When I was a kid, I kept hearing about the Pacific Rim, how it was becoming the economic and cultural centre of the world. I remember reading rubbish books like Megatrends 2000 that predicted this region’s inexorable rise. To what extent have these predictions come true? I know China has done well but Japan has been largely stagnant for the last couple of decades and in the late '90s there was economic turmoil in a number of the Asian tigers. Also the Rim includes presumably the western seaboard the Americas, have countries in these areas risen relative to other regions of the planet?
More or less, yes. They are definitely having growing pains, but many of these countries are increasingly modern, well-educated, and at least quasi-democratic. Culturally, they are a lot more vibrant than much of Europe, and they are fundamentally growing. It also includes, to some degree the United States. Many of the do face boom-n-bust cycles, but they tend to grow regardless.
Now, California is specifically having huge problems, and China may wake up to a cold morning soon, but that is largely because of economic mismanagement and poor choices by government in both.
I’ve been to semiconductor companies and packaging plants in Taiwan, Malaysia and The Philippines. The jobs and economic impact of these companies alone has been dramatic in the last 15 years or so.
It costs big bucks to build a wafer fab, and certain companies in Taiwan just keep cranking them out as process technology shrinks and new tools become available.
Japan may be “stagnant” but it is very rich, stable and powerful. What more could you ask for? Korea and Taiwan are likewise rich and stable. They all have strong currencies, viable banking system, productive economies and zero political turmoil. Compare that to situation in America and in some of the European countries.
China may have lots of unique problems due to its size, relative poverty and various un-ironed-out issues stemming from their rapid growth, but at the very least we could say that they are doing as well as anyone could hope. I think that in macro-economic terms they will do just fine, although the possible political swings might hurt the private fortunes of many of the businessmen (perhaps that’s why some of them reputedly have been moving the money out of the country).
Uh… I am not so sure you are quite as keen a student of international economics and the situations of these countries as you seem to think…
and what are your objections? Lots of political turmoil there? Lack of export driven productive economy? Lack of strong currency? Lack of nuclear-based reliable power grid system, maybe? (something not mentioned in my original post, but quite important). Or maybe their banks have lent massive amounts of money to deadbeat mortgages in the interests of greater social equity? In short, why not be more specific with your objections?
Because my objections are pretty wide. Some of the nations are stable, and some are not. There is a huge amount of econimc and political variability. I mean, I don’t really feel like creating a giant essay on the topic.
are the unstable nations called Indonesia, Burma and Cambodia? 
It seems to me that yes Japan is a stable and prosperous country but it hasn’t eclipsed other regions the way it was seemingly meant to, and it currently sees itself becoming the poor cousin to China in the Far East region. What about the nations in western South America, how are they faring by comparison with other regions of the world?
I guess the point I was trying to make was that the whole Pacific Rim hypothesis/slogan was not based on geographic determinism. It was and still is a veiled “racist” expectation that East Asian nations and nearby/similar ones (Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia) are going to do very well. But in modern discourse saying that out loud would not have been politically correct, so they instead used “code words” like Pacific Rim. Papua New Guinea and Nauru are in the Pacific too, but nobody expected them to get anywhere.
Incidentally, why would anybody expect a nation or a region to “eclipse” everybody else? E.g. has America shortly after WW2 (the sole naval superpower, producer of 50% world GDP and net creditor on massive scale) eclipsed everybody all other nations? I guess, define “eclipse”…
I mean eclipse in the sense of vastly overtaking another region both economically and perhaps culturally. This century is predicted to be one wherein China and India eclipse former world powers in Western Europe and North America.
I actually had never considered that there might be a racial component to the idea before.
