasing power parity dollars.
Source: data are taken from Maddison (2003).
Colonialism and the Developmental State in East Asia 389
the great divergence took place, and the gap between Northeast Asia and
Southeast Asia was sufficiently large on average. In the next section, I shall argue
that what happened during this second period of the short post-colonisation
independence phase was crucial for the reversal of fortune that happened in the third
period.
Colonial Institutions, Inequality and Long-term Growth
I have criticised the existing studies of the developmental state for their fundamental
theoretical lacuna, namely the issue of origins. The developmental state is not manna
from heaven. Stephen Haggard (2004: 56) has recently addressed the same question
to the whole body of developmental state literature:
the problem is deeper. The preoccupation with institutions, and the
functionalism in much institutionalist thinking, has obscured more fundamental
political and social processes that are themselves determinants of institutional
form and quality.
This problem with the endogeneity of institutions is serious, because if there is some
condition that directly gave rise to the developmental state, we may wrongly
attribute the successful economic outcomes solely to the nature of that stateapparatus
and its industrial policies. Although some attempts have been made to
tackle the question of origins, future studies need a more solid comparative historical
perspective and should place more emphasis on socio-economic conditions.
Building on recent theoretical advances in the political economy literature, I
argue that income distribution in society is a fundamental cause, not a result, of
long-term economic growth. Income distribution is a factor shaped by history and
supported by institutions. Acemoglu et al. (2001, 2002), Banerjee and Iyer (2005)
and Engerman and Sokoloff (2002, 2005) have generalised the idea of historical
institutions that determine inequality, which in turn, impedes sustainable economic
development. They have extended our usual sample of analysis, going back to the
foundational moments of colonisation. They have found that colonial institutions
played a crucial role in perpetuating income distribution in society; these initial
institutions shaped the evolution of the conditions under which subsequent
development would occur. The remarkable finding of Acemoglu et al. (2001, 2002)
is that countries that were wealthier in 1500 are the ones that are less
developed now, suggesting that the crucial factor for growth in the long term is
colonialism.
The theory is briefly as follows. When colonisers arrived in a ‘‘new territory,’’ they
established two types of colonial institutions, depending on local conditions and the
nature of pre-existing institutions. When Europeans colonised the world outside
Europe, they found a diversity of local conditions or ‘‘endowments’’ in terms of soils,
climates, natural resources, and size and density of the native population. Those
areas that had a large labour force, humid weather and abundant natural resources
were also characterised by well-developed pre-existing institutions. In those areas,
the colonisers had no incentive to do anything but utilise pre-existing institutions and
extract the resources, so they established ‘‘extractive colonial institutions.’’
390 W. Kim
The important socio-economic outcome from this type of colonial institution was the
great degree of income inequality between the coloniser and the colonised. In
contrast, those areas that had small labour forces and virtually no pre-existing
institutions had little to exploit, so colonisers settled and established ‘‘egalitarian
institutions’’ that were good for economic development. Engerman and Sokoloff
(2002, 2005) categorise Latin America as a typical example of the former (e.g.
institutions that support big plantations known as latifundia) and North America as
the latter.
This theoretical framework is very useful for understanding the generic nature of
colonial institutions in East Asia. Like their Latin American counterparts, the
colonial institutions in East Asia were largely extractive and unequal by nature. As
mentioned in the previous section, the new scholarship in Asian economic history
points out that Asia as a whole, especially Southeast Asia before the nineteenth
century, was the richest area in the world with an abundant labour force and welldeveloped
pre-colonial institutions (see Lieberman, 2003). When Europeans
colonised Southeast Asia except Thailand, they built purely extractive colonial
regimes, and few of them settled. During the whole colonial period in Southeast
Asia, the percentage of Europeans in the total population never exceeded 1%, and
the highest percentage was 0.77% in Malaya in 1931. These are extremely small
numbers relative to Latin America. In a sense, no Asian colony was a true settler
colony, which suggests that the degree of exploitation was huge in this region
(Goodwin, 2001: 83-4). It is not difficult to find studies that document the
exploitative nature of Asian colonial regimes. For example, Frankema’s recent case
study of Malaysia shows that the British set up a huge rubber and tin industry only
to export these materials, indicating that the Malayan wealth drain was one of the
largest. The Gini-coefficient of land inequality right after independence was 0.68,
which is the highest in Asia.7
Thus, Malaysia offers ‘‘a fine model of a country with
highly favorable conditions to tropical cash crop cultivation leading to high levels of
land inequality’’ (Frankema 2006: 11-15).
