Development and Structural Change in Asia-Pacific

9	Growth and vulnerability before and after the Asian crisis
The fallacy of the universal model1
Jomo K.S.

Introduction

From the 1980s onwards, and especially in the early and mid-1990s, there has been growing international recognition of the sustained rapid economic growth, structural change and industrialisation of the East Asian region. There has also been a tendency to see East Asia as much more of an economically integrated region than it actually is, and a corresponding tendency to see economic progress in the region as being similar in origin and nature. Terms such as the ‘Far East’, ‘Asia-Pacific’, ‘Pacific Asia’, ‘East Asia’, ‘yen bloc’, ‘flying geese’, ‘tigers’, ‘minidragons’, and so on, have tended to encourage ...