Not exactly. I mean, for small ionstances, that China is actually apowderkeg which may one dasy (as in, quite probably within my lifetime) explode into massive domestic unrest, more rioting, and even civil war. Japan is stable as much by virtue of being ailing and unable to escape its domestic sinkhole as any social advantage. Korea is outright split in two, and Taiwan may one day declare itself split from China, causing god-knows what.
hello pot. meet kettle…
China’s main economic problem isn’t domestic unrest. Sustainability and environmental concerns are the long-term concerns. Housing, brain drain, and the widening gap between the poor and elite are the short term concerns. Human rights, civil unrest, and civil war aren’t even afterthoughts. Either way, only the ecological/sustainability concerns are real hindrances to the current growth, and the implications of those problems are speculative at best.
Japan’s economy is hardly a sinkhole. The world’s 2nd largest GDP managed to pull off a 2.6% growth even in these harsh economic times. In fact, i’m not even sure what you mean by domestic sinkhole.
Korea’s been split in two for over 60 years. Hardly news. However it’s done nothing to slow down S Korea’s impressive ability to churn out cheap electronics.
Taiwan has held open elections for over 20 years now. They are independent for all intents and purposes. They don’t pay taxes, they have different passports… etc. What more of a split were you looking for? Also i doubt that China is willing to risk international war over a tiny island sovereignty especially since China would have the most to lose if they raised a ruckus. Losing the EU and the US as trading partners even for a short time would cripple their economy.
I think the pacific rim is living up to their expectations. there was a hickup in the late 90s due to the banking fiasco, but ultimately the area is still developing rather well. A very specific yet telling anecdote of the area’s economic prosperity is in looking at the construction of the mega-skyscrapers the area is putting up. Petronas Towers, Taipei 101, the two Shanghai towers, are superimpressive endeavors that reflect the capabilities of East Asia.
if there is domestic unrest, Chinese government will suppress it. Even if lots of people die or get imprisoned in the process, it wouldn’t make front pages in the larger context of the last 200 years of their pretty turbulent history.
As far as ecological and “sustainability” problems go, this reminds me of how back in Russia between 30s and 80s they kept talking about how the West is going to collapse due to inherent contradictions in the evil, brutal, inefficient capitalist system. Any minute now… Those inherent contradictions notwithstanding (it’s not like they weren’t there, btw) the wonderful, progressive, and overall stellar Soviet Communism system collapsed first. Well, in the same way as the capitalists had the last laugh over the “Soviet experiment” so the militantly “unsustainable” nations like China will, IMHO, have the same sort of last laugh over the Gaia worshippers.
There are Gaia worshipers in the real world? Not where I live.
Everything has some racial connotations in American society, but Pacific Rim wasn’t itself a code word. It was simple acknowledgment that a) the population was increasing there at a huge rate (compared especially to Europe, much of was below ZPG at the time); b) the low incomes it could pay meant that manufacturing jobs would be fleeing the U.S.; c) the governments were concentrating on technical education and paying for the best students to get education in the West and then come home; d) the economic systems were increasingly turning to an interesting mixture of capitalism and huge government subsidies to create global businesses; f) the rapid increase in middle class status meant that the Pacific Rim had as many money-spending, object-loving consumers as all of Europe and North America put together and would soon have several times as many.
Nobody expected Japan’s bubble to burst the way it did, just as nobody expected the recession of 2008. Japan didn’t wind up taking the world leadership role, but has stayed prosperous and stable, as others have said. China, India, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, maybe Indonesia and Malaysia, Viet Nam on the outside, all are bursting with money, job growth, and tremendous upside potential.
Will some countries suffer from recession, unrest, revolution, bubbles, natural disaster, failed governments, and bad reality shows? Yes, guaranteed. Nobody can predict which countries will suffer from which calamities when. Will these stop the advantages? Not unless they are so awful that they take the rest of the world down with them as well.
The past two decades have been good for the West and phenomenal for the East. Nor for every country, and not for every one in every country. As generalizations go, however, that’s a safe one.
It seems safe to say that the next two decades will show the same pattern. I gave on prediction a long time ago, though. Every year is a perpetual surprise.