Contrary to Southeast Asian countries, the Korean Peninsula had a higher
number of Japanese who lived in the colony (2-3% of the total population). Yet this
does not mean that the degree of inequality was low in Korea under the Japanese
colonial rule. Huh’s (2005) empirical study demonstrates that c. 1940, the Japanese,
only 0.2% of total agricultural workers, owned more than 50% of total arable land
and 95% of total assets in the industrial and mining sectors. Moreover, in the
situations where few colonisers settled, they had to implement a kind of indirect rule
system, relying on some indigenous intermediaries. This indirect rule always implied
a divide and rule strategy. To maximise the efficiency of governance, the colonial
ruler co-opted some portion of society, usually landlords, industrialists and
intellectuals, into the colonial regime to share economic benefits (Cogneau and
Guenard, 2003) Thus, colonial institutions also entailed inequality between the
indigenous elites who supported the colonial rule, and the vast majority of the
population.
Why is income inequality the main culprit for underdevelopment? Conventional
treatments on the impact of inequality on growth typically focus on the impact of
inequality on savings or investment rates. Yet a recent political economic
formulation in the context of comparative colonialism suggests an institutional
Colonialism and the Developmental State in East Asia 391
mechanism through which inequality affects development. Colonial rule involved
‘‘bad’’ institutions that perpetuated income inequality, which, in turn, impedes the
provision of public goods and infrastructure, economic opportunities and
broad participation in the commercial economy (Engerman and Sokoloff, 2002,
2005). The role of institutions became crucial when ‘‘the arrival of a new
technology and the opportunity to industrialise’’ emerged on the horizon. When
this new opportunity emerged, the effect of institutions was to block industrialisa-
tion.
The elites may want to block investments in new industrial activities because it
may be that these outside groups, not the elites themselves, will benefit from
these activities . . . They may want to block these new activities, fearing political
turbulence and the threat to their political power that new technologies will
bring (Acemoglu et al., 2002: 1273).8
The crucial element in this formulation is the long-lasting effect of colonialism even
after independence. The reason is that extractive colonial institutions entailed an
extreme degree of inequality, which in turn, benefited the existing ruling elites and
ensured them a return to power, rendering institutions difficult to change. As
mentioned in the previous section, the historical opportunity that would break these
colonial legacies occurred during the 1950s when the colonisers suddenly left the
colonies. When the colonisers left, the accumulation of wealth built under colonial
institutions was also completely gone. But the institutional structure and social
organisation remained intact. The critical question was whether or not the
indigenous elites after independence inherited these inegalitarian colonial regimes.
Goodwin (2001: 72-105) persuasively explains the political dynamics right after the
dissolution of colonial rule, showing that all the Southeast Asian countries – with the
sole exception of Vietnam, which made a social revolution – more or less took over
the existing colonial institutional structure and established ‘‘neo-colonial rule.’’ As a
result, profound inequality was inherited as well, and the colonial legacy continued
after independence. This observation is consistent with the theory I have advanced.
The neo-colonial elites needed inegalitarian institutions to defend their privileges.
These elites were unwilling to change institutions, and without the institutional
change the new development path could not be realised. Hence, colonial institutions
reproduced themselves in the post-colonial epoch.
In stark contrast, Korea and Taiwan experienced a completely different mode of
de-colonisation. During the 1950s, they implemented perhaps the most comprehensive
land reforms that dramatically equalised income and resources. The details of
these remarkable agrarian reforms in Korea, Taiwan and Japan, and their effects on
development and income distribution have been well documented and extensively
researched (e.g. Borras, 2006; Dorner and Thiesenhusen, 1990; Griffin et al., 2002;
Kay, 2002). Here, it is sufficient to point out some facts. After land reforms were
introduced from 1949 to 1953 in Taiwan under the Guomindang government, 48%
of agricultural households received land (Griffin et al., 2002: 304-5). Total
production in agriculture grew 5% from 1952 to 1964. In Korea, land reform was
first introduced by the US military government in 1945, and further reforms were
implemented in 1949 and 1950 under the Korean government. After a series of
392 W. Kim
reforms, 65% of land was redistributed, and 77% of the farmers came to own land
(Borras, 2006: 88). The land reforms in Japan were broadly similar to those in
Taiwan and Korea. As a result, income and land inequality in these countries prior
to the developmental state c. 1960 were the lowest among developing countries.
