Version classiqueVersion mobile

The Asian side of the world - II

 | 
Jean-François Sabouret

Part Three. Constructing theories

Asia has become the laboratory of various forms of capitalism and a challenge for the social sciences

Robert Boyer

Texte intégral

1October 2013

Asia is not Latin America: contrasting path of development

2Conventional economic theories had long suggested that the club of industrialised countries had closed after the Second World War because of the advantages that the most advanced countries had enjoyed in terms of innovation, increasing returns to scale, control of networks and rules of the international system. The recurrent difficulties and the inability of Latin American countries to build a strong industrial base and promote a steady growth were arguments in favour of this hypothesis. As a consequence, a complementarity/opposition was established between the centre and periphery: developed countries exchanged industrial goods in exchange for the supply of natural resources by the periphery.

3Japan’s breakthrough in the 1960s received much attention despite the country being industrialised for a long time; it was surprising how quickly Japanese companies could catch up with modernity and how the economy had experienced a double-digit growth rate, as was the case for China from the 1990s onwards. These two countries were not exceptions, as most other Asian countries also saw the success of their industrialisation strategy, which was developed to generate a wide range of literature on the emergence of the Asian tigers, even before the concept of “emerging” countries had been coined in the 2000s

4Asia was therefore a remarkable challenge for theories of growth, more so in developed countries than those underdevelopment that were built to reflect their specificity compared to old industrial economies. It was also an invitation for multidisciplinary research to understand how social ties to Asian countries were shaping their types of capitalism, growth patterns and their integration into the economy.

“Japan number one”, a challenge to American capitalism and its theorists

5The American concept defines a company as being an entity that is wholly dedicated to maximising profit, for the benefit of its shareholders, whereas a large Japanese company is an anomaly, and to a certain extent, is that which represents an irrationality that: seeks professional stability for multi-skilled employees who contribute to the company’s performance, lacks authority of shareholders who are paid a lump sum, and highlights the importance of financing compared to financial markers, constituting to the many elements that would have jeopardised the success of large Japanese groups.

6The findings of Masahiko Aoki, a Japanese researcher and professor at a renown American university, illustrated that both the American company “A” and the Japanese company “J” were two viable configurations of a capitalist company, but that they were based on two different compromises between shareholders, managers and employees, and that the network of circulating information and hierarchy in decision making varied accordingly. Other Japanese researchers had already shown how this originality explained that growth and market share were the preferred targets of companies and not simply the pursuit of profit. This aspect affected the growth regime of Japan.

7Similarly, Japanese colleagues have been consulting studies into the theory of regulation on the United States and France in order to clarify the specificities of their country. There is a sharp contrast between the typical American Fordism salary and that of major Japanese companies. In the case of the former, the growth in remuneration is codified and institutionalised in exchange for flexibility. In the case of the latter, it is the permanent “company-ist” relationship that is turning all the other components of the working contract into variables of adjustment. Moreover, the organisation of work is different in both cases, as illustrated in the comparison of automobile factories in Japan and the United States. Hence the name Toyotist salary, which is given to this original configuration, and by extension, to the corresponding growth regime.

8In some of these problems, the concept of hybridisation is highlighted. After the Second World War, attempts to import American methods of mass production into Japan were confronted by a series of obstacles related to the nature of professional relationships to the degree of industrial concentration, the small size of the market, and the consequences of wartime destruction. Furthermore, it was important to take into account of the values and culture that prevailed in society at that time. Was it not remarkable that the Japanese mathematic economist, Michio Morishima, developed the hypothesis that Confucianism was the equivalent of Protestantism to explain the rise of Asian capitalism? Literature continually defined Americanisation as being a slow and fumbling process of adaptation, more than an imitation, hybridisation and innovation, creating a new form of capitalism. Such a process will be reiterated mutatis mutandis in the majority of countries in South-East Asia, giving rise to various new socio-economic trajectories in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Boom, crisis, stagnation: crises are an integral part of capitalism

9The diffusion of methods of production and forms of organisation towards new areas proved to be a transformation factor of socio-economic regimes. However, this process hybridisation was not the only mechanism at work. Many historical studies conducted during a long period of time, using the theory of regulation as a starting point, have testified the slow transformation of technical systems, organisations and institutions, which can lead to a sharp reversal in economic conditions. The concept of endometabolism, created for this purpose, can describe the reasons for which the Japanese economy had become the reference for economists and management experts in the 1980s, experiencing a speculative surge and arousing great optimism for the future, and then a taking sharp turn downwards, leading to a long process of reducing property prices and the stock market, without affecting the growth rate.

