Development Miracles in Asia: Growth Patterns and Special Economic Zones

Abstract

After the remarkable growth that occurred in the twentieth century, the market economy had been separated from our society where many of the people’s needs were arranged and provided through non-market channels as well as public goods and care services, and this is called the phenomenon of decoupling. For understanding economic and social development represented by the rise and disappearance of miracles over half of the twentieth century, this article explores the diversity of economic activities, which is the way to the new ‘untapped wealth’ in the twenty-first century. Transformation in domains of economic activities and policy regimes could work for re-coupling the market and the society in a novel way within the inclusive macro economic system, which consists of three domains: the domains of the market economy, the public economy and the social economy. The paper explains the patterns and the path of the economic growth focusing on East Asia and China’s high growth in conjunction with the special economic zones (SEZs). As a growth pattern of Asian economies, the study pays attention to the growth mode which shows that an economy can grow endogenously in the early stage of its development due to abundant amounts of labor. The dynamics of the miracle in China can be explained by a similar pattern as that in Japan, but with the variation of a prolonged span towards transition. The growth strategy of the SEZs is interpreted as an extra-exceptional case of geospatial and institutional experiments for the mechanism of diverse governance. In exploring the diversity of the domains of economic activity and opening up a new way to “untapped wealth,” the importance of the infrastructure commons management as a novel design of the mechanism of governance is also emphasized in conjunction with diverse motivations and goals as well as innovative organizations for the process of institutional reform in the inclusive socio-economic system.

This paper is a revised version of the article presented at the World Forum for the Special Economic Zones, held at the China Center for Special Economic Zones, Shenzhen University, China. This is one of series version of the research project regarding the Asia developmental economy. Author thanks KGU support in Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research.