Gini-coefficients for land distribution as of 1960 are 0.39 for Japan, 0.47 for Taiwan,
and 0.20 for Korea (Griffin et al., 2002: 302). The sweeping land reforms in these
countries cut them off completely from the colonial legacy and created the socioeconomic
condition of income equality that was favourable for economic
development. Rodrik (1995) concludes that almost 90% of Korea and Taiwan’s
growth experience since 1960 can be ‘‘explained’’ by this condition of income
distribution. Kholi (1994, 2004), who argues for the Japanese lineage thesis,
maintains that the Korean and Taiwanese developmental states were very much
Japanese-style. But that concerns only the style, neither more nor less.
To schematically summarise the causal argument, one can identify three historical
paths of development from the colonisation era, as succinctly depicted in Figure 2.
The first path is that the colonisers settled and established egalitarian colonial
institutions in the areas where there were scarce resources for development and
relatively poor pre-existing institutions. These institutions were ‘‘good’’ for
subsequent growth, because they were based on income equality (North America).
Secondly, in the areas where there were abundant resources and well-developed preexisting
institutions, the colonisers did not settle and created extractive institutions.
These institutions were ‘‘bad’’ for growth, because they were based on income
inequality. When the moment of independence arrived, the new indigenous elites
established neo-colonial institutions and inherited inequality from colonial rule
(Latin America and Southeast Asia). These two paths suggest that there is strong
path dependency for growth in the long term. But I have presented another path
found in rare cases in Northeast Asia. In this path, what matters for subsequent
growth is path independency.9
The causal story in this trajectory is similar to the one
found in Southeast Asia, but there was the rupture or clear break away from
Figure 2. Three histrical paths: a long-term perspective.
Colonialism and the Developmental State in East Asia 393
extractive colonial institutions, during the decolonisation period. Radical land
reform was the most significant event for this bifurcation.10
Land reforms in Northeast Asia were seen as an exogenous shock of historical
accident. In this regard, I argue for historical contingency, and the idea of
conjuncture works in my story. As Marks (2007: 12) formulates, a conjuncture
happens ‘‘when several otherwise independent developments come together in ways
that interact with one another, creating a unique historical moment.’’ In my story,
the disintegration of colonial rule and land reforms – two independent factors – came
together and led to a new equilibrium characterised by income equality. This means
that once income equality is in place, it must result in a systematically positive effect
on development through the developmental state.
One may claim that the inference I have made can be the usual logical fallacy of
post hoc ergo propter hoc: because land reforms that equalised income happened to
occur prior to the emergence of the developmental state, land reforms caused the
emergence of the developmental state. Statistical analysis is one of the proper
approaches to establish systematic evidence against this fallacy. Specifically, the
purpose of statistical analysis is: (1) to show macro-systematic patterns between
income distribution and development, controlling for other factors; and (2) to see if
income distribution gave rise to the developmental state. The data are time-seriescross-sectional
(the unit is country-year), and the sample of analysis contains
fourteen Asian countries from 1870 to 1979 (see note 5 for the countries). The timeseries
ends in 1979, due to the availability of data on income distribution. Given the
paucity of data for the early years, there are missing observations.
First, let us analyse the impact of income distribution on development. The
dependent variable is per capita income taken from Maddison (2003). Historical
data on income distribution comparable across countries are difficult to come by.
Vanhanen’s (1997) dataset on the percentage of family farms is widely known as the
most comprehensive in terms of coverage of years and countries. The percentage of
family farms (Family Farms) captures the degree of concentration and therefore
inequality in the ownership of land.11
A higher value of this variable indicates a
higher equality of land ownership. The variable Stateness captures the degree of
state-building, taken from Bockstette et al. (2002). The highest value of this variable
indicates a completely independent and centralised state. To account for the impacts
of colonial legacy in terms of type of colonisers, I include five coloniser dummy
variables: UK, France, Netherland, Spain,12
and Japan. The panel-corrected standard
errors (PCSEs) are used to correct for various economic problems with the panel
data. I also include the period dummies to correct for duration dependency
underlying the data. The first column in Table 2 reports the estimates from the
PCSEs model.