10Hardly recognised as a model to imitate, Japan was in crisis, under pressure from the same factors that led it to its emergence and success. The intensification of its own work in relation to the Toyotist wage encountered both social and economic limits; the remarkable productive efficiency was generating a surplus in the trade balance that was leading to pressure being applied by North America to liberalise the Japanese economy and opening it to international financial flows. These two transformations resulted in the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance progressively loosing control of the economic situation at that time, as the steering of the economy by the government was loosing its effectiveness. The Japanese authorities were taken by surprise by the speculative boom of the 1980s, which had turned around abruptly and marked the beginning of a new phase of the Japanese economy: the previous mode of company-ist regulation prevented a cumulative depression, but did not allow the economy to return to the trends of the 1970s and 1980s, while no clear strategy of the government and the administration was allowing for the emergence of new growth regime. This was a major crisis or structural crisis in terms of the theory of regulation. In this respect Japan was the industrialised country that anticipated the crises that would follow and whose common origin was the open conflict between trade and financial globalisation and the persistence of domestic institutionalised compromises, forged long ago in history.

11In 1997, most Asian countries experienced similar crises, although they did not have the same consequences. This episode brought about two lessons. Firstly, we must beware of the naive admiration of models that were supposed to guarantee a limitless growth. Secondly, beyond the sophistication of the economy’s monetary and fiscal management tools, great crises can occur, and this was all the more probable because the illusion of a flawless model had been maintained. Unfortunately, these lessons from the history of Asia have not been taken seriously, neither by officials of the European Union nor by the authorities of North America.

Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan: where other forms of Asian capitalism are still present

12A taxonomy of capitalism based on its geographical origin and the opposition of Asia and Latin America are often found in economic studies. Or still, specialists of capital varieties tend to classify all European countries as belonging to the same model characterised by they way in which institutions oversee coordination, in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon capitalism, where the market is the key actor, if not the exclusive one.

13The theory of regulation emphasises that forms of capitalism should be dependant in relation to certain founding compromises that had been updated and amended over time, but which retain the same tone in terms of the mode of regulation and growth regime. The industrialisation of Korea thus occurred later than that of Japan; the chaebol were not an exact replica of the keiretsu as the country’s impulse through an ambitious industrial policy was much more greater in Korea, while in Japan, the public authorities were playing the role of the mediator and catalyst for major industrial projects. Furthermore, in Korea, the struggles of the labour movement, such as that of 1985, played a key role in the creation of an original form of capitalism. Similarly, the success of Taiwan owes itself to certain institutions that were left by the Japanese colonisation long ago, but the preponderance of small and medium businesses and their production links with mainland China is turning this country into another form of capitalism, with specific characteristics.

14As a consequence, it would be wrong to speak of a model of Asian capitalism, as we would not know how to further the idea of European capitalism, since the euro crisis has been showing opposition between northern Europe and southern Europe. Not only is socio-political history largely specific to each national entity, but it is also an international cross-sectional analysis of institutional, organisational and technical characteristics of contemporary capitalism, showing Asia’s take-off as increasing the diversity of capitalism, for Asian countries are spread out according to contrasting, and at times, extreme configurations. The first group consists of city capitalism, Hong Kong and Singapore, while Indonesia and the Philippines are forms of semi-agrarian capitalism. Malaysia, Thailand and, to some extent, China share a common property: industrialisation thanks to the development of foreign trade, while South Korea, Taiwan and Japan define capitalism driven by innovation and export. Closest to other forms of industrialised capitalism, these three countries differ from it in terms of the long-term trajectory and contemporary political alliances.

15These various forms of Asian capitalism are becoming increasingly interdependent due to the division of labour being intensified within Asia. China is at the centre of this impulse and the public authorities are engaging in a process of technological catch-up at an unprecedented speed, but which is causing many tensions within Asia and the United States of America.

A promising research agenda for social sciences

16The interest in Asia is not purely geographical, but it should also be the starting point for an ambitious interdisciplinary research programme and a melting pot, combining political economy, social and political history, cultural studies, management specialists and many other disciplines. This is one of the research strategies used to understand the rapidly changing modern world, characterised by the growing interdependence of contrasted socio-economic systems.

Bibliographie

Bibliographical indications

Aoki, Masahiko, Information, Incentives, and Bargaining in the Japanese Economy, Cambridge (UK), Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Boyer, Robert, La théorie de la régulation : les fondamentaux, Paris, La Découverte, coll. « Repères », 2004.

Harada, Yuji & Tohyama, Hironori, “Asian capitalisms: institutional configurations and firm heterogeneity”, in Robert Boyer, Hiroyasu Uemura and Akinori Isogai (eds), Diversity and transformations of Asian Capitalisms, London, Routledge, 2011, p. 243-263.

Morishima, Michio, Why has Japan “succeeded”? Western technology and Japanese Ethos, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Socio Economic Review, Special Issue, “Asian capitalisms: bringing Asia into the comparative capitalism perspective”, vol. 11, Issue 1, 2013.

Le texte et les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont sous Licence OpenEdition Books, sauf mention contraire.

Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search