All the coefficients are statistically significant at the conventional 5% level, except
the one for Spain. Notice the directions of covariates. The positive signs of the
covariates of Stateness and Family Farms clearly indicate that the more independent
the state is, and the more equalised the income is, the higher the per capita income is
likely to be. The colonial legacy is positive for development in countries that
experienced British and Japanese rule (not reported), but once Stateness and Family
Farms are included, the positive effect of the colonial legacy disappears, as we see the
negative signs of the coefficients of those coloniser dummies. This means that the
394 W. Kim
impacts of income distribution and independence are so great that they overwhelm
the effects of colonial legacy. This finding confirms my argument that the
relationship between the Japanese lineage and subsequent development is spurious.
Is income equality a crucial socio-economic factor that gave rise to the
developmental state, which in turn produced economic development? The causality
runs through two links: income equality ! developmental state ! economic
development. To account for this causal pattern, we need the treatment-effects
model that endogenises the developmental state. It is a two-stage model in which the
first step is to model the binary decision of the developmental state, and the second
step is to analyse economic development affected by the developmental state.13
The
difficulty is to measure the developmental state. Since the developmental state is a
multi-complex state-industry apparatus, it is almost impossible to quantify. Given
this caveat, I use a crude measure of the dummy variable (Developmental State),
coded 1 for the presence of the developmental state, and 0 otherwise. The decision of
the timings of the emergence of the developmental state is based on Doner et al.
(2005).
The second column in Table 2 shows the results from the treatment-effects model.
The coefficient of Family Farms is positive and highly significant at the 1% level,
clearly indicating that income equality is positively associated with the likelihood of
having the developmental state. Yet the Japanese colonial lineage does not affect the
emergence of the development state, as the coefficient of Japan is not statistically
significant. And the highly significant estimate of Developmental State indicates a
quantitatively large, positive impact on per capita income. The change into the
developmental state results in an increase in per capita income by $5375. In sum,
these findings empirically validate our discussions about the importance of income
distribution on the origin of the developmental state. The successful developmental
state emerged only if certain socio-economic conditions were present, and this
condition appears to be income equality.
Table 2. Effects of income distribution on per capita income from 1870 to 1979
Independent Variables PCSE Model Treatment-effects Model
Stateness 29.14 (14.59) 30.83 (10.22)
Family Farms 35.06 (5.09)
UK 71215.48 (227.59) 7516.91 (134.83)
France 71601.79 (211.34) 7962.83 (179.80)
Netherland 71390.29 (251.99) 7529.90 (224.56)
Spain 7344.79 (236.09) 7133.42 (213.03)
Japan 71049.78 (219.81)
Developmental State 5375.36 (275.22)
First Stage: DV ¼ Development State
Family Farms 0.13 (0.04)
Japan 1.36 (0.89)
r 0.21 (0.14)
Observation 586 586
Note: Standard errors are in parentheses; coefficients of period dummies and constants are omitted due to
the limited space.
Colonialism and the Developmental State in East Asia 395
Conclusion
The existing studies on the developmental state have focused exclusively on the
period since the 1960s and posited that certain politico-economic institutions largely
explain divergent developmental paths between Northeast and Southeast Asia. Yet
they have not succeeded in resolving a problem arising from the endogeneity of
institutions; they take institutions as exogenous, neglecting the fact that the creation
of such institutions initially was linked with socio-economic factors, such as income
inequality, that may be correlated with economic development. In other words, they
have not fully explored the historical origins of the developmental state. To confront
these difficulties, I have conducted a macro-historical comparison of Northeast and
Southeast Asia, focusing on inegalitarian colonial institutions, the role of income
inequality, and subsequent political socio-economic transformations. I have found
that the crucial historical phase was the moment of independence when East Asian
countries had an opportunity to break away from the colonial legacy. The successful
developmental states in Korea and Taiwan were fundamentally based on relative
income equality, and the equalisation of income was radically achieved in the form
of land reforms. In contrast, most Southeast Asian countries inherited colonial rule
and, as a consequence, income inequality was perpetuated.
Notes
1
The literature on the developmental state is enormous and, in a sense, the developmental state has been
‘‘over-studied,’’ in Kholi’s words (2004: 84). Some of the representative works would include a classical
work by Johnson (1982) who coined the term ‘‘the developmental state’’ in the East Asian context, and
would also include Amsden (1989), Chibber (2003), Evans (1995), Haggard (1990), Wade (1990), Weiss
(1998), and Woo-Cumings (1999).
2
Przeworski and Curvale (2005: 2) reminds us of the elusiveness of this critique: ‘‘the restrictions on
sugar imports, or the Halliburton Iraq contracts, or the 14 million dollar subsidy to the oil industry’’
have all occurred in the USA, but none of these was supposed to be possible in the USA, whose
economic system is not based on cronyism.
3
As evidence for the continuation thesis, Kholi (1994, 2004) even mysteriously cites the fact that the
founder of the Korean developmental state, Park Chung-Hee, was educated in the Japanese Military
Academy during the colonial period. For more nuanced discussions about the Japanese style for the
Korean development, see Vogel (1991: 52-4).
4
Maddison’s GDP per capita data are based on Geary-Khamis 1990 purchasing power parity dollars, so
that per capita incomes across countries and times are comparable. Maddison’s figures are not
universally accepted by economic historians, but his dataset is the most comprehensive income series
available.
5
Northeast Asia includes China, Japan, Korea (South Korea after 1948), Taiwan and Mongolia;
Southeast Asian countries in this sample are Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Obviously, some of the countries did not exist or were
colonies in the past, so here a country refers to a territorial boundary that we know now.
6
Notice that what we observe here is GDP per capita. As Pomeranz (2000: 31-68) shows, the Yangtze
area in China, roughly equivalent to the size of England, was the most technologically advanced, and
by far the richest area in the world until the nineteenth century.
7
Gini-coefficient is a widely used measure of income inequality. A higher value of this index means a
higher degree of inequality, so 1 indicates perfect inequality and 0 means perfect equality.
8
Acemoglu and Robinson (2006: 116) generalise this incentive as ‘‘political replacement effect,’’ since
‘‘institutional and technological change will increase the likelihood that the elites will lose power,
creating the political replacement effect.’’
396 W. Kim
9
For the excellent discussion about path independency, see Przeworski and Curvale (2005).
10
The Philippines also introduced land reform much later in 1979, and more serious reforms were made
very recently only after democratisation. A crucial difference between the Northeast Asian cases and
the Philippines is the timing. Northeast Asian countries’ land reforms took place before the
industrialisation that provided the socio-economic conditions favourable for industrial policy. For the
importance of this sequencing factor, see Kay (2002).
11
An extensive literature has related the unequal distribution of land to an unbalanced distribution of
income. As Boix (2003) reports, Gini-coefficients and Vanhanen’s index of family farms are highly
correlated.
12
The Philippines was also colonised by the USA as well as Spain, so this dummy variable can be
interpreted as the joint colonial legacy of Spain and the USA.
13
Specifically, the first stage model can be written as:
Developmental Statei;t ¼ Zi;ta þ ni;t ð1Þ
where Z is a vector of observed factors including Family Farms and ni,t is the error term for country i
and year t. This first stage model generates an instrument to be used in the second stage model of
performance that can be written as:
Incomei;t ¼ Xi;tb þ dIi;t þ ei;t ð2Þ
where Xi,t is a vector of observed control variables, ei,t is the error term, and Ii,t is the instrument from
the first stage: the propensity score, Developmental State. By connecting these two equations, one can
measure d the value of the democratic transition controlling for other variables and correcting for the
endogeneity. The model jointly estimates the two equations, using full maximum likelihood.
Importantly, the random error n is potentially correlated with the error e in the performance equation.
The model assumes that the errors n and e have a bivariate normal distribution with mean 0 and
correlation r. The selectivity correlation r is a crucial parameter, indicating whether or not it is
necessary to endogenise Developmental State.
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